discipline and deep study. No common untaught hussey would ever have thought of placing the blue-book in the red slippers, and the red slippers in the backgammon-box. Again: "I had a box of dinner-pills; I left it on the chimneypiece, at that corner, do you know what has become of it?" "I'm sure I can't tell, unless it's on the sofa." A very likely place, and so the sofa is searched, but in vain; there are more improper places than one for a box of pills. "Could you have put it into the tea-caddy?" "Oh, then, so I did-now I remember." But Anne was out again: the hippo was not with the hyson, nor yet the colocynth with the congo. At length she really did recollect the doings of the day, and had she known Greek, would have screamed Εύρηκα! "I'm positive I put it into the antelope-box?" "The antelope-box!" Probably the reader conjectures that I am of the same trade with the man on Waterloo Bridge, and keep a portable menagerie. However, I do not, although if I did, why should I blush to own it? The truth is, that housemaids settle the Queen's English much in the same way that they settle apartments, and mine invariably calls an envelope an antelope. Did I actually possess such an animal, I wonder where she would place it,-probably to swim in the reservoir, the last place in the world where she would dream of putting a fish! Will housemaids never learn the great truth inculcated by the poet in those immortal verses In trap mouse is, In jug none is, What can be more monstrous than a mouse in a jug, or more preposterous than an eel in a geranium-pot? There are a few questions which I would wish to put to the reader relative to the subject in hand. Did you ever see a table with drawers that was not moored fast against the wainscoting upon the side so provided? I never did. Did you ever see a pincushion with a pin in it? I never did; although every other cushion, in all the houses I have ever lived in, was stuck with pins like a porcupine's back, the points where the heads ought to be, for the comfort and satisfaction of sitting members. Did you ever find a match in a lucifer-box? If you did, you are a lucky dog, for I never did, although I have found those sulphureous conveniences a hundred times in my dressing-case and hatbox. All this comes of the spirit, or rather the devil of settling, which possesses housemaids beyond the reach of human exorcism. Nothing is to be "let alone" but the jade herself. Moveables are indeed moveables with her, the genuine inventor and patentee of the perpetual motion. It is not generally known that chambermaids are profound algebraists; but that the fact is so, I have satisfied my mind perfectly. When I was a student of algebra at Leadenhead College, there was a problem with which Professor Cube delighted to puzzle the pates of unfledged arithmeticians. The question was, to find all the possible arrangements (or "combinations" as he used to term them), in which the letters of the alphabet, for example, or the men of a chessboard, are capable of being disposed. Now this is precisely the problem which the anarch of my domicile proposes to herself every time she settles my apartments. Were the moving cause of the hurlyburly invisible, like other demons not more tormenting, I should infallibly conclude that the furniture had, in my absence, been entertaining itself with a set of quadrilles, or that a couple of hobgoblins had been using them as chessmen. Will some kind lawyer inform me whether the Lord Chancellor would not in such a case grant an injunction to stay such mad proceedings? If his lordship would only settle the settlers, I would sell my property in Airshire, and my fair estate in the Isle of Sky, together with my Chateau en-Espagne, and my shares in the mines of Eldorado, to erect a statue to his glory of pure gold, upon a pedestal of solid diamond. But alas! the chancellor is a settler himself, and the very king of them. Therefore there is no house of refuge from housemaids. EVERY-DAY LYING. BY LAMAN BLANCHARD, ESQ. Believe none of us!- Hamlet. As speech was given unto the wise man that he might conceal his thoughts, so (vir sapit qui pauca loquitur) thought must have been given unto the same personage that he might conceal his speech. This apparent contradiction was necessary to the interests of truth. Many lies are thought which are never spoken, but there are as many spoken which are never thought. If every deviation from truth's straight line constitute a falsehood, then the human tongue teems with lies; we breathe them in myriads. Not a creature has opened its mouth this day without telling ten thousand. Plain speaking in that case is false speaking, and silence is the sole remedy for the evil. Lying is our language. The best, or the worst, of it is, that the moralists who have written upon lying are so imbued, to the heart's core, with the universal vice that they are not to be believed on their oaths. Essays upon lying are only additions to the stock; and nobody who casts an eye upon this page is so absurdly credulous as to suppose that one grain of truth lurks in a single syllable that blots it. We write lies, speak lies, think lies, and dream lies while we are lying in bed. Those who admit a multiplicity, only recognise two classes of lies; black and white. But there is the gray lie, which goes into black and white, and lives