KIDD'S OWN JOURNAL. 



335 



adapted for the purpose, or elsewhere, as agreed 

 upon. 



Now, we ask — is not this diabolical? 

 Marriage, which ought to be the most 

 sacred of all engagements, is here used as 

 a mere peg for an advertisement. The word 

 "marriage," we conceive, is but a colorable 

 evasion of something far too shocking to 

 contemplate. People thus "introduced" 

 would very rarely, we imagine, take refuge 

 in matrimony. We should rather expect 

 to see them falling from the top of the 

 monument, or to hear of a shocking catas- 

 trophe having taken place on Waterloo 

 Bridge ! 



Oh, what an age of wickedness is this ! 



THOUGHTS ON THE SKY. 



It is a strange thing how little, in general, 

 people know about the sky ! It is the part 

 of creation in which Nature has done more 

 for the sake of pleasing man — more for the 

 sole and evident purpose of talking to him, 

 and teaching him, than in any other of her 

 works ; and it is just the part in which we 

 least attend to her. 



The noblest scenes of the earth can be seen 

 and known but by few. It is not intended 

 that man should live always in the midst of 

 them. He injures them by his presence — he 

 ceases to feel them if he be always with them. 

 But the sky is for all ; bright as it is, it is 

 not " too bright nor good for human nature's 

 daily food." It is fitted in all its functions 

 for the perpetual comfort and exalting of the 

 heart, for the soothing it and purifying it from 

 dross and dust. Sometimes gentle, some- 

 times capricious, somtimes awful : never the 

 same for two moments together ; almost 

 human in its passions, almost spiritual in its 

 tenderness, almost divine in its infinity. Its 

 appeal to what is immortal in us, is as distinct 

 as its ministry of chastisement or of blessing 

 to what is mortal is essential. And yet we 

 never attend to it — we never make it a sub- 

 ject of thought, but as it has to do with our 

 animal sensations ! 



We look upon all by which the sky speaks 

 to us, more clearly than to brutes — upon all 

 which bears witness to the invention of the 

 Supreme — that we are to receive more from 

 the covering vault than the light and the dew 

 that we share with the weed and the worm. 

 There exists nothings? meaningless and mono- 

 tonous accident ; too common and too vain 

 to be worthy of a moment of watchfulness or 

 a glance of admiration. — If in our moments 

 of utter idleness and insipidity we turn to the 

 sky as a last resource, which of its phenomena 

 do we speak of? One says it has been wet ; 

 another it has been windy ; and another it 

 has been warm. 



Who among the whole clattering crowd 



can tell us, of the forms and the precipices of 

 the chain of tall white mountains that gilded 

 the horizon at noon yesterday ? Who saw 

 the narrow sunbeam that came out of the 

 south, and smote upon their summits until 

 they melted and mouldered away in a dust of 

 blue rain ? Who saw the dance of the dead 

 clouds, when the sunlight left them last 

 night, and the west wind blew them before 

 it like withered leaves ? All has passed 

 unregretted or unseen ; or, if the apathy be 

 ever shaken off, even for an instant, it is 

 only by what is extraordinary. 



And yet it is not in the broad and fierce 

 manifestation of the elemental energies — not 

 in the clash of the hail, nor the drift of the 

 whirlwind — that the highest characters of 

 the sublime are developed. God is not always 

 so eloquent in the earthquake, nor in the fire, 

 as in " the still, small voice." 



They are but the blunt and the low facul- 

 ties of our nature, says John Ruskin, which 

 can only be addressed through lamp-black 

 and lightning. It is in quiet and subdued 

 passages of unobtrusive majesty, the deep, 

 and the calm, and the perpetual — that which 

 must be sought ere it is seen, and loved ere it 

 is understood — things which the angels work 

 out for us daily, and yet vary eternally, 

 which are never wanting and never repeated, 

 which are to be found always, yet each found 

 but once. It is through these that the lesson 

 of devotion is chiefly taught, and the blessing 

 of beauty given. 



&n (Riitflrial &mk 



A secret in the Public's mouth, 



Is like a wild-bird put into a cage— 



Whose door no sooner opens, but 'tis out. 



Ben Jonson. 



Very curious is our position just 

 now, and very curious are some of the letters 

 and communications that find their way into 

 our " Editor's letter-box." 



We are daily puzzled, perplexed— con- 

 founded, by some of the questions put to us. 

 Our correspondents, masculine and feminine, 

 multiply exceedingly. Gladly would ice re- 

 main neuter, as regards certain questions ; 

 but finding no rest given us until we have 

 answered them, we reluctantly comply with 

 the wishes of the writers. We are expected 

 to know everything, and to furnish advice 

 gratis ! 



Under such circumstances, no wonder is 

 it that we are obliged to preserve the strictest 

 incognito-, and to shroud ourself closer than 

 ever in the "mysterious cloak," so often 

 referred to. This said cloak has stood us 

 in good stead — rendering us perfectly in- 

 visible. Hundreds have tried to waylay us, 

 but we have readily slipped through their 

 fingers; and hundreds have " called" to see 



