When you read on a silver coin the legend one shilling, you readily take it for a shilling; and if a man walks about with great genius painted upon him in large red letters, many people will aecept the truth of the inscription.  Every one has seen how a knot of able young men hanging together at college and in after life can help one another even in a material sense, and not less valuably by keeping up one another’s heart.  All this is quite fair, and so is even the mutual praise when it is hearty and sincere.  For several months past I have been possessed of an idea which has been gradually growing into shape.  I have thought of getting up an association, whose members should always hold by one another, be true to one another, and cry one another up.  A friend to whom I mentioned my plan highly approved it, and suggested the happy name of the mutual exaltation society.  The association would be limited in number:  not more than fifty members could be admitted.  It would include educated men in all walks of life; more particularly men whose success in life depends in any measure upon the estimation in which they are commonly held, as barristers, preachers, authors, and the like.  Its purposes and operations have already been indicated with as much fulness as would be judicious at the present juncture.  Mr. Barnum and Messrs. Moses and Son would be consulted on the details.  Sir John Ellesmere, ex-solicitor-general and author of the Essay on the Arts of Self-Advancement, would be the first president, and the general guide, philosopher, and friend of the Mutual Exaltation Society.  The present writer will be secretary.  The only remuneration he would expect would be that all the members should undertake, at least six times every day, to make favourable mention of a recently published work.  Six times a day would they be expected to say promiscuously to any intelligent friend or stranger, ’Have you read the Recreations of a Country Parson?  Most wonderful book!  Not read it?  Go to Mudie’s and get it directly ’—­and the like.  For obvious reasons it would not do to make public the names of the members of the association; the moral weight of their mutual laudation would be much diminished.  But clever young men in various parts of the country who may desire to join the society, may make application to the Editor of Eraser’s Magazine, enclosing testimonials of moral and intellectual character.  Applications will be received until the First of April, 1861.

I wonder whether any real impression is produced by those puffing paragraphs which appear in country newspapers about some men, and which are written either by the men themselves or by their near relatives and friends.  I think no impression is ever produced upon intelligent people, and no permanent impression upon any one.  Still, among a rural population, there may be found those who believe all that is printed in a newspaper; and who think that the man who is mentioned in a newspaper