novels-not, however, strong-minded in the technical, objectionable, stigmatised sense,-ventures on a deed of daring from which her father, a timid clergyman, would have shrunk, desirable as he knew the result would be. The venture once made, "Nay, Margaret," he says, "I'm glad it is done, though I durst not have done it myself." A less innocent pair of colleagues, in "Martin Chuzzlewit," may contribute a different kind of illustration of the same text. Jonas Chuzzlewit tries to bribe Slyme to let him out of the room for five minutes-one hundred pounds for only five minutes in the next room. What to do?" asks Slyme. The face of his prisoner, as he advances to whisper a reply, makes Slyme recoil involuntarily; but he stops and listens to the whisper in his ear. The words are few, but his own face changes as he hears them. And Slyme answers under his breath, with trembling lips, "I wish you hadn't told me half as much. Less would have served your purpose. You might have kept it to yourself." If he must drag Slyme into a sort of partnership in so black a business, why did he not arrange it to be on sleeping terms?

4

Good stories perhaps a few, and bad ones to a high multiple, are or have been on record of or about President Lincoln. Not the worst of the former is one connected with the alleged remonstrances of General Sherman against the shyness of the government to declare a distinct policy, at the time of Sherman's carrying all before him in his last campaign. Would the government never distinctly explain to him what

policy it desired to have pursued? "I asked Mr. Lincoln explicitly whether he wanted me to capture Mr. Davis or let him escape. I'll tell you, General,' said Mr. Lincoln. Out in Sangamon county there was an old temperance lecturer who was very strict in the doctrine and practice of total abstinence. One day, after a long ride in the hot sun, he stopped at the house of a friend who proposed making him a [sic] lemonade. As the mild beverage was being mixed, the friend insinuatingly asked if he wouldn't like just the least drop of something stronger, to brace up his nerves after the exhausting heat and exercise. 'No,' replied the lecturer, 'I couldn't think of it; I'm opposed to it on principle. But,' he added, with a longing look at the black bottle that stood conveniently to hand, if you could manage to put in a drop unbeknownst to me, I guess it wouldn't hurt me much! Now, General,' Mr. Lincoln concluded, 'I'm bound to oppose the escape of Jeff. Davis; but if you could manage to let him slip unbeknownst-like, I guess it wouldn't hurt me much!'"*

The once popular author of "Wild Oats" tells us in his Memoirs that, when at Sligo, in 1765, he saw and talked with John O'Brien, who had served at the battle of the Boyne. "He was a fine old man, and told me many interesting and circumstantial

The story is told by "Agate," the correspondent of the Cincinnati Gazette, who accompanied Chief Justice Chase in his Southern tour.

anecdotes relative to that day;-one, that a gunner told King James, that at that very precise moment his gun was so pointed, he could, at a twinkle, end the dispute for the three crowns; but James forbade him; and the nephew and son-in-law were thus saved." Menas and Pompey over again,-so far as Menas is concerned. And no doubt there are hot Orangemen who-devout believers in the warmingpan, and zealous toasters to the pious, glorious, and immortal memory,—will unhesitatingly assume that Pompey too was represented at the Boyne, and that the ousted monarch thought, if he did not say to the gunner,

-Ah, this thou should'st have done,
And not have spoken on't.

ABOUT COMING TO BELIEVE ONE'S OWN

LIE

PROSPERO, duke of Milan, enamoured of study and the liberal arts, cast upon his brother, Antonio, the government of his realm. Antonio abused the trust. He new created the creatures that were Prospero's, "or changed them, or else new-formed them." And thus it came to pass that while the rightful-though hardly can he be called the reigning-duke was rapt in secret studies, the false Antonio, having both the key of officer and office, set all hearts in the state to what tune pleased his ear; so that now he was, as Prospero, fretting in exile, phrases it,

The ivy which had hid my princely trunk,
And suck'd my verdure out on't.

Prospero neglecting worldly ends, "all dedicate to closeness,”—his usurping brother found usurpation easy work, and got so used to the daily exercise of supreme power, that before very long he came to believe, virtually and in effect, to all practical intents and purposes, that he himself, Antonio, was the duke:

VOL. II.

6

-like one

Who, having unto truth, by telling of it,
Made such a sinner of his memory,

To credit his own lie,- he did believe
He was the duke.

The construction of this sentence, as Mr. Grant White observes, is a little involved, and so the MS. corrector of Mr. Collier's folio of 1632 changes the words "unto truth" in the first line, to to untruth. But this, the American critic objects, will never do. “How can a man make a sinner of his memory to untruth by telling a lie? The correction achieves nothing but nonsense. The plain construction of the passage, as the original gives it, is, Who, having made such a sinner of his memory unto truth, to credit his own lie by telling of it,' which gives us a portrait of a kind of liar that is not uncommon."

A deceived heart, in the language of the Hebrew prophet, hath so turned him aside, that he cannot deliver his soul, nor say, Is there not a lie in my right hand?

Manifold and variegated are the forms which selfcredulous lying, or self-mystification, assumes,-from white lies to the biggest of black ones. Shaftesbury remarks, in his Letter concerning Enthusiasm, that men are wonderfully happy in a faculty of deceiving themselves, whenever they set heartily about it, and that a very small foundation of any passion will serve us, not only to act it well, but even to work ourselves into it beyond our own reach. Elsewhere his lordship owns himself so charitable, as to think