Chapter III: "Tipsy dance and jollity."--L'Allegro (7)

I might have borne it at some other time; but now--now--now that I am deserted by all--penned in my last fortress--feeling that the safeguards in which I trusted are fallacious,--now it is indeed the climax of my calamity, that she, who helped me to rise to what she thought was prosperity and honour,--who clung to me through a career that inspired all else with horror and hate,--and who, in sickness of body, and agony of mind, follows me in the very desperation of my fate, should at such an hour be taken from me,--I am now undone indeed. He then, for the first time, reflects on the brief and uncertain tenure of life. He has long dabbled in death, but it never before touched himself so closely. He is now aweary of the sun--now finds the deep curses which follow him, sufficiently loud to pierce his ear--now discovers that he has already lived long enough--and plunges into the combat, determined, if he has lived the life of a tyrant, to die the death of a soldier, with harness on his back. Surrender or suicide does not enter his mind; with his habitual love of bloodshed, he feels a savage pleasure in dealing gashes all around; and at last, when he finds the charms on which he depended, of no avail, flings himself, after a slight hesitation, into headlong conflict with the man by whose sword he knows he is destined to fall, with all the reckless fury of despair. What had he now to care for? The last tie that bound him to human kind was broken by the death of his wife, and it was time that his tale of sound and fury should come to its appropriate close.

Thus fell he whom Malcolm in the last speech of the play calls "the dead butcher," By the same tongue Lady Macbeth is stigmatised as the fiend-like queen. Except her share in the murder of Duncan,--which is, however, quite sufficient to justify the epithet in the mouth of his son,--she does nothing in the play to deserve the title; and for her crime she has been sufficiently punished by a life of disaster and remorse. She is not the tempter of Macbeth. It does not require much philosophy to pronounce that there were no such beings as the weird sisters; or that the voice that told the Thane of Glamis that he was to be King of Scotland, was that of his own ambition. In his own bosom was brewed the hell-broth, potent to call up visions counselling tyranny and blood; and its ingredients were his own evil passions and criminal hopes. Macbeth himself only believes as much of the predictions of the witches as he desires. The same prophets, who foretold his elevation to the throne, foretold also that the progeny of Banquo would reign; and yet, after the completion of the prophecy so far as he is himself concerned, he endeavours to mar the other part by the murder of Fleance. The weird sisters are, to him, no more than the Evil Spirit which, in Faust, tortures Margaret at her prayers. They are but the personified suggestions of his mind. She, the wife of his bosom, knows the direction of his thoughts; and, bound to him in love, exerts every energy, and sacrifices every feeling, to minister to his hopes and aspirations. This is her sin, and no more. He retains, in all his guilt and crime, a fond feeling for his wife. Even when meditating slaughter, and dreaming of blood, he addresses soft words of conjugal endearment; he calls her "dearest chuck," while devising assassinations, with the fore-knowledge of which he is unwilling to sully her mind. Selfish in ambition, selfish in fear, his character presents no point of attraction but this one merit. Shakspeare gives us no hint as to her personal charms, except when he makes her describe her hand as "little." We may be sure that there were few "more thoroughbred or fairer fingers," in the land of Scotland than those of its queen, whose bearing in public towards Duncan, Banquo, and the nobles, is marked by elegance and majesty; and, in private, by affectionate anxiety for her sanguinary lord. He duly appreciated her feelings, but it is pity that such a woman should have been united to such a man. If she had been less strong of purpose, less worthy of confidence, he would not have disclosed to her his ambitious designs; less resolute and prompt of thought and action, she would not have been called on to share his guilt; less sensitive or more hardened, she would not have suffered it to prey for ever like a vulture upon her heart. She affords, as I consider it, only another instance of what women will be brought to, by a love which listens to no considerations, which disregards all else beside, when the interests, the wishes, the happiness, the honour, or even the passions, caprices, and failings of the beloved object are concerned; and if the world, in a compassionate mood, will gently scan the softer errors of sister-woman, may we not claim a kindly construing for the motives which plunged into the Aceldama of this blood-washed tragedy the sorely urged and broken-hearted Lady Macbeth?

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 35: Orlando Furioso, canto xxii. st. 1, 2, 3.

I.

"Donne, e voi che le donne avete in pregio,
Per Dio, non date a questa istoria orecchia,
A questa che 'l ostier dire in dispregio,
E in vostra infamia e biasmo s'apparecchia;
Benche, ne, macchia vi puo, dar ne, fregio
Lingua sì vile; e sia l'usanza vecchia,
Che 'l volgare ignorante ognun riprenda,
E parle piu, de quel meno intenda.

