"Richardson," says Hazlitt, "would be surprised in the next world to find Lovelace in heaven and Grandison in hell. Without going this length, I must say there is something in Lovelace's vices more attractive than in the other's best virtues." It is observable that Dr. Johnson, whose very name is sufficient to inspire grave and devout thoughts, had, as Leigh Hunt remarks, "a kind of speculative regard for gay persons, if he thought them not essentially vicious. He seemed willing to regard them as evidences of the natural virtue of all men, bad as well as good, and of the excuse furnished for irregularity by animal spirits. It is not impossible even that he might have thought them rather incidentally than abstractedly vicious. When Beauclerc was labouring under the illness that carried him off, Johnson said to Boswell in a faltering voice that he would walk to the extent of the diameter of the earth to save him. He had a similar regard for Hervey. 'Sir,' said he, 'if you call a dog Hervey I shall love him.' Beauclerc however, like Hervey, had a taste for better things than he practised, and could love scrupulous men." Perhaps this deep under-feeling may be detected even in religious breasts. Perhaps it may be traced in the affection of the people in devout ages for St. Mary Magdalen, whose festival was observed in consequence with such extraordinary solemnity throughout the whole Latin Church, all labour being suspended on the day, and the people continuing to keep it as a strict holiday even after the ecclesiastical obligation was withdrawn, as they did in England until all the ancient observances were changed by order of the government. It may be remarked, also, that the sentiment which is ascribed to Dr. Johnson appears to have belonged as a characteristic to many great and profound intelligences, as well as to popular men, in whom one is naturally prepared to find it, as in that most profound author of our time, “who,” as an eminent critic observes, "has an open sense for all common generous influences, while surveying human nature from the position of charity and affection; who not only makes us love our kind in its exhibition of moral beauty, but also when frailties mingle with its excellence; who contrives also to effect

that reconciliation of charity and morality by which our sympathies with weakness and toleration of error never run into a morbid sentimentality; and who makes the fact that happiness and virtue are not confined to any one class a reality to the mind."

But we must finish this chapter. A few words more however may be heard in conclusion, by way of still further deprecating censure, though it is probable that those who are resolved to blame are not of a nature to be ever moved to refrain from it. To affirm that virtue is a common thing, as we heard from the first, would be enough elsewhere to excite many angry voices; but to add that it can be found even in sinners, must of course be received as an affront offered personally to those whose daily prayer is "Deus gratias ago tibi quia non sum sicut cæteri hominum." Those who make long prayers of this kind, and wrap themselves in a corresponding morality as with a garment, and cry with closed purses and averted faces, "Be ye warmed and filled," have little faith in any virtue which cannot serve as a distinction; and it must be confessed that the qualities we have been adducing to prove its general diffusion can never be employed to answer that purpose. "These are the persons who will have," as a friend of Richter said, "for themselves an Evangile of selfishness; but for others, and above all, for woman, the severity of the law." But they must not be surprised if they hear, from the Lover's Seat at least, an echo of the sacred words that go so home to the human heart-" qui sine peccato est vestrum, primus in illam lapidem mittat †.”

But they will refer us to a higher tribunal than that of lovers. They will say that the whole tendency of our argument is vicious, from its being opposed to the sentence of condemnation already passed by Justice itself upon the defendants in this cause. But are they so sure of their own information in supposing that it is so? Can there be no question about the truth of their report? I remember hearing a theologian once, who had been describing the horrors of an English penitentiary, conclude with observing that the hideous spectacle of an unimaginable suffering was calculated to make men reflect on what was prepared for transgressors in the next world; but,

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God help us! it did seem strange to hear the Creator and Redeemer of mankind likened to an earthly magistrate, who is obliged to contravene the axiom of his own jurisprudence‘pœna ab ignorante non incurritur❞—the God of mercy likened to a policeman and a turnkey; especially when the very person himself who had made the comparison was obliged, as the representative of Omnipotence, to enter those dismal precincts with only forgiveness and offers of absolution on his tongue! Persons who take this dreadful view of human destiny may be very positive; they may cite passages from books, they may call to witness orators, poets, artists, for they see their judgment even painted; but is the unsophisticated human heart and all the wisdom contained in it, is conscience itself to be altogether rejected in evidence? Can these interpret nothing? Has nothing been addressed to these from on high? Is nothing expected from them in answer? Such, at least, is not the common opinion; and many have the courage to avow it. I do not deny that in this respect some are very bold, with whose words, however, we have nothing to do. "We saw," says a recent traveller, "Shaffer's celebrated picture of Francesca Rimini, in which two helpless lovers are whirled round and round in mazes of never-ending wrath and anguish. His face is hid from view; his attitude expresses the extreme of despair. But she, clinging to his bosom-what words can tell the depths of love, of anguish, and of endurance unconquerable written in her pale sweet face! The picture smote to my heart like a dagger-thrust. I felt its mournful exquisite beauty as a libel on our Father in heaven. Yes; it is the imagination that thus pursues undying patient love with eternal storms of vindictive wrath. Alas! well might our Redeemer say, '0 righteous Father, the world hath not known thee!' The day will come, when it will appear that, in earth's history, the sorrowing, invincible tenderness has been all on his part, and that the strange word 'long-suffering,' means just what it says." This, I acknowledge, may sound, in some places, fanciful and overbold; but who, after all, is responsible for such pictures? Is it the sweet, sacred Announcer of good news, who promised paradise to the thief upon the cross, and heaven to the sinner who, with her beautiful hair, washed his human feet? What signifies a gratuitous representation, imagined by a poet

