Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 348

But Joan was not like John—
For when her lips once touch’d the cup,
She swill’d till all was gone.

John often urged her to drink fair,
But she cared not a jot—
She loved to see that angel there,
And therefore drain’d the pot.

When John found all remonstrance vain,
Another card he play’d,
And where the angel stood so plain
He had a devil portray’d.

Joan saw the horns, Joan saw the tail,
Yet still she stoutly quaff’d,
And when her lips once touch’d the ale,
She clear’d it at a draught.

John stood with wonder petrified,
His hair stood on his pate,
“And why dost guzzle now,” he cried,
“At that enormous rate?”

“Oh, John!” she said, “I’m not to blame—
I can’t in conscience stop—
For sure ’twould be a burning shame
To leave the devil a drop.”

Changeable, versatile, inconstant Eusebius, where is now your burst of philanthropy—where is all your rage? Pretty havoc you would but now have made, had you been armed with thunder—thunder, I say, for yours would have been no silent devastation among the villains. No Warnerian silent blazeless destruction would suit your indignation—in open day, and with a shout, would you do it, and in such wise would you suffer, if needs must,   with Ajax’s prayer in your mouth—“Εν δε Φαει και ολεσσον.” But for a grand picture of a sweeping indignation, there is nothing so grand as that fine passage in the Psalms—“Let them be as the dust before the wind, and the angel of the Lord scattering them.” Men and all their iniquities, once so mighty, so vast, but as grains less than grains of dust—all the clouds of hypocrisy dispersed in atoms before the fury of the storm of vengeance. You were, as you read, Eusebius, in honest rage. I could see you as in a picture, like the figure with the scourge in hand flying off the very ground, in Raffaelle’s noble fresco, the Heliodorus; and now are you far more like a merryandrew in your mirth, and the quaint sly humour of the tale in verse has made you blind to the delinquencies of the quaffing Joan. Blind to their delinquencies! Stay your mirth a moment, Eusebius—are you not blind to your own? Now I remember me, you are a thief, Eusebius, however you may have settled that matter with your conscience. Have you read the proposed “Dog-bill?” Here’s a pretty to do!—Eusebius convicted of dog-stealing—subject to the penalty of misdemeanour! “I!” you will say. Yes, you. You put it down, doubtless, in the catalogue of your virtues, as you did when you boasted to me that you had, by a lucky detection in probably the criminal’s first offence, saved a fellow-creature from a course of crime. Do you remember your dog Chance? yes, your dog, for so you called him—and, pray, how came you by him? This was your version. A regiment was marching by your neighbourhood, at the fag-end of which a soldier led a very fine spaniel by a piece of cord. You always loved dogs—did you not, you cunning Eusebius? You can put two and two together as well as most people. The dog had no collar. Oh, oh! thought you—the master of so fine a dog would have collar and chain, too, for him. This fellow must have stolen him—it is my duty (your virtuous duty, indeed) to rescue this fine creature, and perchance save this wretched man from such wicked courses. So thus you proceed—you look indignant, and accost the soldier, “Holloa, you fellow—whose dog’s that?” Soldier—“What’s that to you?” Eusebius—“What’s the name of your captain, that I may instantly appeal to him on the subject?” Soldier alarmed—“I beg your honour’s pardon, but the dog followed me. I don’t know to whom he belongs.” What made you, then, so particularly enquire where he came from, and whereabouts he met with him? Your virtue whispered to you, “Ask these questions, that you may be able to find out the owner.” Another imp whispered, “It might be useful.” So you seize the rope, lecture the man upon the enormity of his intentions, quietly take the dog to your stable, and walk away with, as you flatter yourself, the heartfelt satisfaction of having saved a fellow-creature from the commission of a theft. To do you justice, you did, I verily believe, for two whole days make decent enquiries, and endeavour, if that be not too strong a word—endeavour to find out the owner. But at the close of every day you thought proper to question Rover himself; and questioning Rover led you to look into each other’s faces—and so you liked Rover’s looks, and Rover liked your looks—and when you said to Rover, I should like to know who your master is? Rover looked with all his eyes, as much as to say, “Well now, if ever I heard the like of that! If my name is Rover, yours must be Bouncer”—then you patted him for a true and truth-telling dog; and he wagged his tail, and looked again at you, till you perfectly mesmerized each other, and understood each other, and he acknowledged that you, and no other, could be his master—and so you mastered him, and he mastered your conscience—and then you and your conscience began to have a parley. I fear you had sent her to a bad boarding-school, and had just brought her home for the holidays, with a pretty many more niceties and distinctions than she took with her—and had come back “more nice than wise.” “Have you found the owner?” quoth she. “It is time he were found,” replied you. “Why?” quoth she. “Because,” you rejoin, “the shooting season is fast approaching.” “That is true.” “The dog will be spoiled for want of practice.” “That will be a pity.” “Thank you, conscience—won ’t   it be a sin?” Conscience is silent, so you take that for granted. “Hadn’t I better take out a license this year?” “Oh! it wouldn’t be right you should go without one.” “Certainly not, (somewhat boldly;) I will get my license directly. Poor Rover!—well—how very fond that dog is of me—it would be highly ungrateful not to make a return even to a dog. I ought to be fond of him. I—am—very fond of him.” Then you confess, Eusebius, that you should be very sorry to part with him. Conscience says, “Do you mean to say you should be sorry to find out the real owner?” “Really, conscience,” you reply, “there can be no harm in being sorry; but you are becoming very impertinent, and asking too many questions.” Here conscience nods—is asleep—is in a coma, Eusebius—fairly mesmerized by you, and follows you at your beck wherever you choose to lead her. And so you take her to your stable to look at Rover: and you want a suggestion how you can stop Rover’s wandering propensities; and conscience, being in a state of clairvoyance, bids you tie him up. You ask how—“by the teeth;” so you order him a good plate of meat inside, your stable-door locked, and you replenish that plate for a week or more, and have a few conferences with Rover in your parlour—and the dog is tied. Then you didn’t like the name of Rover—but liked Chance. Conscience suggested the name as a palliative, as something between true proprietorship and theft—it gave you a protective right, and took away the sting of the possession. You fortified yourself in this position, as cunningly as the French at Tahiti. But how happened it, Eusebius, that when any friend asked you if you had found the owner, you turned off the subject always so ingeniously, or denied that you had a Rover, but one Chance, certainly a fine dog?—and how came it that you never took him in the direction of the country from whence the regiment had come? And yet, if the truth could be known, would it not turn out, Eusebius, that fears did often come across your pleasures, and your affection for Chance? and had a child but asked you, as you might have been crossing a stile, in quest, with Chance before you, as you did the soldier, “whose dog’s that?” you would have stammered a little—and almost, in your affection, have gone down upon your knees to have begged him as a gift; and it is fearful to think what a sum any knave as cunning as yourself had been, would have got out of you. Now, my dear Eusebius, I entreat you, when you shall read or hear read—“Is thy servant a dog, that he should do this thing,” that you think of Chance, and not of his doing, but yours. I dare to say, you have never quite looked at the affair in this light; we all are apt to wash our hands of a troublesome affair, and think we come with them clean into court.

