in the sound, various and majestic in the
sentiment, it was no inapt, as it was certainly no timid, spirit that
selected such a range of themes. Of "Gaze not on Swans," I know no more
than these four words; yet that also seems to promise well. It was,
however, not a probable suspicion, the work of his master, Mr.
Berkenshaw--as the drawings that figure at the breaking up of a young
ladies' seminary are the work of the professor attached to the
establishment. Mr. Berkenshaw was not altogether happy in his pupil.
The amateur cannot usually rise into the artist, some leaven of the world
still clogging him; and we find Pepys behaving like a pickthank to the
man who taught him composition. In relation to the stage, which he so
warmly loved and understood, he was not only more hearty, but more
generous to others. Thus he encounters Colonel Reames, "a man," says he,
"who understands and loves a play as well as I, and I love him for it."
And again, when he and his wife had seen a most ridiculous insipid piece,
"Glad we were," he writes, "that Betterton had no part in it." It is by
such a zeal and loyalty to those who labor for his delight that the
amateur grows worthy of the artist. And it should be kept in mind that,
not only in art, but in morals, Pepys rejoiced to recognize his betters.
There was not one speck of envy in the whole human-hearted egotist.

RESPECTABILITY

When writers inveigh against respectability, in the present degraded
meaning of the word, they are usually suspected of a taste for clay pipes
and beer cellars; and their performances are thought to hail from the
_Owl's Nest_ of the comedy. They have something more, however, in their
eye than the dulness of a round million dinner parties that sit down
yearly in old England. For to do anything because others do it, and not
because the thing is good, or kind, or honest in its own right, is to
resign all moral control and captaincy upon yourself, and go post-haste
to the devil with the greater number. We smile over the ascendency of
priests; but I had rather follow a priest than what they call the leaders
of society. No life can better than that of Pepys illustrate the dangers
of this respectable theory of living. For what can be more untoward than
the occurrence, at a critical period and while the habits are still
pliable, of such sweeping transformation as the return of Charles the
Second? Round went the whole fleet of England on the other tack