II.

Lasciate questo canto, che senz'esso,
Puo star l'istoria, e non sara men chiara;
Mettendolo Turpino, anch'io l'ò messo,
Non per malevolenzia, ne per gara;
Ch'io v'ami oltre mia lingua che l'a expresso,
Che mai non fu di celebrarvi avara,
N'ò falto mille prove, e v'o dimostro
Ch'io son ne potrei esser se non vostro.

III.

Passi chi vuol tre carte, o quattro, senza
Leggerne verso, e chi pur legge vuole
Gli dia quella medesima credenza,
Che si vuol dare a finzion, e a fole," &c.

which thus may be rollingly Englished,

Ladies, and you to whom ladies are dear,
For God's sake don't lend to this story an ear.
Care not for fables of slander or blame
Which this scandalous chronicler flings on your name.
Spots that can stain you with slight or with wrong
Cannot be cast by so worthless a tongue.
Well is it known, as an usage of old,
That the ignorant vulgar will ever be bold,
Satire and censure still scattering, and
Talking the most where they least understand.
Passed over unread let this canto remain,
Without it the story will be just as plain.
As Turpin has put it, so _I_ put it too;
But not from ill-feeling, dear ladies, to you.
My love to your sex has been shown in my lays;
To you I have never been niggard of praise;
And many a proof I have given which secures
That I am, and can never be other than yours.
Skip three or four pages, and read not a word;
Or, if you _will_ read it, pray deem it absurd,
As a story in credit not better or worse
Than the foolish old tales you were told by the nurse.

I do not mean to defend my doggrel; but I think Ariosto has not yet had an adequate translator in English, or indeed in any language; nor, in my opinion, will he easily find one. The poem is too long, and requires the aid of the music of the original language to carry the reader through. I do not know what metre in English could contend against the prolixity; but I _do_ know that Ariosto sadly wants--as what classic in the vernacular languages does not?--a better critic of his text than he has yet found, in Italian.

In the above passage it is somewhat amusing to find Ariosto assuring his readers that they might pass this particular canto, because without it "_puo star l'istoria_;" as if there were a canto in the whole poem of which the same might not be said.]

[Footnote 36: Henry V. act i. sc. 2. Archbishop Chicheley's argument is

"The land Salique lies in Germany,
Between the floods of Sala and of Elbe,
Where Charles the Great, having subdued the Saxons,
There left behind and settled certain French,
_Who, holding in disdain the German women
For some dishonest manners of their life_,
Established there this law, to wit, no female
Should be inheritrix in Salique land."]

[Footnote 37: Aristoph. Lysistr.]

[Footnote 38: The speech of this porter is in blank verse.

Here is a knocking indeed! If a man
Were porter of hell-gate, he should have old
Turning the key. Knock--knock--knock! Who is there,
In the name of Beelzebub? Here is a farmer
That hanged himself [up]on the expectation
Of plenty: come in time. Have napkins enough
About you. Here you'll sweat for it. Knock--knock!
Who's there, in the other devil's name? [I'] faith
Here's an equivocator, that could swear
In both the scales 'gainst either scale; [one] who
Committed treason enough for God's sake, yet
Cannot equivocate to heaven. Oh! come in,
Equivocator. Knock--knock--knock! Who's there?
'Faith, here's an English tailor come hither
For stealing out of a French hose. Come in, tailor.
Here you may roast your goose.
Knock--knock--
Never in quiet.
Who are you? but this place is too cold for hell.
I'll devil-porter it no longer. I had thought
T'have let in some of all professions,
That go the primrose-path to th' everlasting darkness.

The alterations I propose are very slight. _Upon_ for _on_, _i'faith_ for '_faith_, and the introduction of the word _one_ in a place where it is required. The succeeding dialogue is also in blank verse. So is the sleeping scene of Lady Macbeth; and that so palpably, that I wonder it could ever pass for prose.]

[Footnote 39: Warburton proposes that we should read "from the _nape_ to the chops," as a more probable wound. But this could hardly be called _unseaming_; and the wound is intentionally horrid to suit the character of the play. So, for the same reason, when Duncan is murdered, we are made to remark that the old man had much blood in him.]

[Footnote 40: Causes secretes de la Révolution de 9 au 10 Thermidor; by Vilate, ex-juré révolutionnaire de Paris.]