Take care you don’t resemble the monkey with the meal-tub. His master thrashed him when he caught him at the theft, and showed him his hands covered with meal, that he might understand the reason of his punishment. Monkey, after the next theft, took care to wash his hands, and when his master came to punish him, extended them to show how clean they were. His master smiled, and immediately brought him a looking-glass—his face and whiskers were powdered with meal: and there you have the origin of the adage, “You have washed your hands but not your face.” There will still be a monitor, Eusebius, to hold the looking-glass to you, and the like of you: and look to your face; and whenever you find that you have put a good face upon any doubtful matter, take the trouble then to look at your hands; and if they be clean, look again and see if your face and hands are clean together. And that will be the best tableau-vivant you or any one else can study.

Now, however, that conscience seems so thoroughly gone to the dogs, without any personal allusion to your case, Eusebius, I cannot resist telling you an anecdote by which you will see how Neighbour Grace of M–n ingeniously touched the conscience of Attorney B., who was supposed to have none—upon the matter of a dog-theft, and how Attorney B. was a match for Neighbour Grace.

“I am come to thee, Friend B.,” said Grace, “to ask thee a question. Suppose my dog should go into thy kitchen, and run off with a neck of   mutton, dost thee think I ought to pay thee for the neck of mutton?”

“Without doubt,” said Lawyer B.

“Then I’d thank thee to pay me three and fourpence; for it was thy dog stole my neck of mutton, and that’s the cost of it.”

“Perfectly right,” said Attorney B., coolly drawing out a bill and receipt. “So, Neighbour Grace, you must pay me three and fourpence, and that settles the matter.”

“How so?”

“Why, as you asked my opinion, my charge for that is six and eightpence—deduct value of neck of mutton, three and fourpence, and just so much remains.” And Lawyer B. got the best of it, and made him pay too. Now this it was to probe another’s conscience, without knowing the nature of the beast you stir up; not considering that when conscience thus comes down, as it were, with “a power of attorney,” it is powerful indeed—“recalcitrat undique tutus.” There are many such big swelling consciences, that grow up and cover the whole man—like the gourd of Jonah, up in a night and down in a night—a fine shelter for a time from the too-searching sun; but there is a worm in it, Eusebius, and it won’t last.

It is a very odd thing that people commonly think they can have their consciences at command, and can set them as they do their watches, and it is generally behind time: yet will they go irregularly, and sometimes all of a run; and when they come to set them again, they will bear no sort of regulation. Some set them as they would an alarum, to awaken them at a given time; and when this answers at all, they are awakened in such an amazement that they know not what they are about. Such was the case with the notorious Parisian pawnbroker, who all in a hurry sent for the priest; but when the crucifix was presented to him, stammered out that he could lend but a very small matter upon it. So consciences go by latitudes and longitudes—slow here and fast there. They have, too, their antipodes—it is night here and sunshine there. And so of ages and eras: and thus the same things make men laugh and tremble by turns. What unextinguishable laughter would arise should Dr Howley, Archbishop of Canterbury, go in procession with his clergy to Windsor, each armed with scissors, to clip the moustaches of the prince and his court! Yet a like absurdity has in other days pricked the consciences of king and courtiers to a sudden and bitter remorse. I read the other day in that very amusing volume, the Literary Conglomerate, in an “Essay on Hair,” how Anselm, archbishop of Canterbury, went so far as to pronounce an anathema of excommunication on all who wore long hair, for which pious zeal he was much commended; and how “Serlo, a Norman bishop, acquired great honour by a sermon which he preached before Henry I. in 1104, against long curled hair, with which the king and his courtiers were so much affected, that they consented to resign their flowing ringlets of which they had been so vain. The prudent prelate gave them no time to change their minds, but immediately pulled a pair of shears out of his sleeve, and performed the operation with his own hand.” A canon is still extant, of the date of 1096, importing that such as wore long hair should be excluded from the church whilst living, or being prayed for when dead. Now, the very curates rejoice in ringlets and macassar. It would be curious to trace the heresy to its complete triumph in full-bottomed wigs, in which, it was ignorantly supposed, wisdom finally settled, when it was not discovered elsewhere. Thus it is, Eusebius, that folly, the vile insect, flies about—just drops a few eggs in the very nest of conscience, and is off, and a corruption of the flesh followeth. Those, therefore, who take out license to shoot folly as it flies, should be made to look after the eggs likewise.

