adapting itself to the circumstances in which it is placed, and "doing its spiriting gently," whatever it may be. at and most important circumstance, is their choosing to indignify him with the name of Nero. This latter I hold to be low treason at the least, if not In conclusion, there are two things high. They might as well dub him a to which I decidedly object in this member of the Holy Alliance feast; both of them appertaining to once! And to say the truth, I should the treatment of the chief partaker not object to this, if the other memof it-the great lion. The first is the bers of that august body would occaunhandsome manner in which his sionally admit him to their meetings! feelings are tampered with, by pre--But to call the king of beasts by the tending to take away his food after it name of one who was scarcely worthy is given to him, merely that he may be to be called a king of men, is a maniinduced to "exaggerate his voice," "fest libel: and the Constitutional Asand roar for the recreation of the sociation should look to it. Adieu spectators; thus depriving him of for the present. that privilege which is allowed even to convicts and felons themselves, of eating their meal in peace. The next Your loving Cousin, TERENCE TEMPLETON. AND over hill and over plain THE PHANTOM BRIDE. He urged his steed with spur and rein, He thought on their swiftness and envied them all. Well the young warrior may fiercely ride, Its bright fountain beneath the palm-tree's shade; Where the air came sweet from the gardens of rose; With perfumed waters, from odours distilled; He stopped his panting steed for breath; He saw it was a place of death. The lonely cypress-tree was keeping And at the head was a grey cross; And almost midnight's hour was come, The wondering stranger to his bed: He heard no step, but still by his side Her sunken eyes gleamed with that pale blue light, She sat her down by his side at the board, And many a cup of the red wine poured; And as the wine were inward light, : Her cheek grew red and her eye grew bright :- My home is dark, my home is low, And cold the love I can offer now; But give me one curl of thy raven hair, He gave the curl, and wildly press'd Her cold brow to his throbbing breast; And calm upon his bosom she lay, HYPOCRISY. "The Devil knew not what he did when he made man politick; he crossed himself by it."-Timon of Athens. NA ATURALISTS have been much puzzled to find a definition of that versatile and inconstant being, man, which will satisfactorily distinguish him from all other living species, and at the same time hit him in all his moods. There is in human nature, notwithsanding all its vaunts and pretensions, so much of the mere animal in " every shape and feature," that not all the Linnés and Cuviers in the world have been able to draw a steady line of separation. The animal "bipes implumis" has long been given up as untenable, and the habits of the butcher-bird have completely knocked on the head the definition of cooking animal." As for the "religious animal"-exclusively that some men are born without the "organ of veneration," and have "no more grace than will serve for prologue to an egg and butter,-there is the praying mantis, which possesses the " * * Called in France "Le prie dicu," from the circumstance of its perpetually resting on its hind legs, and erecting the fore-paws close together, as if in the act of praying: the country-people, in various parts of the Continent, consider it almost as sacred, and would not, on any account, injure it. "It is so divine a creature (says the translator of Mouffet), that if a child has lost its way, and inquires of the mantis, it will point out the right path with its paw.”—Bingley's Animal Biography. 38 ATHENEUM VOL. 2. 2d series. For my own part, if I was obliged to commit my reputation by hazarding an opinion upon so ticklish a point, should prefer seizing upon that most prominent feature in the human character, deceit, and would define the species as being, par excellence, the hypocritical animal." For, whatever may be advanced to the contrary, in the way of certain odious comparisons, to the disadvantage of hyenas and crocodiles, it should never be forgotten that in these cases "the lion is not the painter." If the parties concerned could speak for themselves, it is pretty certain that no hyena would have had the face to vie with Louis XVIII. when making his famous speech upon peace, which opened the Spanish war; and the arrantest crocodile that ever (to use the language of Sir Boyle Roach) "put his hands in his breeches-pocket and shed feigned tears," would decline weeping with a genuine widow of Ephesus. While all other forms and modes are put on and off as whim, fashion, or interest dictate, man is at all times and in all particulars, a perfect hypocrite: -a hypocrite towards God, a hypocrite towards man, nay, a very hypocrite towards himself; not trusting his conscience with a naked view of his secret wishes, nor painting even his pleasures to his own imagination in their proper colours. Of this no safer testimony can be desired, than the eternal contrast which he has established between his words and his deeds, and the pains he has taken in