ficance.

"The superficial observer," says Mr. Greg, "recollects a text which he
heard in his youth, but of which he never considered the precise
applicability--'He that hath two coats, let him impart to him that hath
none.'"

The assumptions that no educated Englishman can ever have heard that
text except in his youth, and that those who are old enough to remember
having heard it, "never considered its precise applicability," are
surely rash, in the treatment of a scientific subject. I can assure Mr.
Greg that a few gray-headed votaries of the creed of Christendom still
read--though perhaps under their breath--the words which early
associations have made precious to them; and that in the bygone days,
when that Sermon on the Mount was still listened to with respect by many
not illiterate persons, its meaning was not only considered, but very
deliberately acted upon. Even the readers of the _Contemporary Review_
may perhaps have some pleasure in retreating from the sunshine of
contemporary science, for a few quiet moments, into the shadows of that
of the past, and hearing in the following extracts from two letters of
Scott's (the first describing the manner of life of his mother, whose
death it announces to a friend, the second, anticipating the verdict of
the future on the management of his estate by a Scottish nobleman) what
relations between rich and poor were possible, when philosophers had not
yet even lisped in the sweet numbers of Radical Sociology.

* * * * *

140. "She was a strict economist, which she said, enabled her to be
liberal; out of her little income of about L300 a year she bestowed at
least a third in well-chosen charities, and with the rest, lived like a
gentlewoman, and even with hospitality more general than seemed to suit
her age; yet I could never prevail on her to accept of any assistance.
You cannot conceive how affecting it was to me to see the little
preparations of presents which she had assorted for the New Year, for
she was a great observer of the old fashions of her period--and to think
that the kind heart was cold which delighted in all these arts of kindly
affection."

141. "The Duke is one of those retired and high-spirited men who will
never be known until the world asks what became of the huge oak that
grew on the brow of the hill, and sheltered such an extent of ground.
During the late distress, though his own immense rents remained in
arrears, a