the night-time; she collected what trifles, might be secured, by giving lessons during the night-like day— happy moral lessons to the young, and merry melodious tasks in music; and with the funds thus drawn together by patient, thoughtful, resolute toil, the accused surrounded himself with the means of defence. This was the holy and loving desire, that kept Lyddie Erle alive. He would have the ablest counsel; he would not be deserted and undone in the desolate time.

What a pang had been thine, fair soul, could thy innocent and truth-speaking spirit have guessed that the gold would have been employed to buy witnesses also! Witnesses!

God of purity! amidst the false they sought to include the true. With the suborned, they would have ensnared her also to their purpose, who had but one tongue, which was lieless. But Lyddie Erle, they said, could save her brother yet. She had only to step into the witness-box; to give her evidence without wavering or wandering; to prove what no one else could; to establish her brother's innocence, his innocence; to rescue him from agony, from ignominy, perhaps from death.

Her brother's innocence!-and she knew!-To be proved, established triumphantly by her, who knew!— She to be called to give evidence, who, if compelled to speak a word-the thought brought a wild wish for instantaneous and universal darkness; she knew not where to hide herself, lest she should be dragged into the presence where Truth dare not be dumb.

It was in vain that she told them that it was impossible!—in vain that she uttered the same words over and over again a hundred times, expressing the one conviction of her soul which it seemed to her childish to repeat, and yet mad not to understand. But they could not understand why it was impossible. She had

but to speak, and yes, one thing more-what so easy? -to hold her tongue! Why was it impossible?

And weeks after, when the brother was voyaging through the deep waters in a hideous felon-ship, and Lyddie Erle's grave was being turfed and bordered with spring violets, those who thus decorated her green dwelling, and who, as they thought, knew her well, and loved her too, could not help preaching over it the old world-sermon—the solemnity which familiarity makes ludicrous :

"Beautiful she was, never proud, and always kind to the poor; but she might have spoken up for her brother in his time of need. He was wild, but devoted to his sister. Both had grievous troubles, and both were to blame. THERE WERE FAULTS ON BOTH SIDES!"

ON CONSIDERING ONESELF HORSEWHIPPED!

In the annals of private quarrel, or of quarrel between man and man—which is at least as frequent and distinguishing a feature of the personal history of the human race as war is of the history of all nations in all ages— the phrase "consider yourself horsewhipped" figures as a golden maxim; and it is peculiar to the plain injunction which it contains, that it appears to have been, in every instance, implicitly respected and obeyed. Multitudinous as are the examples of its application, and constantly as they are accumulating, there is not on record a single case of non-submissiveness. The injunction carries obedience with it; the smack of the whip is in the words the instant they become audible; and the person whose ear is tingled by them, instinctively feels horsewhipped.

Let this be a settled point at once, or all the superstructure we may raise will fall to the ground. There is no rational doubt that the words have the whip in them. It is of no use to quote Shakspeare

Oh! who can hold a fire in his hand

By thinking of the frosty Caucasus !

Shakspeare puts fine truths into some particular mouth which they well become, and we falsify them by the endeavour to give them a universal application; thus turning his sweet philosophy to sheer folly. Each character of his speaks for itself, and not intentionally for all the world, though this may often happen incidentally. Besides, if unable to protect ourselves from the effects of fire by thinking of frost, that is no proof that we may not feel heat by thinking of fire. And again, if it were such a proof, it would still be no evidence that flesh may not writhe and quiver under the torture, although the whip never touched it, but was only shaken, with a kind of savage playfulness and sportive ferocity, over it-with the agonising malignity that spares.

It is conceded then that the force of imagination may be sufficiently sharp and strong to abolish all distinctions between the threat of punishment and the actual infliction of it. We know that the creature formed of flesh and blood, and neither cast in bronze, nor carved in alabaster, does, when desired to consider himself horsewhipped, consider himself horsewhipped. We know, that it is only necessary for a sensitive mortal compound, strung as he must be with nerves and fibres, to see the lash flourishing about him, in order to feel it smartly laid on; to feel it even across his heart.

But this is not all: for this acute and positive impression is shared by everybody. Just as he considers, all mankind considers.

One man is of opinion that he

has horsewhipped somebody; another man fully believes that he has been horsewhipped; and the whole world is prepared to make depositions of the fact, though nothing of the kind has in reality taken place.

Here then there is an extraordinary agreement, a unanimity quite wonderful, to acknowledge the power of imagination. The hero of the lash, having gone through the mock ceremony, stands in the situation of one who has vigorously applied it. The defenceless wight who has never been struck, is in the situation of one who has been disgracefully flagellated; and the public, who have seen nothing, are in the situation of eye-witnesses of the infliction. The whipped man, more especially, is perfectly convinced that he could show you the marks of the lash-his imaginary scars-and bruises, rainbow-coloured by a potent fancy; but nobody on earth requires such proofs, or entertains the slightest doubt of the event.

It follows therefore from this; that we are now in a position to inquire whether many other ceremonies equally unsuppressable, and equally unpleasant as flogging, may not in like manner be both recognised and evaded, by the same easy, intelligible, and popular exercise of the imagination. Much that is necessary to be done among the disagreeables of daily life, might thus be quietly supposed to have taken place, to the relief of the parties in the assumed proceeding, and to nobody's injury, so long as nobody discredits the genuineness of the transaction. A convenient assumption is quite as good as a fact; but the assumption must be unanimous.

Let it once be admitted that a flagellation ought to take place, and nothing can be more delicate, humane, or enlightened, than the policy described in the injunction, "Consider yourself horsewhipped;" the man with a whole skin, believing himself, without the slightest

mental reservation, to have been scarified on the spot. It is only necessary to elicit the same enthusiastic and spontaneous concurrence of sentiment in relation to fifty other duties, ceremonies, and circumstances, of constant occurrence in society, that prevails upon this point-to divest our fellow-creatures of half their worst toils, to rid them of half their galling grievances, and thus to lengthen by one-half their term of honourable enjoyment in life.

How superior in a thousand instances would be the operation of this imaginative influence, and this unshakeable moral belief, to the clumsy and eccentric laws fashioned by the wisdom of Parliaments. Take a solitary example. How laborious, intricate, and, after all, abortive, is the whole machinery of insolvency laws, compared with the practice which must be put in force were the system adverted to established! What would then be required? Simply what common sense requires: -that the debtor should call upon his creditor, shake a purse over his head or an empty pocket in his face, exclaiming at the same time in the presence of witnesses, "Consider yourself paid!" the creditor instinctively admitting that he had received the last farthing, and the spectators avouching that they all saw the money put down.

What is supposable of payments by lash, may be as readily understood of payments in cash. In fact, it is but putting the imaginative faculty a little further to the stretch than we do now, extending that implicit belief with which we have already taught ourselves to look upon six inches of flimsy, perishable paper, and to consider we have got indestructible gold.

But this is anticipating. We should rather begin by extending the convenient assumption from the whip to the pistol; and clearly, if it can be admissible with any