tion, like that of Bucephalus, reined in by Alexander, that the most powerful efforts have been produced. And be it remembered, that minds of the very highest order, who have given an unrestrained course to their caprice or to their passions, would have been so much higher by subduing them; and that so far from presuming that the world would give them credit for talent, on the score of their aberrations and their extravagances, all that they dared hope or expect has been, that the world would pardon and overlook those extravagances, on account of the various and manifold proofs they were constantly exhibiting of superior acquirement and inspiration. We might also add, that the good effects of talent are universal, the evil of its blemishes confined. The light and heat of the sun benefit all, and are by all enjoyed; the spots on his surface are discoverable only to the few. But the lower order of aspirers to fame and talent have pursued a very different course; instead of exhibiting talent in the hope that the world would forgive their eccentricities, they have exhibited only their eccentricities in the hope that the world would give them credit for talent. greater avidity to the former. And the attachment of the aged to wealth must be a growing and a progressive attachment, since such are not slow in discovering that those same ruthless years which detract so sensibly from the strength of their bodies, and of their minds, serve only to augment and to consolidate the strength of their purse. We should justly ridicule a general who, just before an action, should suddenly disarm his men, and putting into the hands of all of them a Bible, should order them, thus equipped, to march against the enemy. Here we plainly see the folly of calling in the Bible to support the sword; but is it not as great a folly to call in the sword to support the Bible? Our Saviour divided force from reason, and let no man presume to join what God hath put asunder. When we combat error with any other weapon than argument, we err more than those whom we attack. None are so fond of secrets as those who do not mean to keep them; such persons coret secrets as a spendthrift covets money, for the purpose of circulation. There are minds so habituated to intrigue and mystery in themselves, and so prone to expect it from others, that they will never accept of a plain reason for a plain fact, if it be possible to devise causes for it that are obscure, far-fetched, and usually not worth the carriage. Like the miser of Berkshire, who would ruin a good horse to escape a turnpike, so these gentlemen ride their high-bred theories to death, in order to come at truth through by-paths, lanes, and alleys, while she herself is jogging quietly along upon the high and beaten road of common sense. The conse quence is, that they who take this mode of arriving at truth are sometimes before her and sometimes behind her, but very seldom with her. Thus the great statesman who re lates the conspiracy against Doria, pauses to deliberate upon, and minutely to scrutinize Avarice begets more vices than Priam did children, and, like Priam, survives them all. It starves its keeper to surfeit those who wish him dead; and makes him submit to more mortifications to lose heaven, than the martyr undergoes to gain it. Avarice is a passion full of paradox, a madness full of method; for although the miser is the most mercenary of all beings, yet he serves the worst master more faithfully than some Christians do the best, and will take nothing for it. He falls down and worships the god of this world, but will have neither its pomps, its vanities, nor its pleasures for his trouble. He begins to accumulate treasure as a mean to happiness, and by a common but morbid association, he continues to accumulate it as an end. He lives poor to die rich, and is the mere jailer of his house and the turnkey of his wealth. Im-into divers and sundry errors committed, and poverished by his gold, he slaves harder to imprison it in his chest than his brother slave to liberate it from the mine. The avarice of the miser may be termed the grand sepulchre of all his other passions, as they successively decay. But, unlike other tombs, it is enlarged by repletion and strengthened by age. This latter paradox, so peculiar to this passion, must be ascribed to that love of power so inseparable from the human mind. There are three kinds of power-wealth, strength, and talent; but as old age always weakens, often destroys the two latter, the aged are induced to cling with the opportunities neglected, whereby he would wish to account for the total failure of that spirited enterprise. But the plain fact was, that the scheme had been so well planned and digested, that it was victorious in every point of its operation, both on the sea and on the shore, in the harbour of Genoa no less than in the city. until that most unlucky accident befel the Count de Fiesque, who was the very life and soul of the conspiracy. In stepping from one galley to another, the plank on which he stood upset, and he fell into the sea. His armour happened to be very heavy-the night to be very dark the water to be very deep-and | a worldling may be compared to a merchant the bottom to be very muddy. And it is another plain fact, that water, in all such cases, happens to make no distinction whatever between a conqueror and a cat. Fortune has been considered the guardian divinity of fools; and, on this score, she has been accused of blindness; but it should rather be adduced as a proof of her sagacity, when she helps those who certainly cannot help themselves. In the obscurity of retirement, amid the squalid poverty and revolting privations of a cottage, it has often been my lot to witness scenes of magnanimity and self-denial as much beyond the belief as the practice of the great -a heroism borrowing no support either from the gaze of the many or the admiration of the few, yet flourishing amidst ruins and on the confines of