to be venerable; there is the green lie, which from its simplicity is easily detected; there is the red lie, which is glaring; and the blue, which is a favourite with the literary. These, however, are well known, though not classed. They are more or less premeditated, all of them. Some have their origin in utter malignity, some in mere selfishness, or wicked sport. But the lies uttered in courtesy and goodnature exceed them in number as a thousand to one! They are spoken in perfect innocence, and never had in a single instance the slightest chance of harming any human being. The true white lie, which is selfish and defensive (“not at home," and "I promise to pay," may be received as illustrations), frequently takes people in; but the undeceptive conventional lie, uttered in pure tenderness for others, is as superior to the selfish white, as the white is to the scandalous black. There is something consoling in the reflection, that great as is the vice of lying, nine-tenths of it as now in practice spring from the virtues! The vilest miscreant, for one lie uttered in malice, tells a hundred in pure courtesy, in compliance with refined usages, or charity towards the feelings of another. Why do people request "the honour," and "feel very happy," a dozen times a day? Why, are they so "excessively glad" to hear something, or so "extremely sorry" on the other hand! They experience neither pleasure nor regret, we know, as the words expressive of these sensations pass their lips. They are notoriously telling lies when they profess to be truly concerned, or positively delighted. But they are lying upon a philanthropic, a sympathetic principle. They intend no deception; no self-interest prompts them; they are vicious out of kindness and delicacy. Can the spirit of self-sacrifice be carried further, than in thus surrendering truth for the sake of pleasing an every-day acquaintance who agrees to dispense with sincerity! 66 extreme When it is urged, as it constantly is, that these courtesies, because hollow, are worthless-that the expression of "deep regret" or pleasure" is but a mockery without the feeling-the answer is, that the philanthropy is deep in proportion to the insincerity. Where there is no real love, the words of affection are indeed an amiable and gratuitous kindness. No thanks to friendship for being friendly; but is it nothing that a mere acquaintance should be ready at any time to tell a lie upon our account? Not a word could be advanced in behalf of this order of lies, if they were ever likely to be believed. But against this calamity people guard themselves in the most scrupulous manner by tones and looks quite at variance with the words. Nay, to convince their hearers that they are merely lying, they declare that "they shall be only too happy," and at the same time that "they are quite too distressed." They vow with a brazen countenance that they are "absolutely ashamed," and protest with great energy that they "thought they should have died" on some occasion when death was the last thing they were thinking of. How much greater still is the kindness when the offer of sympathy is made to extend through us to remote antiquity! A great talker, proud of his family, was describing the other night the exploits of his famous progenitors, until he came to one who in Henry the Seventh's time had the misfortune to break his leg-an accident which drew from a ladylistener the tender remark, that "she was extremely sorry to hear it." In fact, any thing or any body will serve for a peg on which to hang a profession of sympathy-so necessary is the show of it felt to be, where the substance is not. It was not long after the death of Weber, that a little group of admirers of that amiable man of genius, were deploring his early and sudden loss, in a foreign land and in the hour of his triumph;-and the name of Weber, Weber, was repeated sorrowfully by several voices; until the lady, whose guests we were, drew near, and observing the melancholy tone of the conversation, caught as she supposed the name which was the subject of our sad discourse. Then, deeming that a polite regard for our feelings required her to fill up the pause which ensued, she sighed mournfully, and in a plaintive voice, uttered the following words: "Poor Cibber! poor Colley Cibber! Well, I'm sorry he's dead!” To be sorry for Cibber! Who could possibly have expected to live long enough in this world, to hear any mourner it contains, obligingly lamenting with sighs the loss of Colley Cibber! Cobbett, remarking upon the "regret" with which the press very naturally announces the demise of eminent persons, declared his conviction, that if the devil were to die, some newspapers would notice the event "with deep regret." Still we could never have anticipated a sigh for the untimely fate of Cibber! There is no lie that people will not tell to express a becoming sympathy on their own parts, and to excite it in others. When a young person is drowned in the river or crushed on the railway, how does it always happen that he was "going to be married on the following Sunday," or that he was "only married the Sunday previous." Few persons have the slightest interest in the relation of such fables; but all have the deepest interest in the progress of sympathy, and the sadder they make the story, the more surely they elicit