Page:In the dozy hours, and other papers.djvu/105

 Rh the beggar at the gates of Tours was hardly what we delight in calling practical; yet not one shivering outcast only, but all mankind would have been poorer had that mantle been withheld. King Canute taking off his golden crown, and laying it humbly on St. Edmund's shrine, stirs our hearts a little even now; while Queen Victoria sending fifty pounds to a deserving charity excites in us no stronger sentiment than esteem. It was easier, perhaps, for a monarch to do a gracious and a princely deed when his crown and sceptre were his own property instead of belonging to the state; and picturesqueness, ignore it as we may, is a quality which, like distinction, "fixes the world's ideals."

These noble and beautiful benefactions, however, are not the only ones which linger pleasantly in our memories. Gifts there have been, of a humble and domestic kind, the mere recollection of which is a continual delight. I love to think of Jane Austen's young sailor brother, her "own particular little brother," Charles, spending his first prize money in gold chains and "topaze