the grave; a spectacle as stupendous in the moral world as the falls of the Missouri in the natural; and, like that mighty cataract, doomed to display its grandeur only where there are no eyes to appreciate its magnifi cence. There is this difference between those two temporal blessings, health and money: money is the most envied, but the least enjoyed; health is the most enjoyed, but the least envied; and this superiority of the latter is still more obvious when we reflect that the poorest man would not part with health for money, but that the richest would gladly part with all their money for health. To know a man, observe how he wins his object, rather than how he loses it; for when we fail our pride supports us, when we succeed it betrays us. After hypocrites, the greatest dupes the devil has are those who exhaust an anxious existence in the disappointments and vexations of business, and live miserably and meanly, only to die magnificently and rich. For, like the hypocrites, the only disinterested action these men can accuse themselves of is, that of serving the devil, without receiving his wages; for the assumed formality of the one is not a more effectual bar to enjoyment than the real avarice of the other. He that stands every day of his life behind a counter, until he drops from it into the grave, may negotiate many very profitable bargains; but he has made a single bad one, so bad indeed that it counterbalances all the rest; for the empty foolery of dying rich, he has paid down his health, his happiness, and his integrity; since a very old author observes, that "as mortar sticketh between the stones, 80 sticketh fraud between buying and selling." Such VOL. IV. who should put a rich cargo into a vessel, embark with it himself, and encounter all the perils and privations of the sea, although he was thoroughly convinced beforehand that he was only providing for a shipwreck at the end of a troublesome and tedious. voyage. Two things, well considered, would prevent many quarrels; first, to have it well ascertained whether we are not disputing about terms rather than things; and, secondly, to examine whether that on which we differ is worth contending about. It is an unfortunate thing for fools, that their pretensions should rise in an inverse ratio with their abilities, and their presumption with their weakness; and for the wise, that diffidence should be the companion of talent, and doubt the fruit of investigation. Were a plain unlettered man, but endowed with common sense and a certain quantum of observation and of reflection, to read over attentively the four Gospels and the Acts of the Apostles, without any note or comment, I hugely doubt whether it would enter into his ears to hear, his eyes to see, or his heart to conceive the purport of many ideas signified by many words ending in ism, which nevertheless have cost Christendom rivers of ink and oceans of blood. Should the world applaud, we must thankfully receive it as a boon; for, if the most deserving of us appear to expect it as a debt, it will never be paid. The world, it has been said, does as much justice to our merits as to our defects, and I believe it; but, after all, none of us are so much praised or censured as we think; and most men would be thoroughly cured of their self-importance, if they would only rehearse their own funeral, and walk abroad incognito the very day after that on which they were supposed to have been buried. Anguish of mind has driven thousands to suicide; anguish of body, none. This proves that the health of the mind is of far more consequence to our happiness than the health of the body, although both are deserving of much more attention than either of them receive. We are not more ingenious in searching out bad motives for good actions, when performed by others, than good motives for bad actions, when performed by ourselves. As no roads are so rough as those that have just been mended, so no sinners are so intolerant as those that have just turned saints. Few things are more destructive of the best interests of society than the prevalent but 90 mistaken notion that it requires a vast deal of talent to be a successful knave. For this position, while it diminishes that odium which ought to attach to fraud in the part of those who suffer by it, increases also the temptation to commit it on the part of those who profit by it; since there are so many who would rather be written down knaves than fools. But the plain fact is, that to be honest with success requires far more talent than to be a rogue, and to be honest without success requires far more magnanimity; for trick is not dexterity, cunning is not skill, and mystery is not profoundness. The honest man proposes to arrive at a certain point, by one straight and narrow road, that is beset on all sides with obstacles and with impediments. He would rather stand still, than proceed by trespassing on the property of his neighbour, and would rather overcome a difficulty than avoid it by breaking down a fence. The knave, it is true, proposes to himself the same object, but arrives at it by a very different route. Provided only that he gets on, he is not particular whether he effects it where there is a road, or where there is none; he trespasses without scruple, either on the forbidden ground of private property, or on those by-paths where there is no legal thoroughfare; what he cannot reach over he will overreach, and those obstacles they cannot surmount by climbing, he will undermine by creeping, quite regardless of the filth that may stick to him in the scramble. The consequence is that he frequently overtakes the honest man, and passes by him with a sneer. What then shall we say? that the rogue has more talent than the upright? let us rather say that he has less. For wisdom is nothing more than judgment exercised on the true value of things that are desirable; but of things in themselves desirable, those are the most so that remain the longest. Let