doubt whether there be in all England another man who has been so largely engaged in the erecting of aërial mansions. Such edifices are inexpensive; and they have this additional advantage that you may build them after what plans and designs you please, and furnish them in the most superb or voluptuous fashion according to your taste. You need have no apprehension that your architect will send in a drawing too costly and elaborate for your means, that your builder will exceed his estimate, or your upholsterer ruin you with an exorbitant bill. Independent of them all you are free to construct your castle where and how you please, and to deck it out with such appointments of drapery and decoration as may be most suitable to your convenience or enjoyment.

Who shall presume to set bounds to your luxurious imagination? It is nothing to the purpose to say that your castles in the air "come toppling about your ears,” as the O'Finnigan O would phrase it. Of course they do. Such is the fate of every castle, whether material or immaterial. Everything comes toppling about our ears sooner or later, till at last we topple ourselves. It is but a question of time; but it is not in Fate, malignant though she be-to rob us of the dear delight we enjoy while employed in the construction of our Chât eaux en Espagne. What though they go down with a rush at the slightest whiff of adverse wind, the sweet memory of the pleasure we tasted while building them survives their fall, and is a joy for ever. Whether life would be worth having if we were deprived of the privilege of castle building, is a question on which I have not as yet finally made up my mind; but, as at present advised, I am inclined to decide the proposition

in the negative. Everything palls in fruition; nothing comes up to one's conception of its charms; felicity dwells in anticipation, and in that alone. Oh! the bliss ineffable of casting aside the bonds of illness and the trammels of a mean estate, and soaring at a bound into the blue empyrean of poetic fancy, there to revel in such affluent delights as the combination of health and wealth can bestow. At my little rural lodgings I had a fine spell of such rapture. Methought that I had succeeded to a noble fortune and was strong as Hercules and as healthy as a German Spa. I was lord of myself—that heritage of fun. I had nothing to do, and was well paid for doing it; I was free to roam whithersoever I might please; to go a fly-fishing to Norway, or a pig-sticking to India, or a fox-hunting to Hampshire. There was no mountain from Primrose Hill to the Himalayas that I was not at liberty to ascend. I had books and pictures beyond all counting, and my fellow-creatures, so far from snubbing me, or turning up their saucy noses at me, as is their customary practice, treated me with the utmost distinction, and seemed only to live to administer to my pleasure. I called the Heir Apparent "Wales," I chucked the royal children under their royal chins, and they seemed to like it; nay, more, my Sovereign Lady the Queen regarded me with peculiar favor, and styled me the most illustrious of her subjects. Brown was nowhere. Mine was the most brilliant equipage in the Row, mine the most spacious box at the opera, mine the brightest and best of everything. I had two shirts and as many pairs of stockings. Beautiful damsels waited upon me; they sang to me and danced to me, and read my poems aloud, and assured me that they perfectly understood

them, which is more than I would dare to affirm myself. To quote the magnificent language of an American journalist, in describing the wedding of Miss Grant and Mr. Sartoris: "A delightful murmur of conversation was maintained by the ladies, occasionally broken by a zephyr of laughter that only served to ripple the murmuring waves and melt out with a musical echo." And talking of weddings, I had my pick and choice of the most magnificent girls in England, which means the most magnificent in the world; and I was at liberty to wed any one I pleased of them—or any number of them I might fancy, for the matter of that. I got peerages for my friends. I ran over my enemies as though they were mice; and, in a word, I did just as I chose, which is freedom worthy of the name. I bullied all my editors, and behaved with supreme insolence to everyone who is now in authority over me, for I had reached the high top-gallant of my joy, and I belonged to that lucky fraternity of whom old Owen Feltham has written that "their paths are washt with butter and the rosebud crowns them." Such and so prosperous was the condition of my fortunes between the hours of six and eight on Thursday last, while I was employed in the noble occupation of building castles in the air-I built a whole town of them. True, the inevitable hour of disenchantment chimed with an ominous dirge, and when my landlady informed me that Mr. Chalk, my milkman (to whom I owe eighteenpence and am well able to owe it), was waiting down stairs and had become importunate, I sighed to think that I resembled Caligula, who raised a mighty army, and then led it to gather cockle-shells-but what of that? I had had two hours of intense enjoyment, and

that is more than can be said by every muddy-mettled rascal who lords it in the Park or swaggers through Lombard Street, but who, for all his wealth, knows no more about the art and mystery of building castles in the air than a cow knows of playing the flute. Youth, the season made for joy, is not less certainly the age most favorable for castle-building. Who that ever was a boy or girl does not hark back with fond delight, not unmixed with a tender touch of melancholy, to the days when he or she mapped out a future of unclouded joy, and filled it with palaces of pleasure. To hear children talk of what they will do "when they are big "that golden goal never to be reached soon enough, and then to think of what it will all end in, vanity and vexation of spirit, are matters that may well awaken in the mature observer a mournful reflection; for

"O, ye tiny elves who sport

Like linnets in a bush,

You little know what grief you court
When manhood is your wish."

All too true; and yet the very longing for that time, the very effort of the youthful imagination to invest it with ideal charms, the very attempt to paint it in the prismatic hues of fancy, are in themselves joys as genuine as any that the world can supply. Last Sunday morning a friend of mine, an artist of eminence, gave his eldest daughter a gold watch—a birthday gift on the completion of her fourteenth year. "How I wish that I was fourteen instead of six and a half, and then I should have a present!" exclamed her little sister. "Ah! my child," rejoined the father, " how I wish that I was fourteen and then I should have a

future." "Tout le monde a son Carcasonne." Every one pictures to himself some condition of being more blissful and congenial than that which fortune has assigned to him. Handel fancied himself born to command a troop of horse, and Liston, whom nobody could look at without laughing in his face, lived and died in the belief that tragedy was his fort. Even M. Gambetta, who carries his affection for Republican institutions to such a pitch that he will go up in a balloon to serve their interests, sighs for the appearance of "that flower of elegance and good-breeding" which is to make the French Republic what the Athenian once was. May his head never ache till he gets it. Speaking of the romantic exaggerations of poesy, Sir Philip Sidney says that "Nature never set forth the earth in so rich tapestry. as diverse poets have done: neither with so pleasant rivers, fruitful trees, sweet-smelling flowers, nor whatsoever else may make the too-muchloved earth more lovely. Her world is brazen; the poets deliver a golden." This holds good not alone of poets but also of lovers. For painting the meadows with delight, and filling the firmament with picturesque castles, I will back you hair-brained sweethearts against all creation.

"I

THE MISeries oF MUSIC.

AM never merry when I hear sweet music," says Shakespeare. No more am I, my divine William. I am downright miserable. Indeed, the more I think of it, the more firmly am I convinced that music is at the