XXVI.

WHO CALL NAMES.

GEORGE the Third had a great dislike to making Lord Camden (after his return from Ireland) a Knight of the Garter; and inquiring his name-'What, what! 'John Jeffreys! the first Knight of the Garter, I verily ' believe, that was ever called John Jeffreys!' For this anecdote we are indebted to Wraxall's Memoirs.

Things are the same, call them by what names we will. The reefs and sand-banks of the sea are no other than submarine hills and mountains; and the rose, as our ardent friend Romeo learnedly assures us,

By any other name would smell as sweet.'

We may have some idea of the frightful depravity of manners, during the reign of Louis XV., from a passage in Voltaire's Philosophical Dictionary. The 'word adultery is never pronounced. We do not say, 'Madame la Duchesse lives in adultery with Monsieur 'le Chevalier; Madame la Marquise has a criminal intimacy with Monsieur l'Abbé; but we say, Monsieur l'Abbé is, this week, the lover of Madame la Marquise.'

Now let us see what kind of thing the Duke of Otranto dignified with the name of liberty. 'The war is at an end,' wrote he to Collot d'Herbois; 'if we 'know how to avail ourselves of this memorable victory. 'Let us be terrible, that we may not be in danger of becoming weak or cruel; let us destroy in our wrath, ' and at one blow, all rebels, conspirators, and traitors; ' to spare ourselves the anguish, the tedious misery, of

'punishing them as kings. Let us execute justice as nature does; let us avenge ourselves as a people; let

us strike like the thunderbolt, and annihilate the ashes ' of our foes, that they may not pollute the soil of 'liberty.' It must be confessed that Monsieur Fouché was well worthy the times in which he was permitted to arrive at the honours of a dukedom.

The calling of names is always indicative of a weak, degenerate cause. Thus, when the Latitudinarians were held in abhorrence, even such men as Hales, Chillingworth, More, Cudworth, and Tillotson were styled Socinians, Deists, and even Atheists; and that not only by Roman Catholics, but by the more rigid of their own persuasion.

Some are greatly offended, however, with names and epithets, which are, in fact, titles of honour. The English, for instance, were exceedingly offended at Napoleon's calling them 'shopkeepers;' how absurdly, may be learned from the explanation he afterwards gave. 'I meant,' said he to O'Meara, that you were a nation of merchants; and that all your great ' riches and your grand resources arose from commerce. 'What else constitutes the riches of England?' If it is a miserable thing to be ashamed of our trade, calling, or profession; it is still worse to be ashamed of our hopes, virtues, opportunities, and qualifications.

XXVII.

WHO CONFINE THEMSELVES ONLY TO ONE PART OF
THEIR SUBJECT.

Most souls, 'tis true, but peep out once an age,
Dull, sullen pris'ners of the body's cage.

Like eastern kings, a lazy state they keep,

And, close confined to their own palace, sleep.'

Pope-Elegy.

MANY men take only that side of a personal question, in which there appears no defect; and this they call taking a just view: whereas half is concealed.

As seeds of plants, differing in number, size, figure, and character, resemble each other in no inconsiderable degree in their internal construction; so is it of the manners, habits, and, above all, the passions of mankind: though some act, think, and assert, as if there were no more resemblance between one man and another, than there exists between a mountain and a valley, and the letters of which those words are composed; the anatomical structure constituting all the similitude.

Most persons confine their admiration to the flower; whereas the leaf, the stem, the branch, the cuticle, the root-indeed, every other portion of the vegetable structure, is almost equally worthy of attentive investigation. So is it of mankind; for as anatomy regards the structure of bodies, physiology their functions, and natural philosophy their capacities and relations; the

metaphysician, unskilled in worldly wisdom, inquires, with some degree of asperity,

In what vile part of this anatomy
Doth my soul lodge?'

Who has not heard of the beauty, distinguishing the Antinous of the Belvidere ? Turn but a little to the right or to the left, and view it in profile; you immediately discover that it loses no small share of its beauty and grace. Thus is it in courts. Had that of St. James's remonstrated with firmness with that of Versailles, the French had never dared to invade Corsica ; had it but said three words in the way of constructive menace, in 1823, they had never presumed to enter Spain.

Cardinal Mazarin used to assert, that were even the most able men examined, as the ancients did sacrifices, something bad would be found in all of them. This was but a poor apology for his own crimes and indiscretions; though it cannot be safely denied, that men of a clear discernment will often find occasion to believe that misconduct more frequently arises out of inconsiderate folly, than out of considerate baseness. Hence the danger of attributing to mankind in general what only belongs to one order in particular: an example following that of Machiavel too closely; Machiavel having been too often guilty of deducing general arguments from particular facts.

XXVIII.

WHO GIVE WRONG NAMES TO THINGS.

SOME men of the world are polished to such a degree that nothing natural is left to them; all being surface, gilding, and syllabub.

Men of the world make as many worldly mistakes as nobly-minded men; only they do not make the same sort of mistakes. They are ever giving wrong names to actions, too; and wrong epithets to things; mitigating, like the Athenians of old, bad actions, by giving them comparatively innocent appellations. Men they call clever, whom they ought to call knaves; and certain women of rank they call ladies of fashion, when, in fact, they ought to call them no more and no less than strumpets.

Racine labours, and but too justly, under the charge of concealing what is hard, base, and low, under forms of politeness and courtesy; and Pope, speaking of his own times, says (in a letter to Mr. Digby, 1724), 'In'stead of four cardinal virtues, now reign four courtly ones. We have cunning for prudence; rapine for jus'tice; time-serving for fortitude; and luxuries for temperance.' Just such is the case now. 'How does flat'tery deceive us,' inquired Cassiodorus,- by its misno'mers?-Prodigality it calls liberality; avarice, prudence; debauchery, accomplishment; obstinacy, constancy; drunkenness, good companionship; in fact,' continues he, there is no vice that she does not cloak ' under the appearance of a virtue.'

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