ODE TO THE QUEEN.

Thou of the sunny hair,
And brow more sunny and more fair;
The upraised heaven-blue eye,
That borrows from the sky
Its tint, its brightness, and its majesty;
A lip half pouting and half curl'd,--
Mercy and Justice met
To speak thy dictates to the world!
A form, nor tall,
Nor small,
But bearing up the casket of thy mind,
Like to a classic pillar 'neath an altar set,
For elegance, and not for gorgeousness design'd.

How can I hope,
Whilst adulations throng
From mouths of wisdom and the great,
To lift my humble song,
Or cope
With those of higher state,
But that the smile which smiles on all so free
_Must_ smile on me?

Oh, that a brow that has not learn'd to frown
Should bear the impress of a royal crown!
That youth, which has not yet seen womanhood,
Should counsel for the aged and the rude!
And that a form, which joyous as a bird has flown,
Should rigid grow, and statue-like upon a throne!

Can thy tiara's light
Brighten thy fate?
Or thy great empire's might
Relieve its weight?
Can aught atone
For natural youthful pleasures fled and gone?
Not gilded pageantry,
Nor boundless sovereignty:
The ocean that thou rulest is more free than thee!
Thy youthful life is coffin'd down
Beneath the chaining trammels of a crown.

But there's a recompense that's given,
That must sustain
Thy trying hour,--
The all-seeing eye of Heaven
Blesses thy reign
And power;
A Nation's love, in acclamations deep,
Mingles even in thy unbroken sleep,
Giving thee back, in many a vision wild,
Thy days of youthful and unfetter'd charm;
And a fond Mother's arm
Pillows her regal child.
Ah, when thou wakest, still that joyful face is seen,
Beaming upon her daughter and her youthful queen!
On the scroll of Fame
Thy name
Stands free,--
'Tis but another name for Victory!
Long may it stand
A law,--a beacon,--and a will,--
Till the Omnipotent command
Bids Fame be mute, and the great globe be still!

W.R.V.

SUICIDE.

"Die, and increase the demand for coffins!"

_Motto of Undertakers' Mystery. Free translation._

A certain philosopher once said, with a degree of truth that proved the strength of his own head and the weakness of the human nature he was anatomizing, that "many men could easily bring themselves to _practise_ those things they would in nowise permit to be _preached_ to them." He saw the line of distinction between virtue in _thought_ and virtue in action,--the ease with which we could have the former, the difficulty of possessing in practice the latter; he knew how easy it is to be good when and where there is no temptation to the contrary; he knew the proneness of people thus luckily located on the top of Fortune's wheel, to inquire with seeming wonder wherefore they who were being pulverized beneath the bottom of the same,--the pulverization being no jot the pleasanter from the obvious fact of the inquirer's weight being on the top,--why the discontented fellows presumed to be so uncomfortable, when their superiors made so many inquiries after their well-being; he knew that the top wheelmen were but too apt to argue about the fellows below as if they were of themselves, and to conclude that it was as wicked a thing for a man to steal a penny loaf when starving, as for an alderman to do the same thing, whose well-turtled stomach would bring the robbery into an act of wanton appropriation, only to be explained by his superabundant organ of acquisitiveness. In short, respectable reader, he knew what we all know, after he has made it clear, that the _degree_ in which we practise what we will not permit to be preached to us, is proof of human weakness, and measure of the want of health in our personal morals. It is a confession of our inability to act up to our conception of virtue; and the cherishing the theory of good without making the practice follow after, is a postponement of active virtue _sine die_. Or if we beat away that pertinacious dun, conscience, by saying, "Ah! never mind, I'll start with bran-new morals next year," it is only like moving that a bill be read this day six months,--a humane method of knocking the measure on the head without the unfeeling necessity of saying in so many words that knocking is to be its entertainment.