Alas, Eusebius, that any thing should take the name of this nice sense that is not replete with goodness, that is not the true ductor substantium! The prophet of an evil which wounds his very soul will take offence if it come not to pass and spare not. Was not Jonah grieved that the whole city was not destroyed as he had said? That nice and inner sense was more ingenious on the side of bold justice, than prodigal to mercy;   and so had he not “a conscience void of offence;” and thus this honourable feeling not always acts unfettered, but is intercepted and hurried on, spite of itself, into courses of action in which there is too much of passion, and, plunging into error with this outward violence, is forced upon ingenious defences. The story of Piso is in point. He thought to act the conscientious judge, when he condemned the soldier to death who had returned from forage without his companion, under the impression that he had killed him; but as he is upon the point of execution, the man supposed to have been murdered returns, all the soldiery present rejoice, and the executioner brings them both to the presence of Piso. And what did the conscientious Piso? His conscience would not so let him put by justice; so, with a surprising ingenuity of that nice faculty in its delirium, he orders execution upon all three—the first soldier, because he had been condemned—the second, who had lost his way, because he was the cause of his companion’s death—and the executioner, because he had disobeyed his orders. He had but to pretend to be greatly grieved at his vagary, to have the act lauded as an instance of Roman virtue. I look upon the famed Brutus, when he thought it a matter of conscience to witness, as well as order, his sons’ execution, to have been a vain unfeeling fool or a madman. Let us have no prate about conscience proceeding from a hard heart; these are frightful notions when they become infectious. A handful of such madmen are enough, if allowed to have their way, to enact the horrors of a French Revolution. All this you know, Eusebius, better than I do, and will knit your brows at this too serious vein of thought. I will come, therefore, a little nearer our common homes. You shall have a scene from domestic life, as I had it the other day, from a lady with whom I was conversing upon this subject, who tells me it is a veritable fact, and took place some seventy years back. “It will want its true power,” said my friend, “because that one solitary trait could give you no idea of the rich humour of the lady, the subject of this incident—her simplicity, shrewdness, art, ignorance, quickness, mischief, made lovely by exceeding beauty, and a most amusing consciousness of it. Seventy years ago, too, it happened—there are no such ladies in the better ranks of society now. She lived at Margate. It came to pass that the topping upholsterer there got a new-shaped chest of drawers from London—the very first that had appeared in Margate—and gave madam, she being one of the high top-families, the first sight of it. With the article she fell in love, and entreated her husband to buy it; but the sensible gentleman, having his house capitally and fully furnished, would not. The lady still longed, but had not money enough to make the purchase—begged to have her quarter advanced. This was not granted. She pouted a little, and then, like a wise woman, made up her mind to be disappointed, and resumed her more than wonted cheerfulness; but, alas! she was a daughter of Eve, as it will be seen. Christmas-day came—it was the invariable custom of the family to receive the sacrament. Before church-time she sent for her husband. She had a sin on her conscience—she must confess before she could go to the altar. Her husband was surprised. “What is it?” “You must promise not to be very angry.” “But what is it? Have you broken my grandmother’s china tea-pot?” “Oh! worse than that.” “Have you thrown a bank-note in the fire?” “Worse than that.” “Have you run in debt to your abominable smuggling lace-woman?” “Worse than that.” “Woman!” quoth he sternly, and taking down an old broadsword that hung over the chimney-piece, “confess this instant;” and he gave the weapon a portentous flourish. “Oh! dear Richard, don’t kill me, and I’ll tell you all at once. Then I, (sob,) I, (sob,) have cribbed (sob) out of the house-money every week to buy that chest of drawers, and you’ve had bad dinners and suppers this month for it; and (sobbing) that’s all.” He could just keep his countenance to say—“And where have you hid this accursed thing?” “Oh, Richard! I have never been able to use it; for I have covered it over with a blanket ever since I had it, for fear of your seeing it. Oh! pray, forgive me!”   You need not be told how she went to church with a “clean breast,” as the saying is. It is an unadorned fact. Her husband used to tell it every merry Christmas to his old friend-guests.” Here you have the story, Eusebius, as I had it thus dramatically (for I could not mend it) from the lips of the narrator.

Is it your fault or your virtue, Eusebius, that you positively love these errors of human nature? You ever say, you have no sympathy with or for a perfect monster—if such there be—which you deny, and aver that if you detect not the blot, it is but too well covered; and by that very covering, for aught you know to the contrary, may be all blot. You would have catalogued this good lady among your “right estimable and lovely women!” and if you did not think that chest of drawers must be an heirloom in the family, you would set about many odd means to get possession of it. Yet I do verily believe that there are brutes that would not have forgiven in their wives this error—that would argue thus, You may sin, madam, against your Maker; but you shall not sin against me. Is there not a story somewhere, of a wretched vagabond at the confessional—dreadful were the crimes for which he was promised absolution; but after all his compunctions, contortions, self-cursings, breast-beatings, hand-wringings, out came the sin of sins—he had once spit by accident upon the priest’s robe, though he only meant to spit upon the altar steps. Unpardonable offence! Never-to-be-forgiven wretch! His life could not atone for it. And what had the friars, blue and grey, been daily, hourly doing? You have been in Italy, Eusebius.