all ages to provide a double set of terms and phrases to express the same things as they refer to himself or to his neighbours, to abstract principle, or to practical application: insomuch that his language no less than his mind resembles those paintings done upon slips of pasteboard placed in relief, which exhibit a different picture according to every different point of view from which they are beheld. Every peculiar condition of society has its favourite sin, which it clothes in the likeness of its conterminate virtue. The merchant's avarice is parsimony, the parson's gluttony is hospitality, the great man's corruption is loyalty, and his hatred to the people, is his zeal for the king's prerogative. All this is nothing; but your genuine hypocrite, the more he is inclined to a sin, and the more he indulges his inclination, the louder and more confidently he declaims against it, just as a desperate adventurer rushes into deeper expenses, and makes a greater show of opulence, at the very moment when he has arrived at the verge of bankruptcy. If the object and end of society be to increase the powers of the individual, to multiply his means of gratifying his propensities and inclinations, the social system is admirably constituted, as far as hypocrisy is concerned; since all its institutions seem calculated to develop the deceptive tendencies of the species, and to give the greatest scope to the individual nisus. Hypocrisy is established by act of parliament too, and, like better things, it has become part and parcel of the common law of the land. So curiously, indeed, are the most sacred and solemn objects mixed up with lackadai sical common-places, and superficial plausibilities, that not to be a hypocrite is to lack common decency; and to call "things by their right names" is to unsettle the foundation of the world's repose. The imagined necessity for the gravity of the learned professions, has gone a great way towards generalizing the practice of hypocrisy. As soon as it becomes necessary to appear wiser or better than the mass of mankind (it being impossible for humanity to raise itself above the condition of humanity, or for man to put off his nature, merely because he puts on a robe or a cassock), the reign of humbug commences; and from the moment that society requires a given exterior; from that moment the individual has not only a right, but labours under a necessity for wearing a mask. The increase of human happiness which is thus created is beyond calculation: not only in its indirect influence upon social order, by imposing upon that many-headed monster the people, pinning down the lower classes to their duties, and thus confirming systems which the bayonet alone could not uphold; but also in the great enjoyment it directly occasions to the dupes themselves. There is no man, I am sure, on this side fifty, but will allow that love is at once the great business and pleasure of life, the one drop of honey mixed with its cup of gall, the "green velvet of the soul;" and is not this love the more delightful, the more perfect and unbroken its deceit ? The whole process of courtship is indeed, from beignning to end, one great scene of mutual hypocrisy. If it be true that the "tongues of men are full of deceits," it is not less so that "every inch of woman in the world, ay every dram of woman's flesh, is false :" and so much does the pleasure of the pursuit depend upon the dupery, that the credulous fair who believes her lover's protestations, is happier than the swain who makes them; and the patient wittol, whose eyes are shut to what is going forward, and is the dupe of both parties, is out and out the happiest of the whole three. But if lovers are thus mutually dependent on each other for administering to their respective gullibilities, and for raising those illusions which shut out the " weary, stale, and flat" unprofitability of life; the whole class of litigators are not less obliged to their advocates for the pleasures they derive from that well-acted comedy called a "law suit." What intense delight do not these good souls receive from certain grave eulogies upon that system of laws by which the Chancery Court lawyers swallow up the whole property in dispute between the parties! What "easement" do they not obtain from that simulated zeal and wellaffected sympathy with which their counsel "protest to God" that their client's case is justice itself! How edified, likewise, are even the bystanders, at the grave and moral discourses, "de omnibus rebus," &c. with which a judge charges a jury, in a case of libel, for example, and thus discharges his share of the farce. For this reason I cannot sufficiently applaud the inventors of that excellent piece of dupery, the monstrous fictions of law, which undo deeds, 66 making things to have been performed which never were attempted, bringing unborn children into existence, and considering the living as dead." Whatever other grounds of complaint there may lie against this system, it cannot be disputed, that it tends powerfully to increase the pleasures which the litigator derives from the law's deceptions, and while it promotes the profits of the practitioner, gives the client