the symptoms. The most moral persons in society will lie egregiously from a mere habit of civility, to agree with you when agreement is not wanting. Some lie without any motive-their untruths are mere matters of course. What could have been the direct prompter in the case of that serious and solemn dame, who only yesterday, seeing somebody reading (the book was Shakspeare, opened at a large engraving of Caliban, of which the dame had a glimpse), inquired what that was? The reader, supposing she meant the volume, said "Shakspeare." "Oh!" ejaculated the serious dame, and then added, “Ah! I thought it looked like him!" All that is not religion in that old dame is morality; in her composition nothing else mingles: yet it is certain she never thought so. Had she been told "it's the Thames-tunnel," her remark would equally have been, "I thought it looked like it." At the same time, perhaps, no influence on earth could prevail upon her to utter a deliberate untruth. We may easily perceive how very trifling and insignificant in number are the lies annually told for purposes of wilful deception-in trade, in politics, and in social intercourse-with the view of filling pockets or gratifying base passions-in self-defence and in defaming enemies-from vanity, from knavery, from malice;-when we contrast their amount with the enormous multitude daily uttered in courtesy and in sympathy;- and then again proceed to estimate the myriads which have their birth in good fellowship, in gaiety of heart, and a desire to keep the world alive and merry. Of this latter class, one all-sufficing example offers itself in the practice of Dick Whisk. Dick indeed was a class in himself. He differed from other liars, not so much in the length of his bow, as in never departing from the principle with which he set out-that of drawing it incessantly. He must have abandoned all idea of the truth before he quitted the cradle. When he began to lisp he began to lie. His motto might have been borrowed from Mr. Fag-" Oh! I lied sir, I lied; I forget the particular lie, but they got no truth from me." The water of truth's well produced in his moral frame a terrible shudder-his was a sort of hydrophobia. He had an unconquerable repugnance to facts-yet he might have related them with perfect safety, relying upon his astonishing power of translation. There was no mistaking a statement falling from his lips for any thing but a lie. Nobody was ever known to insult him with the supposition that he was telling the truth; and, talking continually, he passed through life unsullied by the breath of suspicion. It was his proud boast that no man ever believed a word he said—that he had not an enemy in the world. The character he had earned in early youth he never forfeited in maturer years; for he found when he first went to school, that the verb "to lie" constitutes exactly three-fourths of the verb "to live." To lie and die were almost all he had to do. A hic non jacet is upon his tomb. The inscription required the addition of a non to mark the change that had fallen upon him, and distinguish death from life. Dick's lies were the perfection of lies. They were not tremendous thumpers, save when the occasion called for something in the enormous style, when he would fling you out a fine spanker off-hand, big enough to frighten Munchausen into a fit of truth, and make Pinto stare in his coffin. But generally he kept to the Every-day style;-it was good level lying, save, as we have said, when a regular crammer was wanted. This was when he was provoked to a flight by some aggravated truth that could not otherwise be topped. And this brings us to an anecdote. It was summer weather, and a swimming-feat was boasted of by a companion. Unluckily there was a witness present, who vouched for the authenticity of the story. Dick hated the maxim of magna est veritas, and never would allow an authentic anecdote to prevail. He was born prior to the date of the new school, and knew fiction to be stranger than truth. When a lover of accuracy plunged into the Serpentine, he took an imaginative leap into the German Ocean-if duly provoked, as he happened to be on this occasion. So he began. "Very good-at least not so bad." (Dick begrudged the least scrap of praise to an authenticated fact.) "Not so very bad it must be admitted. You remind me of an odd incident that dates as far back as the time when, according to the old almanack, George III. was king.' I was living by the sea-coast then, and went down to the beach to bathe. Not a soul was in sight-nothing visible but land, water, and sky. I was accustomed to go about half a mile out, but the sea was delicious, I was in good spirits, and on I went, buoyant as an ocean bird. Now and then, I checked my course, to sport about a bit, and dally with the wanton waves until I could almost fancy myself a sort of thinking fish. Then I struck out again, heedless of the distance from the beach, until it occurred to me it might be time to turn back. Just then, as I was about to set my face towards the shore-what do you think happened?” -"The blue sky looked suddenly gray, the sparkles upon the water were extinguished, and I heard a noise behind me. It startled me, and instead of turning to the beach, I struck out. With every movement of my limbs I breasted the billows, and went rapidly forward; but still I |