I have not yet told you the story for the telling which I began this letter; and why I have kept it back I know not—it is not for the importance of it; for it is of a poor simple creature. But I must stay my hand from it again; for here has one passed before my window that can have no conscience. It is a great booby—six foot man-boy of about nineteen years. He has just stalked by with his insect-catcher on his shoulder; the fellow has been with his green net into the innocent fields, to catch butterflies and other poor insects. Many an hour have I seen you, Eusebius, with your head half-buried in the long blades of grass and pleasant field-weeds, partially edged by the slanting and pervading sunbeams, while the little stream has played its song of varied gentleness, watching the little insect world, and the golden beetles climbing up the long stalks, performing wondrous feats for your and their own amusement—for your delight was to participate in all their pleasures; and some would, with a familiarity that made you feel akin to all about you, walk over the page of the book you were reading, and look up, and pause, and trust their honest legs upon your hand, confiding that there was one human creature that would not hurt them. Think of those hours, my gentle friend, and consider the object for which that wretch of a booby is out. How many of your playmates has he stuck through with pins, upon which they are now writhing! And when the wretch goes home murder-laden, his parents or guardians will greet him as a most amiable and sweet youth, who wouldn’t for the world misspend his time as other boys do, but is ever on the search after knowledge; and so they swagger and boast of his love of entomology. I’d rather my children should grow up like cucumbers—more to belly than head—than have these scientific curiosity-noddles upon their poles of bodies, that haven’t room for hearts, and look cold and cruel, like the pins they stick through the poor moths and butterflies, and all innocent insects. Good would it be to hear you lecture the parents of these heartless bodies for their bringing up, and picture, in your eloquent manner, the torments that devils may be doomed to inflict in the other world on the cruel in this; and to fix them writhing upon their forks as they pin the poor insects. What would they do but call you a wicked blasphemer, and prate about the merciful goodness of their Maker, as if one Maker did not make all creatures? Yet what do such as they know of mercy but the name? These are they that kill conscience in the bud.

Men’s bosoms are like their dwellings—mansions, magnificent and gorgeous—full of all noble and generous   thoughts, with room to expand—or dwellings of pretensions, show, and meanness—or hovels of all dirt and slovenliness; yet is there scarcely one in which conscience does not walk in and out boldly, or steal in cautiously, though she may not always have room to move her arms about her, and assert her presence. Yet even when circumscribed by narrowness, and immured in all unseemly things, will she patiently watch her time for some appropriate touch, or some quiet sound of her voice. Her most difficult scene of action, however, is in the bosom of pretension; for there the trumpet of self-praise is ever sounding to overwhelm her voice, and she is kept at arm’s-length from the touch of the guilty hearts, by the padding and the furniture that surround them. But oh! the hypocrites of this life—they almost make one weary of it; they who walk with their hands as if ever weighing, by invisible scales, with their scruples of conscience their every thought, word, and action. Shall I portray the disgusting effigies of one? “Niger est—hunc tu, Romane, caveto.” I will, however, tell you somewhat of one that has lately come across my path, and I will call him Peter Pure; for he is one of those that, though assuming a quietness, is really rabid in politics, and has ever upon his lips “purity of election,” and the like cant words. A few years ago his circumstances not being very flourishing, he got the ear of our generous friend of the Grange; through his timely assistance, and a pretty considerable loan, he overcame his difficulties, and is now pretty well to do. At the last contest for the borough, our friend T. of the Grange, with others, waited upon Peter Pure; and Peter, with large professions of gratitude—as how could he do less for so kind a benefactor?—unhesitatingly promised his vote. At this time, be it observed, there was not the slightest appearance of the contest which afterwards came, and with that storm a pretty good shower of bribery. What quantity of this shower fell to Peter Pure’s share, was never discovered; but it is easy to conjecture that so nice, so grateful a conscience was not overcome for nothing. Peter never liked cheap sins. The contest came, the election takes place, and Peter Pure’s plumper weighs down the adversary’s scale. Soon after this he had the impudence to accost his benefactor thus:—“My dear friend and benefactor, and worthy sir, I wished for this opportunity of explaining to you, with the utmost sincerity and confidence, what may have appeared to you like—yes—really like a breaking of my word. It is true I did promise you my vote: but then, you know, voting being a very serious matter, I thought it necessary to read my oath which I should be called upon to take; and I found, my good friend, to my astonishment, that I was bound by it not to vote from ‘favour and affection.’ Yes, those are the words. Now, it unfortunately—only unfortunately in this instance, mind me—happens, that there is not a man in the world so much in my affection and my favour as yourself; to vote, therefore, as you had wished me to vote, would, after reading the oath, have been downright perjury; for I certainly should have voted ‘through favour and affection.’ That would have been a fearful weight upon my conscience.” Here was a pretty scoundrel, Eusebius. I should be sorry to have you encounter him in a crowd, and trust his sides to your elbows, lest you should be taken with one of those sudden fits of juvenility that are not quite in accordance with the sedateness of your years. You will not be inclined to agree with an apologist I met the other day, who simply said that Satan had thrown the temptation in his way. There is no occasion for such superfluous labour, nor does the arch-fiend throw any of his labour away. Your Peter Pures may be very well left to themselves, and are left to themselves; their own inventions are quite sufficient for all their trading purposes; there is no need to put temptations in their way—they will seek them of themselves.