a great deal more for his money than he could otherwise obtain. I speak not of the comfort and advantage society derives from that organized system of hypocrisy, more despotic than the laws of the Medes and Persians, which passes current in the world under the name of politeness; because every one knows and feels its value, and is but too well pleased to possess a good excuse for hiding unpleasant truths, the avowal of which might involve the relater in a duel or a law suit. "Chi non sa fingere, non sa vi vere," says the Italian proverb, a text upon which Nic Macchiavel has written an elaborate commentary; but by far a better one is to be found in the grave faces of political wights, who, while they are exerting all their energies to propagate despotism and raise their own fortunes, turn up their eyes at the bare mention of this same Macchiavelli's name; and with a pharisaical demureness of the whole outward man, denounce him and his writings anti-christian and anti-social, merely for saying, what they themselves are doing every day and hour of their lives. The triumph of opinion over the sword, has made political hypocrisy more than ever necessary in the safe conduct of a state. It is the great arcanum of modern policy, and it possesses every quality which can be required in a remedy, operating in all cases citò, tutò, et jucundè. He then, who is no hypocrite, knows nothing of life, nothing of its enjoyments, nothing of its amenities, and above all, nothing of the moyen de parvenir. That there can be any vice in a practice so universal, so respected, and so serviceable to mankind, seems eminently impossible. If there were really any harm in it, can we believe that so many great princes and divines should in speeches, proclamations, and sermons, so frequently use the name of Heaven to cover their own private interests, and talk of the good of the people, at the very moment when they are adding to their miseries? If hypocrisy were a sin, should we find "Right honourable gentlemen," and "my learned friend," so often substituted, for " corrupt rascal," and "jobbing knave;" which, if we may judge by the context, is evidently in the speaker's mind? or would high-minded men condescend to pass over "the highest quarter," and "in another place," without seeming to perceive that those words teemed with the most forbidden allusions?—No, no, esse quam videri," may do very well for a motto, but it has nothing to do with real life; except, indeed, it be used as a blind to cover a meditated fraud; and then it enters into the system, and will MR. WHAT'S-YOUR-NAME, - Pavet arduam viam, IAM a prince by descent and a pavier by profession. True, I am a foreigner and barbarian, for I come from Ireland, but there is blood in my veins which heretofore ran riot up and down the O'Rourkes and OShaughnessies. Milesius was my greatgrandfather forty times removed, and my great-grandmother of the same generation was cousin by-the-buttonhole to O'Connor, progenitor and propropagator of the present great Roger O'Connor of Dangan Castle, who was found innocent of robbing the mail a few years ago, when the Orangemen were in want of a head to adorn King William's lamp-post at the Anniversary of the Boyne Water. Thus, Mr. Thingumbob, you though I do fillip the paving-stones with a three-man beetle, though I do peg a few pebbles every day into the scull of our old Mother Earth (alma tellus, as Phelim used to call her),-I really was born to a royal rattle. Excuse alliteration, Mr. Blank; I am not only a prince and a pavier, but a poet.* I broke half the panes in the province of Leinster scribbling amatory verses, epigrams, and epitaphs on Miss Kitty M'Fun, with a glazier's diamond that see (Phelim O'Flinn, my Schoolmaster.) I stole from my uncle; I wrote all the best lines in the "Emerald Isle" (all the bad ones were written by Counsellor Phillips), and I gave 'Tom Moore hints for Thomas Little's poems. But this is all bother. What I want to say is this:-I don't like at all at all this new-fashioned out-ofthe-way way of paving the streets with jackstones. Who ever saw a street covered with gun-flints by way of pavement? This is pretty wig-making! I suppose the next thing we'll do is to spread them with Turkey carpets that our old duchesses and debauchees may trundle along to the Parliament House and the Opera without shaking themselves to pieces a season too soon ! O give me the sweet little pebblement of my own native city in Shamrockshire-Dublin! Major-Taylorization against Macadamization any day! Where the jingles totter over the streets like boats on a river of paving stones!t Up an down! right and left! Hohenlo! toss'd hither and thither! from pebble to puddle! from gully to gutter!-Splish splash! there they go! while the Rawneys leers through one of his dead-lights back at Mr. Paddy O'Phaëton, Paddy for lack * 'Twas my mother's foster-brother wrote "The Groves of Blarney;" her maiden name was Kelly, and she is the identical she of whom the author says † Major Taylor, Paving-Master General to the City of Dublin. Jingles, one-horse wooden baskets, upon three wheels, and another on Sundays. § Corrupted from the paternal Spanish-Rosinante, we suppose.-Ed. |