us therefore mark the end of these things, and we shall come to one conclusion, the fiat of the tribunal both of God and of man; -That honesty is not only the deepest policy, but the highest wisdom; since however difficult it may be for integrity to get on, it is a thousand times more difficult for knavery to get off; and no error is more fatal than that of those who think that virtue has no other reward, because they have heard that she is her own. Pride differs in many things from vanity, and by gradations that never blend, although they may be somewhat indistinguishable. Pride may perhaps be termed a too high opinion of ourselves, founded on the overrating of certain qualities that we do actually possess; whereas vanity is more easily satisfied, and can extract a feeling of self-complacency from qualifications that are imaginary. Vanity can also feed upon externals, but pride must have more or less of that which is intrinsic; the proud therefore do not set so high a value upon wealth as the vain, neither are they so much depressed by poverty. Vanity looks to the many and to the moment, pride to the future and the few; hence pride has more difficulties, and vanity more disappointments; neither does she bear them so well, for she at times distrusts herself, whereas pride despises others. For the vain man cannot always be certain of the validity of his pretensions, because they are often as empty as that very vanity that has created them; therefore it is necessary for his happiness, that they should be confirmed by the opinion of his neighbours, and his own vote in favour of himself he thinks of little weight, until it be backed by the suffrages of others The vain man idolizes his own person, and here he is wrong; but he cannot bear his own company, and here he is right. But the proud man wants no such confirmations; his preten sions may be small, but they are something, and his error lies in overrating them. If others appreciate his merits less highly, he attributes it either to their envy, or to their ignorance, and enjoys in prospect that period when time shall have removed the film from their eyes Therefore the proud man can afford to wait, because he has no doubt of the strength of his capital, and can also live, by anticipation, on that fame which he has persuaded himself that he deserves. He often draws indeed too largely upon posterity, but even here he is safe; for should the bills be dishonoured, this cannot happen until that debt which cancels all others shall have been paid. If you cannot inspire a woman with love of you, fill her above the brim with love of herself;-all that runs over will be yours. When we feel a strong desire to thrust our advice upon others, it is usually because we suspect their weakness; but we ought rather to suspect our own. Many schemes ridiculed as utopian, decried as visionary, and declaimed against as impracticable, will be realized the moment the march of sound knowledge has effected this for our species: that of making men wise enough to see their true interests, and disinterested enough to pursue them. There is this of good in real evils, they deliver us while they last from the petty despotism of all that were imaginary.-Lacon: or Many Things in Few Words. LOVE'S PERVERSITY. [Coventry Kearsey Dighton Patmore, born at Woodford, Essex, 2d July, 1823. He was some time assistant-librarian in the British Museum. His works are: Tamerton Church Tower, and other Poems; The Angel in the House, a domestic poem in four parts: The Betrothal; The Espousal; Faithful for Ever; and The Victories of Love. Mr. Ruskin says this poem "is a most finished piece of writing, and the sweetest analysis we possess of quiet, modern, domestic feeling." Mr. Patmore also edited A Garland of Poems for Children, and contributed to the Edinburgh and North British Reviews. A complete edition of his poems has been issued by Macmillan.] How strange a thing a lover seems The undevout with paradox! Grows witty and fantastical; In simply picturing his relief, That 'plaining seems to cure his plight; He makes his sorrow when there's none; His fancy blows both cold and hot; Next to the wish that she'll be won, His first hope is that she may not; He sues, yet deprecates consent; Would she be captured she must fly; She looks too happy and content, For whose least pleasure he would die; Oh, cruelty, she cannot care For one to whom she's always kind! He says he's nought, but, oh, despair, If he's not Jove to her fond mind! He's jealous if she pets a dove, She must be his with all her soul; That part is greater than the whole, As if his life were only there; Falls slain with ecstasies of fears; He blames her, though she has no fault, Except the folly to be his; He worships her, the more to exalt The profanation of a kiss; Health's his disease; he's never well But when his paleness shames her rose; His faith's a rock-built citadel, Its sign a flag that each way blows; His o'erfed fancy frets and fumes; And Love, in him, is fierce like Hate, And ruffles his ambrosial plumes Against the bars of time and fate. The Angel in the House. THE AUTHORESS. BY AMELIA OPIE. A young lady, who valued herself on her benevolence and good breeding, and had as much respect for truth as those who live in the world usually have, was invited by an authoress, whose favour she coveted, and by whose attention she was flattered, to come and hear her read a manuscript tragi-comedy. The other auditor was an old lady, who, to considerable personal ugliness, united strange grimaces and convulsive twitchings of the face, chiefly the result of physical causes. The authoress read in so affected and dramatic a manner, that the young lady's boasted benevolence had no power to curb her propensity to laughter; which being perceived by the reader, she stopped in angry consternation, and desired to know whether she laughed at her or her composition. At first she was too much fluttered to make any reply; but as she dared not own the