occasions, nor wish, nor expectation to do so, the soul, the essence of lying, is not in the transaction on the side of the offender. But the offended is forced to say that he is satisfied, when he certainly can not be so. He knows

that the offender meant, at the moment, what he said; therefore, he is not satisfied when he is told, in order to return his half-drawn sword to the scabbard, or his pistol to the holster, that black means white, and white means black.

However, he has his recourse; he may ultimately tell the truth, declare himself, when out of the house, unsatisfied; and may (horrible alternative!) peril his life, or that of his opponent. But is there no other course which can be pursued by him who gave the offence? Must apology to satisfy be made in the language of falsehood? Could it not be made in the touching and impressive language of truth? Might not the perhaps already penitent offender say 66 no; I will not be guilty of the meanness of subterfuge. By the words which I uttered, I meant at the moment what those words conveyed, and nothing else But I then saw through the medium of passion; I spoke in the heat of resentment; and I now scruple not to say that I am sorry for what I said, and entreat the pardon of him whom I offended. If he be not satisfied, I know the consequences, and must take the responsibility.'

Surely an apology like this would satisfy any one, however offended; and if the adversary were not contented, the noble or honourable house would undoubtedly deem his resentment brutal, and he would be constrained to pardon the offender in order to avoid disgrace.

But I am not contented with the conclusion of the apology which I have put into the mouth of the offending party; for I have made him willing, if necessary, to comply with the requirings of worldly honour. Instead of ending his apology in that unholy manner, I should have wished to end it thus :-" But if this heart-felt apology be not

sufficient to appease the anger of him whom I have of fended, and he expects me, in order to expiate my fault, to meet him in the lawless warfare of single combat, I sol emnly declare that I will not meet him; that not even the

dread of being accused of cowardice, and being frowned on by those whose respect I value, shall induce me to put in peril either his life or my own."

If he and his opponent be married men, and, above all, if he be indeed a christian, he might add, "I will not, for any personal considerations, run the risk of making his wife and mine a widow, and his children and my own faterless. I will not run the risk of disappointing that confinding tenderness which looks up to us for happiness and protection, by any rash and selfish action of mine. But, I am not actuated to this refusal by this consideration alone; I am withheld by one more binding and more powerful still. For I remember the precepts thaught in the Bible, and confirmed in the New Testament; and I cannot, will not dare not, enter into single and deadly combat, in opposition to that awful command, " thou shalt not kill !"

Would any one, however narrow and worldly in his conceptions, venture to condemn as a coward, meanly shrinking from the responsibility he had incurred the man that could dare to put forth sentiments like these, regardless of that fearful thing, "the world's dread laugh ?"

There might be some among his hearers by whom this truly noble daring could not possibly be appreciated. But, though in both houses of parliament, there might be heroes present, whose heads are even bowed down by the weight of their laurels; men whose courage has often paled the cheek of their enemies in battle, and brought the loftiest low; still, (I must venture to assert) he who can dare, for the sake of conscience, to speak and act counter to the prejudices and passions of the world, at the risk of losing his standing in society, such a man is a hero in the best sense of the word; his is courage of the most difficult kind; that moral courage, founded indeed on fear, but a fear that tramples firmly on every fear of man; for it is that holy fear, the FEAR OF GOD

I HAVE observed in the preceding chapter, and elsewhere, that all persons, in theory, consider lying as a most odious, mean, and pernicious practice. It is also one which is more than almost any other reproved, if not punished, both in servants and children;-for parents, those excepted, whose moral sense has been rendered utterly callous, or who never possessed any, mourn over the slightest deviation from truth in their offspring, and visit it with instant punishment. Who has not frequently heard masters and mistresses of families declaring that some of their servants were such liars that they could keep them no longer? Yet, trying and painful as intercourse with liars is universally allowed to be, since confidence, that necessary guardian of domestic peace cannot exist where they are; lying is undoubtedly, THE MOST COMMON OF ALL VICES. A friend of mine was once told by a confessor, that it was the one most frequently confessed to him; and I am sure that if we enter society with eyes open to detect this propensity, we shall soon be convinced, that there are few, if any, of our acquaintance, however distinguished for virtue who are not, on some occasions, led by good and sufficient inotives, in their own opinion at least, either to violate or withhold the truth with intent to deceive. Nor do their most conscious or even detected deviations from veracity fill the generality of the world with shame or compunction. If they commit any other sins, they shrink from avowing them but I have often heard persons confess, that they had, on certain occasions, uttered a direct falsehood, with an air which proved them to be proud of the deceptive skill with which it was uttered, adding, "but it was only a white lie, you know," with a degree of self-complacency which showed that, in their eyes, a white lie was no lie at all. And what is more common than to hear even the professedly pious, as well as the

