of Jerusalem was dedicated, but that Lindley Murray, grammarian, died January 16th, 1826.  This is not because they could not find so many as three hundred and sixty-five events of considerable interest since the creation of the world, but because they well know we would rather hear of something less interesting.  We care most about what concerns us either very closely, or so little that practically we have nothing whatever to do with it.

I once asked a young Italian, who professed to have a considerable knowledge of English literature, which of all our poems pleased him best.  He replied without a moment’s hesitation: 

“Hey diddle diddle, the cat and the fiddle,
   The cow jumped over the moon;
The little dog laughed to see such sport,
   And the dish ran away with the spoon.”

He said this was better than anything in Italian.  They had Dante and Tasso, and ever so many more great poets, but they had nothing comparable to “Hey diddle diddle,” nor had he been able to conceive how anyone could have written it.  Did I know the author’s name, and had we given him a statue?  On this I told him of the young lady of Harrow who would go to church in a barrow, and plied him with whatever rhyming nonsense I could call to mind, but it was no use; all of these things had an element of reality that robbed them of half their charm, whereas “Hey diddle diddle” had nothing in it that could conceivably concern him.

So again it is with the things that gall us most.  What is it that rises up against us at odd times and smites us in the face again and again for years after it has happened?  That we spent all the best years of our life in learning what we have found to be a swindle, and to have been known to be a swindle by those who took money for misleading us?  That those on whom we most leaned most betrayed us?  That we have only come to feel our strength when there is little strength left of any kind to feel?  These things will hardly much disturb a man of ordinary good temper.  But that he should have said this or that little unkind and wanton saying; that he should have gone away from this or that hotel and given a shilling too little to the waiter; that his clothes were shabby at such or such a garden-party—­these things gall us as a corn will sometimes do, though the loss of a limb may not be seriously felt.

I have been reminded lately of these considerations with more than common force by reading the very voluminous correspondence left by my grandfather, Dr. Butler, of Shrewsbury, whose memoirs I am engaged in writing.  I have found a large number of interesting letters on subjects of serious import, but must confess that it is to the hardly less numerous lighter letters that I have been most attracted, nor do I feel sure that my eminent namesake did not share my predilection.  Among other letters in my possession I have one bundle that has been kept apart, and has evidently no connection