and a painter, inspiring a horror which the fate beheld in Dives and denounced to Pharisees never elicited from a human heart? Rash conclusions, however, respecting things beyond the thought of mortals, are not drawn at the Lover's Seat, where hearts are as humble, and, in some respects, as timid, as they are affectionate. Here, for comment on the picture, we should only hear that it is very dreadful. Without having read Cicero, those in the bower are not ignorant "maximam illecebram esse peccandi impunitatis spem." If any one reminds them of this, they will answer, we do not contradict you; we know that it would be sometimes wrong to proclaim from housetops what is whispered, looked, or thought on here. Only thus much we will venture to add, in reply to those who would affect to ridicule us for being too sentimental in grave matters-to hear only one side in the trial of the human race, as you seem inclined to do, is inhuman; and let you be ever so grave and positive, let there be ever such solid logic for the foundation of your ridicule, still, as Octavio says, in The Bashful Lover,

"Despise not; 'tis impious in man to prescribe
Limits to the divine compassion."

You like to see your opinion, in some respects, gratuitous, unauthorized in its details, dark and fearful as it is in the concrete, represented even by the pencil. Not content with hearing what you think will be, you would see it painted, and where? Truly, in this very spot, where conscience and the heart are loudest. Well, still lowly and respectful, they who occupy the Lover's Seat will only say, Picture for picture, we prefer a different one. We prefer, for instance, this painting by St. Matthew, "And it came to pass as he was at table in the house, behold many, publicans and sinners came, and sat down with Jesus and his disciples. And the Pharisees seeing it, said to his disciples, Why doth your master eat with publicans and sinners? But Jesus, hearing it said, They that are in health need not a physician, but they that are sick. Go, then, and learn what this meaneth: I will have mercy, and not sacrifice. For I am not come to call the just, but sinners,-non enim veni vocare justos, sed peccatores *.' But you refuse to look

* Matt. ix.

at this last picture, or practically to accept it in evidence? Why so? Is that the condition of paintings, that to those to which you refuse credit when they proclaim mercy, you will yield it when they seem to signify the reverse? or, to use the orator's very words, "ut quibus creditum non sit negantibus iisdem credatur dicentibus ?" Such is not our way of judging here. We believe that there can be no rash presumption, no exercise of the Satanic art of insinuating a mortal error, in saying here that, of the two pictures, we like the latter best. And how should reasonable creatures mistrust its truth? The one is the work of man; the artist to whom we owe the other is his Judge. And oh, how responsive to his painting is the human conscience! for, if Mercy did not hear the voiceless prayer breathed inwardly, unheard by every other

ear,

"Oh, God would not be what this bright
And glorious universe of his,

This world of beauty, goodness, light,

And endless love proclaims He is !"

For this preference, this choice between the two pictures, are they, then, at the Lover's Seat, to be blamed? Methinks, as we have heard objections to their views from men who are strangers to it, it is but fair to hear also what is said in accordance with them from others who are at a like distance. Now such accordant voices can be heard both from among the moderns and from the ancients, who seem to agree in believing that one express object of the mission which concerns us all alike, was to bring about the very state of things of which we have been endeavouring to show the reality, namely, to render virtue common, or if not absolute virtue, at least that quality which, in the eyes of our Judge, will be accepted as its equivalent. Among the axioms of jurisprudence, we read as follows: "Quæ in favorem alicujus sunt constituta, adversus eum non sunt interpretanda." It may be humbly believed, that what has been done for the human race by the Son of God, will not be turned against it, after the manner that is described by some interpreters, in a shallow age, when least is known and least forgiven. "The thought of our Lord," says a great modern author, who does not rank among the latter, "was that of an