things contentedly. Let me tell you that the music is not bad on the new pier, and the programme always seems uncommonly well selected. And heroically it is gone through, whether the sounds are on every side drunk in by delicate musical ears, or the performers gather the curtains of their orchestra close around them, and fiddle away to the roaring elements. There are certain people, I perceive, who are regular habitués of the pier, and the weather must be violent indeed that keeps them away. There are one or two gentlemen who gaily affect a sailor-like attitude, and are supposed to have found their weather legs, and to be now pacing the quarter-deck. Then there are several invalid-chaises, where the invalids look so cheerful that I am glad to believe that they must be getting much better; and I am sure they have my good wishes that the good air may do well for them. Then there is the hardy individual, who, like Charles Kingsley, has a special affection for the east wind, and shows particular skill in selecting the most exposed corners in the most boisterous weather. Then there is a certain amount of flirtation, and one or two little scenes occur that have just the suspicion of an assignation about them. It is so easy, the last thing at a party, to tell an agreeable acquaintance that if it is fine you will be sure to be hearing the band play to-morrow on the new pier. Human faces have an indescribable attraction for me: they are library and picture-gallery in one. Did you ever hear how much time, on an average, it takes a physician to understand a medical case? As a rule, it takes him just two minutes. The other minutes of his morning call are to be put down to a little gossip, and pleasant manners, and perhaps your own social charms. Now, as a moral philosopher, dealing with men and women whom I compassionately regard as literary patients, I think that two minutes, well employed, would in many cases enable me to form a tolerably correct moral diagnosis. There is many a face that flits past me, where the transient glance is not enough, and which I should like to arrest just for two precious minutes, just thoroughly to comprehend the general impression, and, as in a palace of truth, make a few interrogatories that must needs be faithfully answered. Socrates used to do that sort of thing in the fashionable walks of old Athens; and I need hardly say that I consider myself a second Socrates. 'Ah! my military friend, Colonel, I presume I beg your pardon, Generalhome from India, I am sure; have some anecdotes about the mutiny and Calcutta balls; belong to the Ragged Club; a little touched in the liver, but sound in wind and limb; a little proud of the station you have won, and taking all fair moderate enjoyment out of it.' This is an honest man, with perhaps only some slight stain of wine upon his conscience, cience. and the expletives which Sterne tells us the Recording Angel wipes out with a tear. I feel certain that my diagnosis is correct. My next military friend is a little bent and bowed, looks anxious, and wears rusty cloth, and I mentally put him down as a shareholder in Overend and Gurney. The young ecclesiastic with the Mark of the Beast waistcoat probably went to support Mr. Purchas yesterday, and perchance he wears a cassock beneath his overcoat. He is very sore just now on the Judgment of the Privy Council; but all his real troubles are before him. He entertains vague expectations from the Ecumenical Council. Theoretically he holds firmly the dogma of the celibacy of the clergy; but he is a little shaken in this opinion by the bright eyes of some Ritualistic belle. You see, my friends, I am only taking the most transparent cases, where, in an analogous case, a physician, as he pockets a fee, could hardly refrain from that ganglionic action which is called blushing. There are other cases more interesting; not only the class of ladies of whom I specially approve, who have sweet sunny faces, courteous, pleasant manners, and wide, affluent natures; but faces whence, if I could be in the confidence of those men and women, I might derive in abundance stories of incident and passion sufficient for any number of novelists lacking the faculty of invention. I know no place that surpasses Brighton for fine female faces with a certain type of intellectual beauty. For the highest kind of womanly loveliness there are several requisites absolutely necessary. You must have sound physical excellence, and, if possible, regular features. In a lighted room a girl with regular features can, in these days, get herself up in any desired style of loveliness. You must have the physique as a necessary groundwork; but much more is necessary to make up beauty. Those who have respect to the physique alone help to harrow up the feelings of the Lord Chamberlain. This is the reason why you never see beauty among very poor people; there are, at the best, merely features and form-which, unrelieved by expression, simply make what the Laureate calls an 'animalism.'