you exactly for what you are, and esteem you precisely at your worth?  If so, my friend, you will live in a dreary house, and you will have but a chilly fireside.  Do you suppose the people round it don’t see your homely face as under a glamour, and, as it were, with a halo of love round it?  You don’t fancy you are, as you seem to them?  No such thing, my man.  Put away that monstrous conceit, and be thankful that they have not found you out.

ON A HUNDRED YEARS HENCE.

Where have I just read of a game played at a country house?  The party assembles round a table with pens, ink, and paper.  Some one narrates a tale containing more or less incidents and personages.  Each person of the company then writes down, to the best of his memory and ability, the anecdote just narrated, and finally the papers are to be read out.  I do not say I should like to play often at this game, which might possibly be a tedious and lengthy pastime, not by any means so amusing as smoking a cigar in the conservatory; or even listening to the young ladies playing their piano-pieces; or to Hobbs and Nobbs lingering round the bottle and talking over the morning’s run with the hounds but surely it is a moral and ingenious sport.  They say the variety of narratives is often very odd and amusing.  The original story becomes so changed and distorted that at the end of all the statements you are puzzled to know where the truth is at all.  As time is of small importance to the cheerful persons engaged in this sport, perhaps a good way of playing it would be to spread it over a couple of years.  Let the people who played the game in ’60 all meet and play it once more in ’61, and each write his story over again.  Then bring out your original and compare notes.  Not only will the stories differ from each other, but the writers will probably differ from themselves.  In the course of the year the incidents will grow or will dwindle strangely.  The least authentic of the statements will be so lively or so malicious, or so neatly put, that it will appear most like the truth.  I like these tales and sportive exercises.  I had begun a little print collection once.  I had Addison in his nightgown in bed at Holland House, requesting young Lord Warwick to remark how a Christian should die.  I had Cambronne clutching his cocked hat and uttering the immortal la Garde meurt et ne se rend pas.  I had the “Vengeur” going down, and all the crew hurraying like madmen.  I had Alfred toasting the muffin; Curtius (Haydon) jumping into the gulf; with extracts from Napoleon’s bulletins, and a fine authentic portrait of Baron Munchausen.