Now, if I were to say,--which I feel very much disposed to do,--that cutting one's own throat (where there are no kindred feelings to be cut)--"that cutting one's own throat in this case was a very proper thing,--where a man likes it," I should at once have a cloud of the schoolmen upon me, each with the weapons his master of the ordnance, Paley, has supplied to him, proving, until breath, temper, and text were exhausted, that I am a presumptuous puppy in imagining for one moment that I have any property at all in my own throat, which is given to me for the good of society, and not to be cut by and for me, and my proper satisfaction. This would be the language of these "top wheelmen,"--fellows who are far too comfortable not to wish to be as immortal as a corporation, and who therefore doubt my sanity in not being as jolly as themselves,--like the young princess to her miserable little subject, "What is the matter with you?--how can you cry? _I_ am very happy?" "Live," says the archdeacon, as he wipes his mulligatawnied mouth with his napkin;--"live," cries he to the lank-cheeked fellow who has been fished out of the river against his will, whither he had gone to stop the disagreeable function of breathing on a scanty supply of bread;--"_live_," cries the archdeacon,--"life you cannot give, life you cannot take. You are placed in this world to run your course; you must run it accordingly. How soon it may require your aid, you do not know; at any rate, when it is fit you should retire hence, you will be _called_ hence; rush not uncalled-for, into the other world. I am sorry for you; here is half-a-crown; and, John," turning to the footman, who has been picking the crumbs of morality falling from the rich man's mouth, "_John, show this poor man out_." The poor man, with a sad aspect and a slow pace, crawls toward the door; and looks as if, did not deferential modesty restrain him, he would reply to the good archdeacon in these words. As the old man has seen them, and owned, with wonder at our penetration, that they correctly exhibit the thoughts at that time passing through his brain, we at once put the reader in possession. "Live, my dear sir! I am quite willing to do so; it is what I have been in vain struggling to do. Live! Have not the slightest objection; but then I _must_ live; _you_, your honour, have said you could not afford to keep a conscience, although you doubtless think it a very good thing among people who _can_ afford to do so; indeed I know well your _writings_ venerate many things your _acts_ do not, for want of this article you cannot afford to keep. So my abstract admission must be given to all arguments against suicide in the main, reserving a particular conclusion for myself, _viz_. that to attempt to live without money is quite as bad as cutting off my legs, in order to pit myself in a walking-match against Mr. Coates. I shudder, Mr. Paley, as deeply as yourself at the general idea of suicide; but, in reference to particular cases, it's all a matter of cash. _You_ cannot afford to keep a conscience, another man cannot afford to keep a mistress, a third finds the keeping _himself_ beyond the capacity of his exchequer: the first denies himself the luxury of a conscience for the present, the second puts his lady quietly away, the third puts himself in a pond quietly and comfortably." The would-be suicide was quite right: as the profound estimator of political tactics some time back remarked, in reference to the gladiatorial exercises of the factions of the day, "it's all a matter of 'wittals:'" necessity compels us to do what principle will not hear preached by others; so that I almost despair of miseries great as mine making out a claim for mortality, and apprehend that only a few very sensible people will say at the end of my paper, "There, _go, my good fellow, and hang yourself_, as soon as you can beg, borrow, or steal a sufficient bit of cord for that laudable purpose."

Yet if there be one moral truth clearer, stronger, and less assailable than another, it is that, in some circumstances, "self-murder" is the most virtuous act a man can perform. A burthen to himself, an annoyance to the world, no relatives or connexions to regret his loss, may not an intentional stopping of the breathing function be the best act he can commit for all sides? The utilitarian will say "_Yes_," among whom we rank the Paleyites, all of whom were and are utilitarians; the old-fashioned addlepates will shake their heads, take snuff, and finally declare that a good deal may be said on both sides.

The above useful reflections, as well as those that immediately follow, had their origin on the third step above high-water mark of Waterloo Bridge.

I was thinking about providing for myself in the flood beneath, and after mature reflection concluded I had better not. They are your "thinkers" about it who never do the thing,--a man who is always thinking about marrying is sure to die an old bachelor. Hamlet thought about killing his uncle so long, that that very immoral elderly gentleman had very nearly slipped through his reflective nephew's fingers; and so a man who thinks about throwing himself in the water is sure to conclude the argument as I did, by turning round and walking up the steps. Indeed death's a nasty thing; we go to it as to a last resource, sharp though sure, as the young woman said on handling the hatchet that was to dissociate her head and shoulders. The watery form of it has its advantages and disadvantages; there is little pain, but it is cold, plashy, sneaking, and kitten-killing in its general style: the warmest imagination cannot save the body from a certain shiver as the thing is contemplated; at least that was my experience on the third step aforementioned. I tried to fancy that it was but a sort of hydrostatic bed without the expense of the India-rubber casing. It was of no use; active memory recurred to the attitudinizings of a fine growing family of young mousers whom in early life I had introduced to the cold comfort of a pail of water; and at the reminiscence my blood ran colder than the water at my feet. With a quiet rippling plash it washed along the step. It sounded to the ear as if old Charon called from the bottom, ready to start over that other stream to which this merely branch canal must conduct us. Bright and tempting it ran at my feet, ready to conceal both me and my sorrows. But the foolish instinct for life prevailed within me; I returned to walk the streets at night,--an employment from which I had thought, ten minutes before, _death_ would be a happy relief; a delusion which the being confronted with it soon dissipated. In walking up the steps I felt as one who had been reprieved, to whom life in its worst aspects would be infinitely preferable to that 'hereafter' which the fancy studs with such dimly awful horrors.

