yet in this situation, with only the comfort that cleanliness and order could impart, kindness of heart and the determination to be talkative and agreeable throws a halo round the scene, and as we contemplate it we cannot but feel that Kit Nubbles attained to the summit of philosophy, when he discovered “there was nothing in the way in which he was made that called upon him to be a snivelling, solemn, whispering chap—­sneaking about as if he couldn’t help it, and expressing himself in a most unpleasant snuffle—­but that it was as natural for him to laugh as it was for a sheep to bleat, a pig to grunt, or a bird to sing.”

Or take another example, when wealth is attained, though by different means and for different purposes.  Ralph Nickleby and Arthur Gride are industrious and successful; like the vulture, they are ever soaring over the field that they may pounce on the weak and unprotected.  Their constant employment is grinding the poor and preying upon the rich.  What is the result?  Their homes are cold and cheerless—­the blessing of him that is ready to perish comes not to them, and they live in wretchedness to die in misery.  What a contrast have we in the glorious old twins—­brother Charles and brother Ned.  They have never been to school, they eat with their knives (as the Yankees are said to do), and yet what an elucidation do they present of the truth that it is better to give than to receive!  They acquire their wealth in the honorable pursuits of business.  They expend it to promote the happiness of every one within their sphere, and their cheerful days and tranquil nights show that wealth is a blessing or a curse, as it ministers to the higher or lower propensities of our nature.

  “He that hath light within his own clear breast,
  May sit in the centre and enjoy bright day;
  But he that hides a dark soul, and foul thoughts,
  Benighted walks under the mid-day sun;
  Himself is his own dungeon.”

Such men are powerful preachers of the truth that universal benevolence is the true panacea of life; and, although it was a pleasant fiction of brother Charles, “that Tim Linkinwater was born a hundred and fifty years old, and was gradually coming down to five and twenty,” yet he who habitually cultivates such a sentiment will, as years roll by, attain more and more to the spirit of a little child; and the hour will come when that principle shall conduct the possessor to immortal happiness and eternal youth.

If, then, our guest is called upon to state what are

                    “The drugs, the charms,
  The conjuration and the mighty magic,
  He’s won our daughters with,”

well might he reply, that in endeavoring to relieve the oppressed, to elevate the poor, and to instruct and edify those of a happier condition, he had only held “the mirror up to Nature.  To show virtue her own form—­scorn her own image.”  That “this only was the witchcraft he had used;” and, did he need proof of this, there are many fair girls on both sides of the water who, though they might not repeat the whole of Desdemona’s speech to a married man, yet could each tell him,