WHAT TO TALK ABOUT.

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When, in the winter evenings, the shutters are closed upon the outside world, the curtains drawn and the lamps lighted—when every dimple smiles upon the cheek of home-take your place in the little ring of happy faces, and endeavour to promote a flow of genial, wise, and good-humoured talk. Shakespeare has told us the indispensable elements. it "should be pleasant without scurrility, witty without affectation, free without indecency, learned without conceitedness, novel without falsehood." Or we may take the compound prescribed by Sir William Temple :-“The first ingredient is truth, the next good sense, the third good-humour, and the fourth wit." You may not be able to be witty-and for Heaven's sake don't pretend to it-nothing is more dreary than the emptiness of false wit; but you can be sensible, kindly, natural. You are not to talk, however, for the sake of self-display. Conversation implies that all will do their part; and a good "converser" will know how to listen as well as how to talk-how to impel others to join in the harmonious current as well as how to join in it himself. So says the sententious Young, who wrapped up so many nice little maxims in his correct couplets :

""Tis a task indeed to learn to hear;

In that the skill of conversation lies,

That shows or makes you both polite and wise."

Do not raise the objection that you are at a loss for subjects in days when the newspapers furnish you with so many. The last new book, the last new play, the last speech of a great statesman, some indication of foreign manners, some new invention of science, some fresh masterpiece in art-such topics as these will agreeably fill up a vacant half-hour, and your family or your friends as well as yourself will profit by the discussion. As Cowper says:

"The mind, despatched upon her busy toil,

Should range where Providence has blessed the soil;
Visiting every flower with labour meet,

And gathering all her treasures, sweet by sweet,
She should imbue the tongue with what she sips,
And shed the balmy blessing on the lips,

That good diffused may more abundant

grow,

And speech may praise the Power that bids it flow."

It was said of Varilles, that of ten things which he knew he had learned nine from conversation; and the stores of general information possessed by royal personages who are known never to have studied were acquired in their intercourse with the leading minds of their age and country. As Bacon puts it, conference or conversation makes " a ready man;" it imposes on us the necessity of keeping our knowledge close at hand, so that we may be able to draw upon it without difficulty. Bacon goes on to recommend that variety of subjects which knowledge renders possible.

"It is good in discourse," he says, "and speech of conversation, to vary and intermingle speech of the present occasion with arguments, tales with reasons, asking of questions with telling of opinions, and jest with earnest; for it is a dull thing to tire, and, as we say now, to jade anything too far." And he points out how conversation may be made profitable for self-culture:-"He that questioneth much shall learn much and content much; but especially if he apply his questions to the skill of the persons whom he asketh; for he shall give them occasion to please themselves in speaking, and himself shall continually gather knowledge." In another way conversation may be turned to good account; it may be made to act as an incentive to study, if you feel that it is your duty to play that part in conversation which you expect others to play, to entertain and inform them as you desire them to entertain and inform you. Conversation is a game in which everybody ought to put down a stake, because everybody shares in the profits.

Home is the place where you may best deal with the æsthetic side of self-culture. At school you may have taken "lessons in drawing," and acquired a certain facility in making bad copies of good models or in "music," and have hammered your way through a number of pianoforte "morceaux" and "fantasias." This superficial knowledge you may conveniently deepen and extend at home. Probably some member of your family may be able to direct your studies; if not, "practice makes perfect," and numerous facilities in the way of art-education are now offered, at a wonderfully cheap rate, by the Government and various public bodies. I would strongly recommend every student to cultivate at least one branch of art, not only for the high and pure enjoyment it will afford, but as a relief and a relaxation from his graver pursuits. There is no true rest in idleness, but there is in a wise change of occupation; and after assiduous application to some scientific pursuit or to the day's business, or perhaps the mastery of a foreign language, I know no better method of refreshing and reinvigorating the mind than by sitting down to the piano or organ, or joining with friends or family in part-singing, or making a "fair copy" of some masterpiece by a great painter. That intellect must necessarily be imperfectly cultivated of which the imaginative and emotional side is neglected, and a whole region of faculties and perceptions is opened up by the study of art. Shall we close our ears to all that the great musicians would teach us by their mighty harmonies and subtle melodies? Shall we shut our eyes to the wise and beautiful and generous things which the great painters have put upon their eloquent canvas? The love of art so appeals to our deepest emotions, to all that is best and purest in our nature, so gratifies the imagination while it contents the judgment, so stimulates the power of reflection and quickens the critical faculty, that it is of the highest importance to develop and cherish and educate it.

Mr.

ON THE PRACTICE OF ART.