You will certainly lay me under the censure that Montaigne throws upon Guicciardini. Let me then make amends, and ascribe one action to a generous, a conscientious motive. There cannot be found a better example than I have met with in reading some memoirs of the great and good Colston, the founder of those excellent charities   in London, Bristol, and elsewhere. I find this passage in his life. It happened that one of his most richly-laden vessels was so long missing, and the violent storms having given every reason to suppose she had perished, that Colston gave her up for lost. Upon this occasion, it is said, he did not lament his unhappiness as many are apt to do, and perpetually count up the serious amount of his losses; but, with dutiful submission, fell upon his knees, and with thankfulness for what Providence had been pleased to leave him, and with the utmost resignation relinquished even the smallest hope of her recovery. When, therefore, his people came soon afterwards to tell him that his ship had safely come to port, he did not show the signs of self-gratulation which his friends expected to see. He was devoutly thankful for the preservation of the lives of so many seamen; but as for the vessel and her cargo, they were no longer his—he had resigned them—he could not in conscience take them back. He looked upon all as the gift of Providence to the poor; and, as such, he sold the ship and merchandize—and most valuable they were—and, praying for a right guidance, distributed the proceeds among the poor. How beautiful is such charity! Here is no false lustre thrown upon the riches and goods of this world, that, reflected, blind the eyes that they see not aright. The conscience of such a man as Colston was an arbiter even against himself, sat within him in judgment to put aside his worldly interest, and made a steady light for itself to see by, where naturally was either a glare or an obscurity, that alike might bewilder less honest vision.

Some such idea is gloriously thus expressed by Sir Thomas Browne in his admirable Religio Medici.[3 - Religio Medici, a new edition, with its sequel, Christian Morals, and resemblant passages from Cowper’s Task. By Mr Peace, Bristol. The text of this inestimable author is here cleared of its many errors, and the volume contains a useful verbal index.] “Conscience only, that can see without light, sits in the areopagy and dark tribunal of our hearts, surveys our thoughts, and condemns our obliquities. Happy is that state of vision that can see without light, though all should look as before the creation, when there was not an eye to see, or light to actuate a vision—wherein, notwithstanding, obscurity is only imaginable respectively unto eyes. For unto God there was none. Eternal light was for ever—created light was for the creation, not himself; and as He saw before the sun, He may still also see without it.”

A case of conscience came to be discussed not long since, in which I took a part. We had been speaking of the beauty of truth, and that nothing could justify the slightest deviation from the plain letter of it. This was doubted; and the case supposed was, that of a ruffian or a madman pursuing an innocent person with intent to murder. You see the flight and pursuit; the pursuer is at fault, and questions you as to the way taken by the fugitive. Are you justified in deceiving the pursuer by a false direction of the way his intended victim had taken? Are you to say the person went to the right, when the way taken was the left? The advocate for the downright truth maintained that you were not to deceive—though you felt quite sure that by your telling the truth, or by your silence altogether, immediate murder would ensue. The advocate declared, that without a moment’s hesitation he should act upon his decision. He would have done no such thing. People are better than their creeds, and, it should seem, sometimes better than their principles. In which case would his conscience prick him most, when the heat was over—as accessory to the murder or as the utterer of untruth? I cannot but think it a case of instinct, which, acting before conscience, pro hac vice supersedes it. The matter is altogether and at once, by an irresistible decree, taken out of the secondary “Court of Conscience” and put into the primary “Court of Nature.”

Truth, truth! well may Bacon   speak of it thus—“‘What is truth?’ said laughing Pilate, and wouldn’t wait for an answer.” If there be danger in the deviation shown in the case stated, what a state are we all in? All, as we do daily in some way or other, putting our best legs foremost. Look at the whole advertising, puffing, quacking, world—the flattering, the soothing, the complimenting. Virtues and vices alike driving us more or less out of the straight line; and, blindfolded by habit, we know not that we are walking circuitously. And they are not the worst among us, perhaps, who walk so deviatingly—seeing, knowing—those that stammer out nightly ere they rest, in confession, their fears that they have been acting if not speaking the untrue thing, and praying for strength in their infirmity, and more simplicity of heart; and would in their penitence shun the concourse that besets them, and hide their heads in some retired quiet spot of peace, out of reach of this assault of temptation. And this, Eusebius, is the best prelude I can devise to the story I have to tell you. It is of a poor old woman; shall I magnify her offence? It was magnified indeed in her eyes. Smaller, therefore, shall it be—because of its very largeness to her. But it will not do to soften offences, Eusebius. I see already you are determined to do so. I will call it her crime. Yes, she lived a life of daily untruth. She wrote it, she put her name to it—“litera scripta manet.” We must not mince the matter; she spoke it, she acted it hourly, she took payment for it—it was her food, her raiment. Oh! all you that love to stamp the foot at poor human nature, here is an object for your contempt, your sarcasm, your abuse, your punishment; drag her away by the hair of her head. But stay, take care you do not “strain at a gnat and swallow a camel;” examine yourselves a little first. She has confessed, perhaps you have not. Remember, no one knew it; no one guessed it. It is she herself has lifted up the lantern into the dark recesses of her own heart; or rather, it is true religion in her hath done it: and dark though it was there, you ought to see clearly enough that her heart is not now the den wherein falsehood and hypocrisy lurk; search well—you see none. She has made a “clean breast of it,” and you had better do the same, and drop the stone you were about to fling so mercilessly at her dying head. Are you out of patience, Eusebius? and cry—Out with it, what did she do? You shall hear; ’tis but a simple anecdote after all. I have learned it from a parish priest. He was sent for to attend the deathbed of poor old village dame, or schoolmistress. She had a sin to confess; she could not die in peace till she had confessed it. With broken speech, she sobbed, and hesitated, and sobbed again.