. You must have, beyond this, to attain to beauty, the expression of intellect, the expression of culture, the expression of innocence and goodness. Such expression gives nobility to any face; and with it beauty is glorified indeed. I must also desiderate the grace and freedom conferred by a highly refined and polished state of society. It is the want of this that deprives many a pretty, clever face of the dignity essential to beauty. Now the Brighton belles seem to me to combine all these excellences in an unusual degree. The bracing climate gives fine health. The society of the place confers manner and brightens intellect. The culture and goodness must virtually come from the young ladies' mothers, who deserve a dissertation on their own matronly beauty. Taking one place with another, and dealing with women as they are, I think that the Brighton belles have a higher style of face than can be found elsewhere. The Devonian faces are pretty, bnt they chiefly affect those who are admirers of rusticity. Here on the pier the young ladies are listening to what the wild waves are saying, just as little Paul Dombey did yonder. There are a good many of Dr. Blimber's young friends about to-day, and I believe I passed Feeder, B.A., and his Cornelia outside the gates. Almost unwittingly I am at my diagnosis again, and am thinking what kind of symptoms smiles may be. Now let me confess that I am not altogether a believer in smiles, thereby exposing myself to the most ungenial suspicions, but meaning thereby the smile set and fixed on the countenance. Mr. Charles Dickens has taught me to admire the portly smile of universal philanthropy which of course is necessary at Christmas as mistletoe itself. If some one on the pier is smiling genuinely at some merry thought or conceit, almost involuntarily I smile back again, just as I should yawn if he yawned; or if one smiles on the eloquent prattle of children, all this is intelligible enough. There are wonderful children on the pier, by the way, beautifully behaved, and turned out as completely as if from a book of fashions. This is all very well for the pier, and children should be as beautiful as art can make them on occasions; but I don't like children always so spic and span on the coast. There should be honourable dust upon their clothes, and glorious rents in their raiment, and the hair wildly dishevelled; and among the boys I do not object to a few cuts and bruises. It is impossible, however, by dress or undress, to spoil the loveliness of the little children, and I always smile on those who smile on them. But there are some dead, set, stereotyped smiles on some faces which I detest. There is the inane smile of self-complacency and vanity, very irritating on the faces of those who ought to be allegorically laying their faces in dust and ashes. Now, there is a face, clever and well-bred, which I meet here, always falsified by an expression of self-glorification, as if the owner had just made another discovery of his cleverness, and was internally congratulating himself. I can very well understand the fine generalisation that a friend of mine makes of such people, 'Never spoke a word to the fellow, but I should like to punch his head.' Then, again, there is the sort of smile which is often little less than insulting to those towards whom the insult is directed. That handsome, dressy girl has no business to give that contemptuous smile towards the governess with her young charges. Mark you, I am not going to talk any nonsense about governesses. As a rule, from their circumstances, self-consciousness, and sensibility, they lack manner, knowledge of the world, grace, esprit. I don't think that, generally speaking, they are over well educated, using the word in its best sense. It is notorious that schoolmistresses are, as a class, rather uneducated. Still, that insolence of beauty - when a girl has looks, fortune, position, and knows it all so well-which shows itself in a smile of assumed superiority, must, I think, be offensive to every right-minded person. As for those over-dressed among men, their stereotyped smiles or sneers are now put down as mere vulgarity, for which they will perhaps themselves some day blush. It is, in fact, affectation, and, on my soul, I loathe all affectation, and at the present time there is so much of it. I will tell you a good saying of Lord Macaulay's about it. He and a man I know were discussing Edward Irving. Macaulay, in his brusque way, said that Irving was a hypocrite, because he wore his hair in so singular a fashion. The other man pleaded that it was only affectation. 