little sweet savour of the old Adam.  It is quite wonderful how far simple generosity and kindliness of heart go in securing affection; and, when these exist, what a host of apologists spring up for faults and vices even.  A country squire goes recklessly to the dogs; yet if he has a kind word for his tenant when he meets him, a frank greeting for the rustic beauty when she drops a courtesy to him on the highway, he lives for a whole generation in an odour of sanctity.  If he had been a disdainful, hook-nosed prime minister who had carried his country triumphantly through some frightful crisis of war, these people would, perhaps, never have been aware of the fact; and most certainly never would have tendered him a word of thanks, even if they had.  When that important question, “Which is the greatest foe to the public weal—­the miser or the spendthrift?” is discussed at the artisans’ debating club, the spendthrift has all the eloquence on his side—­the miser all the votes.  The miser’s advocate is nowhere, and he pleads the cause of his client with only half his heart.  In the theatre, Charles Surface is applauded, and Joseph Surface is hissed.  The novel-reader’s affection goes out to Tom Jones, his hatred to Blifil.  Joseph Surface and Blifil are scoundrels, it is true; but deduct the scoundrelism, let Joseph be but a stale proverb-monger and Blifil a conceited prig, and the issue remains the same.  Good humour and generosity carry the day with the popular heart all the world over.  Tom Jones and Charles Surface are not vagabonds to my taste.  They were shabby fellows both, and were treated a great deal too well.  But there are other vagabonds whom I love, and whom I do well to love.  With what affection do I follow little Ishmael and his broken-hearted mother out into the great and terrible wilderness, and see them faint beneath the ardours of the sunlight!  And we feel it to be strict poetic justice and compensation that the lad so driven forth from human tents should become the father of wild Arabian men, to whom the air of cities is poison, who work without any tool, and on whose limbs no conqueror has ever yet been able to rivet shackle or chain.  Then there are Abraham’s grandchildren, Jacob and Esau—­the former, I confess, no favourite of mine.  His, up at least to his closing years, when parental affection and strong sorrow softened him, was a character not amiable.  He lacked generosity, and had too keen an eye on his own advancement.  He did not inherit the noble strain of his ancestors.  He was a prosperous man; yet in spite of his increase in flocks and herds,—­in spite of his vision of the ladder, with the angels ascending and descending upon it,—­in spite of the success of his beloved son,—­in spite of the weeping and lamentation of the Egyptians at his death,—­in spite of his splendid funeral, winding from the city by the pyramid and the sphinx,—­in spite of all these things, I would rather have been the hunter Esau, with birthright filched away, bankrupt