serene—the chief of the searchers for knowledge—is an honour. To be a Representative Man of that order, in virtue of, not only brilliant achievement, but the illustrative completeness of the whole character, is the highest of honours; and this is the honour which crowns the life, and will immortalise the career of Michael Faraday.
WANTED—A DIAMOND RING!
I saw it kicked by the careless Balmorals of a jaunty nurse; I saw a fat morsel of humanity make for it with a hey!—broken into divers hey-ey-eys by pudgy trotting—and I stooped and secured it, thereby causing the fat one to pull up short, stare at me with two black currants stuck in a dreary expanse of dough, insert a dumpy thumb in an orifice of the same expanse, and trot back again with that stolid resignation under disappointment which is the peculiar attribute of the London infant population.
Having ascertained the nature of my prize, I proceeded to meditate on the proper course to be taken, which meditation resulted in the following advertisement:
FOUND this evening, Wednesday, in the Regent’s Park, nearly opposite the New College, a valuable diamond ring. The owner may recover it by calling at No. 19, Wilton Place, &c.
Before noon on the following day I was making my most courteous bow to a venerable-looking old gentleman whose white hairs and benevolent smile added a double charm to the grace with which he stepped forward, and, waving ceremony, extended his hand, saying:
“You have taken a weight from my mind, my young friend, and must allow me to thank you.”
The insinuating delicacy of the adjective (I am not more than forty-five) was, perhaps, not with-