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ILLUSTRATIONS OF LYING.

deviation from truth, or, at least, withholding the so as to deceive, is sometimes ab solutely y? Yet, I would seriously ask of those who thus whether, when they repeat the com"thou shalt not steal," they feel willing to admit, either in themselves or others, a mental reservation, allowing them to pilfer in any degree, or even in the slightest particular, make free with the property of another? Would they think that pilfering tea or sugar was a venial fault in a servant, and excusable under strong temptations? They would answer "no ;" and be ready to say in the words of the apostle, "whosoever in this respect shall offend in one point, he is guilty of all." Yet, I venture to assert that little lying, alias white lying, is as much an infringement of the moral law against "speaking leasing," as little pilfering is of the commandment not to steal; and I defy any consistent moralist to escape from the obligation of the principle which I here lay down.

moral, assert that a with l mand Cessary, 8

The economical rule, "take care of the pence, and the pounds will take care of themselves," may, with great benefit, be applied to morals. Few persons, comparatively, are exposed to the danger of committing great crimes, but all are daily and hourly tempted to commit little sins. Beware, therefore, of slight deviations from purity and rectitude, and great ones will take care of themselves; and the habit of resistance to trivial sins will make you able to resist temptation to errors of a more culpable nature; and as those persons will not be likely to exceed improperly in pounds, who are laudably saving in pence, and as little lies are to great ones, what pence are to pounds, if we acquire a habit of telling truth on trivial occasions, we shall never be induced to violate it on serious and important ones.

I shall now borrow the aid of others to strengthen what I have already said on this important subject, or have still to say; as I am painfully conscious of my own inability to do justice to it, and if the good which I desire be but effected, I am willing to resign to others the merit of the

success.

CHAPTER XIV.

EXTRACTS FROM LORD BACON, AND OTHERS.

In a gallery of moral philosophers, the rank of Bacon, in my opinion, resembles that of Titian in a gallery of pictures; and some of his successors not only look up to him as authority for certain excellences, but, making him, in a measure, their study; they endeavour to diffuse over their own productions, the beauty of his conceptions, and the depth and breadth of his manner. I am therefore, sorry that those passages in his Essay on Truth which bear upon the subject before me, are so unsatifactorily brief;-however, as even a sketch from the hand of a master is valuable, I give the following extracts from the essay in question.

"But to pass from theological and philose ical truth -to truth, or rather veracity, in civil business, will be acknowledged, even by those that practise it not, that clear and sound dealing is the honour of man's nat and that mixture of falsehood is like alloy in coin of geld and silver which may make the metal work the better, but it embaseth it. For these winding and crooked courses are the goings of the serpant, which goeth basely upon the belly, and not upon the feet. There is no vice that does so overwhelm a man with shame, as to be found false or perfidious and therefore Montaigne saith very acutely, when he inquired the reason, why the giving the lie shoul.l be such a disgraceful and odious charge, if it be well weighed," said he, " to say that a man lies, is as much as to say, he is a bravado towards God, and coward towards man. For the liar insults God, and crouches to man." Essay on Truth.

I hoped to have derived considerable assistance from Addison; as he ranks so high in the list of moral writers, that Dr. Watts said of his greatest work, "there is so much virtue in the eight volumes of the Spectator, such a reverence of things sacred so many valuable remarks for our conduct in life, that they are not improper to lie in parlours or summer-houses, to entertain one's thoughts in anv