truth, and had no scruple against being guilty of deception, she cleverly resolved to excuse herself by a practical lie. She therefore trod on her friend's foot, elbowed her, and, by winks and signs, tried to make her believe that it was the grimaces of her opposite neighbour, who was quietly knitting and twitching as usual, which had had such an effect on her risible faculties; and the deceived authoress, smiling herself when her young guest directed her eye to her unconscious vis à vis, resumed her reading with a lightened brow and increased energy. This added to the young lady's amusement; as she could now indulge her risibility occasionally at the authoress's expense, without exciting her suspicions; especially as the manuscript was sometimes intended to excite smiles, if not laughter; and the self-love of the writer led her to suppose that her hearer's mirth was But, though this girl lost two valued acquaintances by acting a lie—a harmless white lie, as it is called-I fear she was not taught or amended by the circumstance; but deplored her want of luck, rather than her want of integrity; and, had her deception met with the success which she expected, she would probably have boasted of her ingenious artifice to her acquaintance; nor can I help believing that she goes on in the same way whenever she is tempted to do so, and values herself on the lies of SELFISH FEAR, which she dignifies by the name of LIES OF BENEVOLENCE. It is curious to observe that the kindness which prompts to really erroneous conduct cannot continue to bear even a remote connec tion with real benevolence. The mistaken girl, in the anecdote related above, begins with what she calls a virtuous deception. She could not wound the feelings of the authoress by owning that she laughed at her mode of reading: she therefore accused herself of a much worse fault; that of laughing at the personal infirmities of a fellow-creature; and then, find the result of her comic powers. But the treacherous gratification of the auditor was soon at an end. The manuscript was meant to move tears as well as smiles; but as the matter became more pathetic, the manner became more ludicrous; and the youthful hearer could no more force a tear than she could restrain a laugh; till the mortified authoress, irritated into forgetfulness of all feeling and propriety, exclaimed, "Indeed, Mrs., I must desire you to move your seat and sit where Missdoes not see you; for you make such queer grimaces that you draw her attention and cause her to laugh when she should be listening to me." The erring but humane girl was overwhelmed with dismay at the unexpected exposure; and when the poor infirm old lady replied, in a faltering tone, "Is she indeed laughing at me?" she could scarcely refrain from telling the truth, and assuring her that she was incapable of such cruelty. "Yes," rejoined the authoress, in a paroxysm of wounded self-love; "she owned to me, soon after she began, that you occasioned her ill-timed mirth; and when I looked at you, I could hardly helping that her artifice enabled her to indulge her smiling myself; but I am sure you could help making such faces if you would." 'Child!" cried the old lady, while tears of wounded sensibility trickled down her pale checks, "and you, my unjust friend, I hope and trust that I forgive you both; but, if ever you should be paralytic yourselves, may you remember this evening, and learn to repent of having been provoked to laugh at the physical weakness of a palsied old woman!" The indignant authoress was now penitent, subdued, and ashamed, and earnestly asked pardon for her unkindness; but the young offender, whose acted lie had exposed her to seem guilty of a fault which she had not committed, was in an agony to which expression was inadequate But to exculpate herself was impossible: and she could only give her wounded victim tear for tear. To attend to a farther perusal of the manuscript was impossible. The old lady desired that her carriage should come round directly; the authoress locked up the composition that had been so ill received; and the young lady, who had been proud of the acquaintance of each, became an object of suspicion and dislike both to the one and the other; since the former considered her to be of a cruel and unfeeling nature, and the latter could not conceal from herself the mortifying truth, that she must have felt her play to be wholly devoid of interest, as it had utterly failed either to rivet or to attract her young auditor's attention. sense of the ridiculous with impunity, she at length laughs treacherously and systematically, because she dares do so, and not involuntarily, as she did at first, at her unsuspecting friend. Thus such hollow unprincipled benevolence as hers soon degenerated into absolute malevolence. But had this girl been a girl of principle and of real benevolence, she might have healed her friend's vanity at the same time that she wounded it, by saying, after she had owned that her mode of reading made her laugh, that she was now convinced of the truth of what she had often heard; namely, that authors rarely do justice to their own works when they read them aloud themselves, however well they may read the works of others; because they are naturally so nervous on the occasion, that they are laughably violent, because painfully agitated. This reply could not have offended her friend greatly, if at all; and it might have led her to moderate her outré manner of reading. She would in consequence have appeared to more advantage; and the interests of real benevo lence, namely, the doing good to a fellow creature, would have been served, and she would not, by a vain attempt to save a friend's vanity from being hurt, have been the means of wounding the feelings of an afflicted woman; have incurred the charge of inhumanity, which she by no means deserved; and have vainly, as well as grossly, sacrificed the interests of truth. -Illustrations of Lying in all its Branches. |