"Stuff!" I hear some one say who is reading this perhaps on a full stomach; "nonsense! a happy relief from walking about the streets, indeed! the fellow does not know what to write about." So would not poor old Dr. Johnson have said after one of _his_ street vagabondizings, when he sate down to write the essay whose signature "Impransus," indicated the dinnerless state of the writer's stomach; so would not _he_ have said; no, nor his wandering chum, Savage: warm tears would have coursed down their rough cheeks, for they knew what it was in _their_ time; and living in the streets, notwithstanding the improvement of the paving, is not much more desirable now than it was in their time, or in the old time before them.

It is only at night,--and that cold, drizzly, and muddy,--you can feel in its full force the misery that is foodless and houseless. In the day the busy streets are thronged with the crowds drifting along, intent on their respective objects. Then, houseless though you be, you feel no consciousness of it from contrast: purposeless as you are, the fact is known to none but yourself, and you enjoy the poor privilege of promenading the pavement free from staring remark or official interruption. But at night, about twelve or half-past, the theatre-frequenters hurrying home, happy shopmen returning from their sweethearts, and attorneys' clerks and small joyous shopboys, cigar in mouth, hastening to their quiet beds, the very poorest Cyprian, perhaps, staggering away in silence and ginny stupor to her squalid room,--then you feel that you are not one of the mass; it is the school-boy sensation of strangeness in a new school, carried up and increased into one's manhood; you are a misfit in society,--of no use; a shoe-black, a hackney-coachman, a costermonger are respectable in your eyes, for each of these holds a department in the great game of life. If you walk fast, the tears come into your eyes at the thought of the sad mockery of people with homes,--for _where_ should _you_ walk _to_? You slink from street to street, shivering and broken-spirited; afraid to pause, lest the searching eye of the policeman shall for one moment mistake the unfortunate for a thief; and tremblingly shunning to stretch your weary limbs in a doorway, tempting as it looks, that your miseries shall not the next morning be presented to a police office, and published to the world. In fine, you almost feel that the "_world would move on much the same even if you were dead and buried_,"--a root-and-branch cutting-up of one's self-esteem that may be called the last conviction of the dejected.

Many are the poor wretches who for months pass through such an existence as this. If men, enlistment is a last resource: if women, prostitution, paint, gin, and jollity that would look wonderfully _like_ happiness were it not so _loud_, low spirits, laudanum, or Waterloo steps; paragraph in newspapers--old story--seduction and suicide--fine young woman--parents in the country; penny-a-liner pockets his fee, and keeps the "_form_" of his female biography open for the next name the same set of circumstances may bring to him.

There is something awfully desolate in walking the streets through a night, passing across that dark gulf of the four-and-twenty which is a sort of temporary banishment from humanity,--that on-and-on purposeless tramp from the coming down of the darkness to the dawning of light, passing perhaps not two persons within the space of a mile; the solitary pad of our feet on the pavement; the sombre and dim hue of the streets relieved by the gas; the seemingly unnatural quiet in a place old custom tells us should be so noisy; the strange feeling that we are watching and thinking, whilst the vast Leviathan of toil, and luxury, and woe, and pleasure, has run its daily course, and is now snatching from the Lethe of sleep the instalment of energy for the next day's career. What passions and aspirations, what purposes of pomp and glory, of wickedness and virtue, what golden glories of the poet's brain quenched, or flickering in the twilight of dream, the strategy of the politician, all plunged into the "death of each day's life!" What a time, what a scene for reflection, with the deep, and awful, and warning gong of old Paul's clock striking two, in a tone which, plain as words, tells us how time with flying foot runs from us,--and all the humbler fry of iron pots in the metropolis plagiarising the sad fact tolled forth by their grave old leader! The streets are completely empty; the very policeman has slunk into some early house, and we feel like the last man.