“I—I—I,” she stammered out, and hid her face again. “There, I must, I must tell it; and may I be forgiven! You know, sir, I have kept school forty years—yes, forty years—a poor sinful creature—I—I”–

“My good woman,” said the parish priest, “take comfort; it will be pardoned if you are thus penitent. I hope it is not a very great sin.”

“Oh yes!” said she, “and pray call me not good woman. I am—not—good;” sobbing, “alas, alas!—there, I—will out with it! I put down that I taught grammar—and (sobbing) I, I, did not know it myself.”

Eusebius, Eusebius, had you been there, you would have embraced the old dame. The father of lies was not near her pillow. This little sin, she had put it foremost, and, like the little figure before many nothings, she had made a million of it; and one word, nay one thought, before confession was uttered, had breathed upon and obliterated the whole amount. Where will you see so great truth? And this, you will agree with me, was a case of Tender Conscience.

THIERRY’S HISTORY OF THE GAULS.[4 - Histoire des Gaulois, par M. Amadée Thierry. 3 tomes. Paris: 1835.]

’Tis a pleasant thing to turn from the present, with its turmoil and its noise, its clank of engines and its pallid artizans, its political strife and its social disorganization, to the calm and quiet records of the past—to the contemplation of bygone greatness: of kingdoms which have passed away,—of cities whose site is marked only by the mouldering column and the time-worn wall—of men with whose name the world once rang, but whose very tombs are now unknown. If there is any thing calculated to enlarge the mind, it is this; for it is only by a careful study of the past that we come to know how duly to appreciate the present. Without this we magnify the present; we imagine that the future will be like unto it; we form our ideas, we base our calculations upon it alone; we forget the maxim of the Eastern sage, that “this too shall pass away.” It is by the study of history that we overcome this otherwise inevitable tendency; we learn from it, that other nations have been as great as we, and that they are now forgotten—that a former civilization, a fair and costly edifice which seemed to be perfect of its kind, has crumbled before the assaults of time, and left not a trace behind. There is a still small voice issuing forth from the ruins of Babylon, which will teach more to the thinking mind than all the dogmas and theories of modern speculators.

When we turn to the study of ancient history, our attention is immediately riveted on the mighty name of Rome. Even the history of Greece cannot compare with it in interest. Greece was always great in the arts, and for long she was eminent in arms: but the arms of her citizens were too often turned against each other; and the mind gets fatigued and perplexed in attempting to follow the endless maze of politics, and the constant succession of unimportant wars. There are, indeed, many splendid episodes in her history—such as the Persian war, the retreat of the Ten Thousand, a few actions in the Peloponnesian contest, and the whole of the Theban campaigns of Epaminondas; but the intervening periods have but a faint interest to the general reader, till we come down to the period of the Macedonian monarchy. This, indeed, is the great act in the drama of Grecian history. Who can peruse without interest the accounts of the glorious reign of Alexander; of that man who, issuing from the mountains of Macedonia, riveted the fetters of despotism on Greece, which had grown unworthy of freedom, and carried his victorious arms over the fertile plains of Palestine, till he stood a conqueror amidst the palaces of Persepolis, and finally halted only on the frontiers of Hindostan, arrested in his progress not by the arms of his enemies but by the revolt of his soldiers? He flung a halo of glory around the last days of Greece, like the bright light of a meteor, whose course he resembled equally in the rapidity and brilliancy of his career. With him dies the interest of Grecian story: the intrigues and disputes of his successors, destitute of general interest, served but to pave the way for the progress of a mightier power.

Of greater interest even than this is the history of Rome. Her conquests were not merely the glorious and dazzling achievements of one man, which owed their existence to his talents, and crumbled to pieces at his death; they were slow and gradual in their progress—the effects of a deep and firm policy: they were not made in a day, but they endured for a thousand years. No country presents such interest to the politician and the soldier. To the one, the rise and progress of her constitution; her internal struggles; the balance of political power in the state; her policy, her principles of government; the administration and treatment of the many nations which composed her vast empire, must ever be the subject of deep and careful study: while to the other, the campaigns of Hannibal, the   wars of Cæsar, and the long line of her military annals, present a wide field for investigation and instruction—an inexhaustible topic for philosophic reflection.

But there is one subject connected with the progress of the Roman empire which has been unduly neglected, and without a perfect understanding of which we cannot justly appreciate either the civil or military policy of that state. We mean the history of the nations who came in contact with her—viz. the Carthaginians, the Gauls, the Spaniards. The ancient historians belonged exclusively to Greece or Rome: they looked upon all other nations except themselves as barbarous; and they never related their history except incidentally, and in so far as it was connected with that of those two countries. Modern historians, following in their track, and attracted by the splendour of their names, deviated not from the beaten path; and a thick veil still hung over the semi-barbarous neighbours and enemies of Rome. The history of no one of those nations was more interesting, or in many points involved in greater obscurity, than that of the Gauls.