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Herbert Spencer divides the leading kinds of activity which constitute human life into five classes :-First, those activities which directly minister to self-preservation; second, those activities which, by securing the necessaries of life, indirectly minister to self-preservation; third, those activities which have for their end the rearing and discipline of offspring; fourth, those activities which are involved in the maintenance of proper social and political relations; and fifth, those miscellaneous activities which fill up the leisure part of life, devoted to the gratification of the tastes and feelings. In the last class must be included the pursuit and cultivation of art; but though it thus occupies a subordinate position, I must still insist upon its importance. Man cannot live by bread alone. The imagination must be inspired, the fancy awakened, the feelings aroused. The sense of beauty is in a great degree coincident with the sense of truth and purity; and though it is certain that the artist may lead an immoral life, his art must thereby suffer, and the highest art will always be the truest and purest. Both as a moral and mental discipline, not less than as a rest and refreshment for the brain, wearied by much study or by the cares of life, the study of art must be strenuously recommended. If you feel no capacity for the practice of music, take up drawing or painting; or, if that be uncongenial or impossible, carve in wood, mould in clay-do anything which will keep alive in you a love of the beautiful. For myself, I know no art which is more delightful in itself or elevating in its effects than music. With Bishop Beveridge I have found it "the best recreation both to my mind and body." The same motion that the hand makes upon the instrument, the instrument seems to make upon the heart. It revives the spirits, composes the thoughts, delights the ear, recreates the mind, and so not only fits me for after-business, but fills my heart at the present with pure and useful thoughts; so that when the music sounds the sweetliest in my ears, truth commonly flows the clearest into my mind." To Sir William Herschel, the astronomer, it was a source of profound pleasure. Milton soothed his weary spirit, when he had fallen on evil days and evil tongues, with the lofty strains of the organ, and to others he recommended what had brought such great gain to himself. "The interim of convenient rest before meat," he writes, “may both with profit and delight be taken up in recruiting and composing the travailed spirit with the solemn and divine harmonies of music heard or learned, either while the skilful organist plies his grave and fancied descant in lofty figures, or the whole symphony, with artful and unimaginable touches, adorns and graces the well-studied chords of some choice composer; sometimes the lute or soft organ stop waiting on elegant voices either to religious, martial, or civil ditties, which, if wise men and prophets be not extremely out, have great power over dispositions and manners to smooth and make them gentle from

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THE ARTIST IS THE true worker.

rustic harshness and distempered passions. The like also would not be inexpedient after meat to assist and cherish Nature in her just concoction, and send their minds back to study in good time and satisfaction." The student to whom these pages are addressed must be his own organist or pianist, violinist or flutist, and supply his own recreation, as did Goldsmith with his flute. Gray, the author of the immortal "Elegy," performed upon the harpsichord; and it is recorded that he sung to his own accompaniment on that instrument with fine taste and much feeling. Goethe studied music at eighty-one. The "chiefest recreation" of George Herbert, the Church poet, was music, "in which heavenly art," says Izaak Walton, "he was a most excellent master, and composed many divine hymns and anthems while he sat and sang to his lute or viol." Canon Kingsley, when addressing the students of Berkeley College, advised them, amid the pursuits of a technical education, "to cultivate the aesthetic faculty," a taste for music and the fine arts. He himself was defective in the musical organisation, but his love of art was intelligent and sincere; and when planning with his future wife the occupations of their happy wedded days, he was careful to provide that "in the evening" they should "draw, and feed the fancy." There is a theory, as Sir Arthur Helps says, which has done serious mischief to the cause of general culture, namely, that it is impossible to excel in more things than one. "Avoid music; do not cultivate art; be not known to excel in any craft but your own," says many a worldly parent, thereby laying the foundation of a narrow, greedy character, and destroying means of happiness and of improvement which success, or even real_excellence, in one profession only cannot give. And therefore I say, let one of your amusements at home be the pursuit of some branch of art.

CHAPTER II.

LIFE IN THE WORLD.

HEN a young man leaves the shelter of the paternal rooftree and goes forth into the world, the first difficulty he experiences lies in the choice of friends. Unless circumstances should place him in a position of exceptional solitariness, acquaintances will quickly throng around him, and before long he will have admitted one or more of them to a closer intimacy. In due time the intimacy will ripen into friendship. Upon the wisdom and propriety that have governed his selection will probably depend his success in life, so great is the subtle and unostentatious influence exerted upon our character by the companionship we keep. We enter society and begin to play our part upon the stage while the mind is still plastic, still open to every impression, while the feelings are undisciplined and before the habits are matured. The strength of our passions and the real tenderness of our nature are unknown even to ourselves; we resemble the clay statue which waits the master's touches to mould it into a hero or a slave, into something godlike or something debased. It is ill for us, perhaps, to come into contact with a will stronger than our own, for then we submit unresistingly to its guidance; it is worse to meet with one which readily acknowledges a superiority in ourselves, for then we lose that moral check and support we seriously need. The dangers that in either case surround us are not the less because we do not easily discover them, and can be neutralised only by a discretion which young men are slow to exhibit. How strange it is that while a man will display the most anxious vigilance in choosing a horse, demanding a warranty, and closely criticising its points, he will take to himself a friend without the pretence of an inquiry into his antecedents or his characteristics! He accepts his credentials with implicit confidence, perhaps dispenses with them altogether. A gay, light bearing, a confident manner, a merry laugh, a show of skill or courage; some of us ask no more than this of the man whom we hasten to call our friend. We never ask ourselves what is the object of friendship, or whether in the economy of life it has any value; it never occurs to us that it is perhaps one of the agencies