'Well,' said Macaulay, 'and what is affectation but hypocrisy in trifles?' I think this is one of the best definitions of affectation I have ever heard -that it is really nothing else than a kind of hypocrisy. So the affected smiler is a hypocrite, and Shakespeare tells us that he may also be a villain. There is a great deal to talk about, that fancy ball especially, which almost eclipsed the officers' balls, only there was a sad falling-off in costumes. It was allowable to attend in simple evening dress, and then higher prices were rightly charged for the tickets. There was a considerable preponderance of mere evening dress, which is not desirable, and ladies seemed to hesitate about using patches, wigs, or powder. There was not much originality in the characters. There was a great run on the Louis Quinze period. Night, with her sables and her stars, the seasons, with all their floral adaptations, are now pretty well exhausted. There were beautiful little recesses where I should think that a good deal of future clerical morning work for months was cut out. A ball like this always sets an infinitude of gossip about. Other subjects come on the tapis not so pleasant. There was rather a curious little law case tried here the other day which occasioned some. painful gossip. A Mr. Ade, a draper in the Western Road, prosecuted an old lady upwards of seventy for shoplifting. There can be no doubt but the old lady put the collar in her muff, and when she was followed and spoken to on the subject she brought it out. But there is all the doubt in the world whether she had intended to commit a felony. The poor old soul, through all those weary threescore years and ten, had preserved a blameless character; and a man from Swan and Edgar's came down to say what respect they had for her during the many years in which she had dealt at their place of business. I do not admit any exculpatory plea of kleptomania, but it is easy to suppose that an error might be made with failing faculties at so advanced an age. A little absence of mind was the most merciful, and probably the most correct view of the case. The jury - Heaven preserve me from having anything to do with juries-having a common tradesmanlike cause with the prosecutor, convicted her. verily believe that trial by jury is the most iniquitous and haphazard proceeding possible. If you happen to see Lord Kingsdown's 'Autobiography,' just published for private circulation, but of which a very liberal use is made in the last number of the 'Edinburgh, you will see in what profound contempt this great lawyer held the institution of a British jury. I am sure I tremble in my peripatetic shoes. I I remember being in a bookseller's shop, and, having settled in my own mind that I would purchase a book, deposited it in my pocket, and having given a great deal of attention to various objects, I unconsciously pocketed the volume, and walked off with it without going through the preliminary ceremony of paying for it. What a mercy it is that I escaped being handed over to the tender mercies of a British jury! Fortunately I rectified the mistake before it was discovered. It would be no answer to the charge that I was an absent man, and the day before had left a quantity of change upon the counter. The poor old soul was sentenced to a month's imprisonment. She told the judge he might as well have taken out his black cap, and ordered her to be put to death at once. I believe it was a most unrighteous conviction; and I cannot pass the shop without a thrill of horror. As I look out from the pier on the Channel waters, a remarkable literary coincidence occurs to me. Both Wordsworth and Arthur Hugh Clough commence a sonnet with the self-same line Where lies, the Land to which yon ship must go? Now this is very curious if it is an exact coincidence of phraseology; but most probably it was a wandering line in Clough's memory, whose parentage he had forgotten, and which he assumed to be his own. And this reminds me. Looking up one of our best and best-known scholars once, my eye lighted on some Latin poetry he had been writing, and I caught the line Mira manus tangit citharam neque cernitur ulli.' Meeting him in company that evening, we were talking of the effect of associations in celebrated localities, and I told him one of the Latin writers had very poetically struck it off, and I quoted the line. An hour or two afterwards my friend came to me with a very puzzled expression, asking for the authorship, and adding that it was an extraordinary fact that he really thought he had composed such a line himself. He was quite relieved when I told him the facts. This man, who writes Latin poetry as well as Horace and better than Lucan, might as originally have produced one of their lines as Clough did this of Wordsworth's. A large ship slowly appears upon the offing. I mentally repeat to myself that line of double authorship'Where lies the Land to which yon ship must go?' 'Suppose you try it,' comes a comical whisper. 