And who will wonder, after this course repeated with little variation for a respectable period of three or four months, that a man looks upon a dissolution of partnership with this lower life as the best fate open to him? Why should one in this state stay longer among men, when no occupation can be secured which will rescue him from indifference, or shield him from contempt? Why should moralists, like Paley, try to stay his purpose by flinging the salt of their sapiency on his tail, when his only ambition, like Goldsmith's George Primrose, is to _live_, and that humble aim thwarted at every avenue by the grim visage of starvation staring him in the face? It is time he is gone. Let him unlock his soul from its painful prison, and send it cleaving its way in the joy of emancipation to those regions where the wicked cease from troubling, and the weary are at rest. Without wife or children, brothers, sisters, or cousins, grandfathers or grandmothers, dogs, cats, or birds, which can call with the voice either of nature or custom for my personal presence here below, why should _I_ be tied by the leg with a moral "ne exeat mundo?" I _am my own_,--not a chop or a cutlet of me belonging to my creditors, for I am out of debt; and surely, I repeat, I may do what I like with my own. "You are _not your own_," again cries my moralist, attempting to throw a net of words over my mind about relative and social duties, society and its incidents, law of civilization, &c.--the whole leading to a sort of conclusion that if the world may not want me _now_, there is no saying the time will not come when it may find out what an indispensable person I am; and upon the dependence of this "may want" I am to hang about in the outer hall of this sublunary state, until those very comfortable fellows within, happen to think of us shivering without, and promote us to the pleasures of their well-plenished table. Truly we must wait long for this,--perhaps until an earthquake comes, and they call for our assistance in fishing them up through the bricks and beams of their fallen chambers.

No, no; Mr. Creech was quite right, if he thought himself so, in writing on the margin of his Lucretius, "When I have finished my translation, I must kill myself." That gentleman took the extended and philosophical view of the subject; life was to him something to be and to do; to be a translator, to do Lucretius, and then to do for the personal estate of Mr. Creech in this world, in order to translate the accidents and chances of personalty into the settled and comfortable remainder of eternity. Cool, philosophical man! what refinement of reflection, to come to regard the act of letting out life with as little perturbation as ordinary men contemplate eating their dinners! To translate Lucretius was his task; performed, he was to kill himself: a silk-weaver has to weave so many yards of his fabric; done, he promises himself with his wife and little ones a walk in the fields. In both cases there is a duty to fulfil, in both cases the emancipation follows; both must we subject to the same test in endeavouring to settle their respective characters,--the necessity or obligation of the translator on the one hand, or the weaver on the other, loitering in the world, or the workshop, after their work is executed. The only difference is an affair of time and distance; the one being bound, as he thinks, for the _Elysian_, the other and humbler for the _Marylebone_ fields.

"Well, my dear sir," cries the reader, "I see you are intent on your _point_. I shall perhaps only waste my lungs and logic in trying to beat you away from your delusion; but reflect, sir, the tendency--how catching--the imitative faculty in man,--lateral organ largely developed." Fiddlestick!--away with your organs and developements! An old gentleman, who has read all qualities of human dealing in a learned spirit, writes as follows:--"All I will venture to assert with confidence is, that there is no reason to apprehend that suicide will become an epidemic malady. Nature has provided too well for that. _Hope and fear are too powerful as inducements_ not to frequently _stop the hands of a wretch about to terminate his own life_."

Meanwhile, it is useless blinking the moral fact, that suicide is as natural a result of compared good and evil as any other act in life. In every case (not excepting those of insanity) we shall find it takes that shape. Whether it be Mr. Creech, who sits down and stares death out of countenance with a familiarity that must have disconcerted the conceit of the omnipotent old commissioner,--or one with blasted hopes, like myself,--or blighted ambition, like old Anthony,--or repulsed patriotism, like Brutus,--the process is the same in all,--comparison of the inestimable evils of life with the presumed quiet and rest of the grave, and action in accordance with the conclusion. Men are not cowards for not living to face evils, for the mere sake of facing them without any other result; they are men of policy and magnanimity to quit, when the grappling with them can alone be productive of a self-destruction of a more painful and protracted character, or at best exhibitory of an idle and vain bravery of bearing, of no avail either one way or the other. They are not cowards, and no imputation of cowardice will prevent them following out the clear conceptions that are shaped from their exigencies, any more than it would deter one in a burning ship at sea from casting himself overboard, rather than become an insulated and floating roast; or than it shall prevent me, when I have made an end of this confession, plaiting my garters for the office of strangulation, if after the plait is finished I entertain the same fixed principles on the subject as I do at present.

M.

ADVENTURES IN PARIS.