Nowhere amongst the ancient writers could any connected account of the origin or progress of this nation be found; scattered notices of them alone could be discovered interspersed incidentally amongst other matter, and these notices were frequently inconsistent. This is particularly the case as regards their early history: in later times, when they came into more immediate contact with the Romans, a more connected and minute account of them has been preserved. In the lively pages of Livy, and in the more accurate narrative of Polybius, a considerable mass of information on this subject maybe found; while a clear light has been thrown on many parts of their latter history by the narrative of Appian, the Lives of Plutarch, and, above all, by the Commentaries of Cæsar. But all this information, scattered over a multiplicity of authors, could give us no conception of their history as a people. An author was still wanting to collect all these together, so as to present us with something like a continuous history. But to do this was no easy task: the materials were scanty and often contradictory; they were all written in a spirit hostile to the Gauls; a deep vein of prejudice and national partiality ran through and tarnished them all; the motives of that people were misrepresented, their actions falsified, the historians often understood little of their institutions and their character. From such materials it required no common man to be able to deduce a clear and impartial narrative; it required great talent and deep research—the accuracy of the scholar and the spirit of the philosopher, the acuteness of the critic joined to the eye of the painter. Such a man has been found in Amadée Thierry. His History of the Gauls is a work of rare merit—a work which must ever be in the hand of every one who would understand the history of antiquity. It is little to the credit of the literature of this country, that his work has not yet appeared in an English translation.

He has traced the progress of the Gauls, from their earliest appearance on the stage of the world till their final subjection to the Roman power, in a manner worthy of a scholar and a philosopher. His narrative is clear, animated, and distinct; he possesses in an eminent degree the power of giving breadth to his pictures; of drawing the attention of his readers to the important events, whilst the remainder are thrown into shade. His mode of treating his authorities is perhaps the best that can be imagined; he neither clogs his pages with long extracts, nor does he leave them unsupported by a reference to the original authors. At the end of each paragraph a reference is given to the authorities followed, to whom the reader may at once turn if he wish to verify the conclusions arrived at; and where the points are involved in obscurity, the passages founded on are quoted generally in a note, and never in the text, except when their importance really justified such an interruption of the narrative. His style is always animated and graphic, occasionally rising to elevated flights of eloquence, while his subject is one of a deep and varied interest; for in following the checkered fortunes of the Gauls, he is brought in contact with   almost every nation of the earth. To whatever country of the ancient world we turn, we find that the Gaul has preceded us, either as the savage conqueror or the little less savage mercenary. Issuing originally from the East, that boundless cradle of the human race, we soon find him contending with the German for his morass, with the Spaniard for his gold—traversing the sands of Africa, and pillaging the plains of Greece—founding a kingdom in the midst of Asiatic luxury, and bearing his conquering lance beneath the Capitol of Rome. But a mightier spirit soon rose to rule the storm. In vain the courage of the Gaul, allied with the power of Carthage, and directed by the genius of Hannibal, maintained for years a desperate and doubtful contest in the heart of Italy. The power of Rome kept steadily advancing: Greece soon fell beneath her conquering arm; and the fleets of Carthage no longer ruled the wave. The Spaniard, after many a hard-fought field, at last sank into sullen submission; and the Galatians, degenerating under the influence of Asiatic manners, proved unequal to the contest; the Gaul, instead of inundating the land of the foreigner, could with difficulty maintain his own; and soon the eagle of the Capitol spread its wings over a Transalpine province. But the free spirit of the Gaul now made a mighty effort to rend asunder the bonds which encircled it; and a countless multitude, after ravaging Spain, poured down into Italy: the Roman empire rocked to its foundation, when Marius, hastening over from his African conquests, saved his country by the glorious and bloody victory of Aquæ Sextiæ. Yet a little while and the legions of Rome, under the orders of Cæsar, traversing with fire and sword their country, retaliated on the Gaul the calamities he had often inflicted on others, subdued his proud spirit, and forged for him, amidst seas of blood, those fetters which were finally riveted by the policy of Augustus. Such is a brief outline of the heart-stirring story of this singular and interesting race.

One of the most interesting parts of Thierry’s work is the Introduction. He there gives a brief view of the character of the Gaulish race; its division into two great branches, the Gaul and the Kimry, and the periods into which the history of this people naturally divides itself. A considerable part of it is taken up in proving that this people do in reality consist of two great branches, the Gaul and the Kimry. This, we think, he has clearly and satisfactorily shown, by evidence drawn both from the language and from the historical accounts which have been preserved to us regarding them. His character of the Gauls as a people is ably and well given; but here we must let him speak for himself:—

“The salient characteristics of the Gaulish family—those which distinguish it the most, in my opinion, from the other races of men—may be thus summed up:—A personal bravery unequaled amongst the people of antiquity; a spirit frank, impetuous, open to every impression, eminently intelligent; but joined to that an extreme frivolity, want of constancy, a marked repugnance to the ideas of discipline and order so strong in the German race, much ostentation—in fine, a perpetual disunion, the consequence of excessive vanity. If we wish to compare, in a few words, the Gaulish family with that German family to whom we have just alluded, we may say that the personal sentiment, the individual I, is too much developed amongst the former, and that amongst the latter it is not sufficiently so. Thus we find, in every page of Gaulish story, original characters who strongly excite and concentrate upon themselves our sympathy, causing us to forget the masses; whilst, in the history of the Germans, it is generally the masses who produce the effect. Such is the general character of the people of the Gaulish blood; but in that character itself, an observation of facts leads us to recognise two distinct shades corresponding to two distinct branches of the family, or to use the expression consecrated by history, to two distinct races. One of those races—that which I designate by the name of the Gauls—presents in the most marked manner all the natural dispositions, all the faults and all the virtues, of the family; to it belong, in their purest state, the individual types of the Gaul. The other, the Kimry, less active, less spiritual perhaps, possesses in return more weight and stability: it is in its bosom principally that we remark the institutions of classification   and order; it is there that the ideas of theocracy and monarchy longest maintain their sway.”—(I. iv. vi.)

