wants is felt.  Till the lower wants are supplied you never feel the higher; and accordingly people who pass through life barely succeeding in gaining the supply of the lower wants, will hardly be got to believe that the higher wants are ever really felt at all.  A man who is labouring anxiously to earn food and shelter for his children—­who has no farther worldly end, and who thinks he would be perfectly happy if he could only be assured on New Year’s day that he would never fail in earning these until the thirty-first of December, will hardly believe you when you tell him that the Marquis at the castle is now utterly miserable because the King would not give him a couple of yards of blue or green ribbon.  And it is curious in how many cases worldly-successful men mount, step after step, into a new series of wants, implying a new set of mortifications and disappointments.  A person begins as a small tradesman; all he aims at is a maintenance for him and his.  That is his first aim.  Say he succeeds in reaching it.  A little ago he thought he would have been quite content could he only do that.  But from his new level he sees afar a new peak to climb; now he aims at a fortune.  That is his next aim.  Say he reaches it.  Now he buys an estate; now he aims at being received and admitted as a country gentleman; and the remainder of his life is given to striving for social recognition in the county.  How he schemes to get the baronet to dine with him, and the baronet’s lady to call upon his homely spouse!  And every one has remarked with amusement the hive of petty mortifications, failures, and disappointments, through which he fights his way, till, as it may chance, he actually gains a dubious footing in the society he seeks, or gives up the endeavour as a final failure.  Who shall say that any one of the successive wants the man has felt is more fanciful, less real, than any other?  To Mr. Oddbody, living in his fine house, it is just as serious an aim to get asked to the Duke’s ball, as in former days it was to Jack Oddbody to carry home on Saturday night the shillings which were to buy his bread and cheese.

And another shade of disappointment which keeps pace with all material success is that which arises, not from failing to get a thing, but from getting it and then discovering that it is not what we had fancied—­that it will not make us happy.  Is not this disappointment ft It everywhere?  When the writer was a little boy, he was promised that on a certain birthday a donkey should be bought for his future riding.  Did not he frequently allude to it in conversation with his companions?  Did not he plague the servants for information as to the natural history and moral idiosyncrasy of donkeys?  Did not the long-eared visage appear sometimes through his dreams?  Ah, the donkey came!  Then followed the days of being pitched over his head; the occasions on which the brute of impervious hide rushed through hedges and left me sticking in them:  happiness was no nearer,