'Get into a small boat with a lot of fivers' the lot of fivers' is merely an artistic touch -'and make arrangements that the ship shall take you wherever it is going. Would it take you to summer belts of ocean, laving palmfringed lands, or bear you to the ice and lichen of Labrador?' And then, in this pre-eminent place of meeting and parting, I repeat to myself some lines of my own poor muse-probably an unconscious echo of some one else: 'Oh friend, we meet, like ships at sea- But stop. The band is just finishing off with an air from 'Il Flauto Magico' that wonderful opera where Mozart anticipated Moore, and by which Mr. Mapleson made one of the best operatic hits of late. It is 'God Save the Queen' now, and I must go and lunch, if I really mean a drive in this exceptional sunshine from Cliftonville to Kemptown. Sauntering thus, we move and gossip on the Brighton New Pier. COLERIDGE AND KEBLE.* That venerable judge, Sir J. T. Coleridge, bas just published a Memoir of his friend, John Keble, the poet, which it requires no prophet to tell will be one of the most valued works of this age. There is something very touching in the friendship between these two. The judge has kept all the letters that passed between them for upwards of forty years-letters written in the fresh morning of life, and others written A Memoir of the Rev. John Keble, M.A., late Vicar of Hursley.' By the Right Hon. Sir J. T. Coleridge, D.C.L. Oxford and London: James Parker and Co. when he was a very old man, counting up the friends who were vanishing one by one, and whom he must soon follow; and these letters breathe an intensity of mutual affection, reveal lives in calmness, purity, and high intellectual thoughts very far removed from ordinary lives, that our modern days may recall all that we know best of ancient worth; and we are thankful for a work so salutary and so elevated. Both the author and the subject were remarkable men. Keble had taken his double-first and a fellowship at Oriel before he was nineteen. Sir John Coleridge also, after high academical distinctions, pursued a brilliant career at the bar, became one of our most useful and honoured judges, and voluntarily retired from the bench to pass many years of a serene old age in his Devonshire home. He has a son who has inherited his abilities and his great legal fame, and we trust also the unspotted goodness of his sire. Much in this volume is unsuited for discussion in these pages, but there is much also of great literary and social interest. There is especially a letter from Dr. Newman here giving an account of the memorable interview, which he, Dr. Pusey, and Mr. Keble had at Hursley not very long before the latter's death. They had not met for so many years that the old men could not at first recognise each other, and Keble afterwards wrote When shall we three meet again? We see how strenuously he supported Mr. Gladstone and how hopefully he thought of him. Here is a brief extract from a letter: H. is just returned from spending two very pleasant days with Lord Derby at Highclere. Lord D. was full of fun, but H. is regretting that he omitted to ask him why he renders βοῶπις "stag-eyed." However, you see we have two strings to our bow. Homer and good wit are in fashion, whether we are Whigs or Tories.' He was naïvely astonished at the amount of money which came in for his poems, but he wished that people would con sider his prose as well as read his poetry.' But this considering Keble's prose is very hard work the style is so exceedingly repellent and unpopular. He did not much approve of what the younger Coleridge was doing with his Abolition of Tests Bill. But I cannot say how much I am obliged to the said John for what he has done for us in the matter of confession.' This refers, Sir J. T. Coleridge tells us, 'to a legal opinion given in a matter which arose out of the extraordinary case of Constance Kent and to services in it as her legal adviser,' meaning, we suppose, the confession made to Mr. Wagner of Brighton. Both the legal knights Coleridge have parts, though unequal, in the volume. The Solicitor - General writes a long letter which is reprinted by his father as a postscript to the work. Both father and son, when they went the western circuit and came to Winchester, used to slip away for the quiet refreshment of a day at Hursley. Sir John Duke Coleridge does not appear to have got on quite well with the aged saint and poet. The two got into conversation on the subject of Charles the First. The lawyer took a view adverse to the king, on the strength of the Naseby letters. 'On this, he said, I remember, with a tenderness and humility, not only most touching but to me most embarrassing, that "it might be so; what was he to judge of other men? he was old, and things were now looked at very differently; that he knew he had many things to unlearn and learn afresh; and that I must not mind what he had said, for that, in truth, belief in the heroes of his youth had become part of him." I am afraid these are my words and not his, and I cannot give his way of speaking, which to any one with a heart I think would have been as overcoming as it was to me.' On one occasion when they were walking together in London, and the barrister was talking on a sacred subject that of the inspiration of the Scriptureswhich he thought would be the great religious question of the time, He showed great dislike to the |