How important and how little attended to is this character of the different races of men! How perfectly is it preserved under all situations and under all circumstances! No lapse of time can change, no distance can efface it. Nowhere do we see this more distinctly than in America: there how marked is the difference of the Spanish race in the south and the Anglo-Saxon in the north! And from this we may draw a deeply important practical lesson; viz. the danger of attempting to force on one race institutions fitted to another. Under a free government, the Anglo-Saxon in the north flourished and increased, and became a mighty people. Under a despotic sway, the Spaniard in the south was slowly but surely treading that path which would ultimately have led to national greatness, when a revolution, nourished by English gold, and rendered victorious by English arms, inflicted what was to him the curse of free institutions. Under their influence, commerce has fled from the shores of New Spain; the gold-mines of Peru lie unworked; population has retrograded; the fertile land has returned to a state of nature; and anarchy, usurping the place of government, has involved the country in ruin and desolation. Nor is this the only instance of the effect of free institutions on the Spanish race. In Old Spain the same experiment has been tried, and has produced the same result. Under their withering effect, the empire of Spain and the Indies has passed away; the mother country, torn by internal dissensions, has fallen from her proud estate, and can with difficulty drag on a precarious existence amidst all the tumult and blood of incessant revolutions. How long will it be ere we learn that free institutions are the Amreeta cup of nations—the greatest of all blessings or the greatest of all curses, according to the race on which it is conferred!

The history of the Gauls, in Thierry’s opinion, divides itself naturally into four great periods: his brief resumé of the state of the nation, during each of those periods, is so animated that we cannot refrain from quoting his own words:—

“The first period contains the adventures of the Gaulish nations in the nomad state. No race of the West has accomplished a more agitated and brilliant career. Its wanderings embrace Europe, Asia, and Africa: its name is inscribed with terror in the annals of almost every people. It burned Rome: it conquered Macedonia from the veteran phalanxes of Alexander, forced Thermopylæ, and pillaged Delphi: afterwards it planted its tents on the ruins of ancient Troy, in the public places of Miletus, on the banks of the Sangarius, and on those of the Nile: it besieged Carthage, threatened Memphis, reckoned among its tributaries the most powerful monarchs of the East: on two occasions it founded in Upper Italy a mighty dominion, and it raised up in the bosom of Phrygia that other empire of the Galatians which so long ruled Asia Minor.

“In the second period—that of the sedentary state—we observe the same race every where developing itself, or permanently settled, with social, religious, and political institutions, suited to its particular character—original institutions, and civilization full of life and movement, of which Transalpine Gaul offers a model the purest and the most complete. One would say, to follow the animated scenes of that picture, that the theocracy of India, the feudality of the Middle Ages, and the Athenian democracy, had resorted to the same soil, there to combat and rule over one and other in turn. Soon that civilization mixes and alters: foreign elements introduce themselves, imported by commerce, by the relations of vicinity, by the reaction of the conquered population. Hence various and other strange combinations: in Italy it is the Roman influence which makes itself felt in the manners of the Cisalpines: in the south of Transalpine Gaul it is at first the influence of the Greeks of Massalia, afterwards that of the Italian colonies: and in Galatia there springs up the most singular combination of Gaulish, Phrygian and Greek civilization.

“Next follows the period of national strife and of conquest. By a chance worthy of notice, it is always under the sword of the Roman that the power of the Gaulish nations falls: in proportion as the Roman dominion extends, the Gaulish dominion, up to that time firmly established, recoils and declines: one would say that the conquerors and the   conquered from the Allia followed one and other to all points of the earth to decide the old quarrel of the Capitol. In Italy the Cisalpines are subjugated, but only after two centuries of the most determined resistance: when the rest of Asia accepted the yoke, the Galatians defended still, against Rome, the independence of the East. Gaul yields, but only from exhaustion, after a century of partial contests, and nine years of a general war under Cæsar: in fine, the names of Caractac and Galgac render illustrious the last and fruitless efforts of British liberty. It is every where the unequal combat of a military spirit, ardent and heroic, but simple and unskilful, against the same spirit disciplined and persevering. Few nations show in their annals so beautiful a page as that last Gaulish war, written nevertheless by an enemy. Every effort of heroism, every prodigy of valour, which the love of liberty and of country ever produced, there displayed themselves in spite of a thousand contrary and fatal passions: discords between the cities, discords in the cities, enterprises of the nobles against the people, licentiousness of democracy, hereditary enmities of race. What men were those Bitunyes who in one day burned twenty of their towns! What men were those Camutes, fugitives, pursued by the sword, by famine, by winter, and whom nothing could conquer! What variety of character is there amongst their chiefs—from the druid Divitiac, the good and honest enthusiast of the Roman civilization, to the savage Ambio-rix, crafty, vindictive, implacable, who admired and imitated nothing save the savageness of the German: from Dumno-rix, that ambitious but fierce agitator, who wished to make the conqueror of the Gauls an instrument, but not a master, to that Vercingeto-rix, so pure, so eloquent, so true, so magnanimous in misfortune, and who wanted nothing to take a place amongst the greatest men, but to have had another enemy, above all another historian, than Cæsar!