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the plainest points I am "laboring under a strange delusion?” What have I gained from astronomy but a neck twisted from constant stargazing? What from geology but a racking cough caught while trying some glazier experiments? What from the study of anatomy but to know where my muscles ought to be? Of what use is it for me to know that "life was sparse in the Chemung period," when heaven knows I have scarce enough to hold my bones together? Of what consolation to such a shaky mortal as I to know the pedigree of Hercules? What gain to conquer every 'ism' but rheumat-ism, every 'ology' but the Partingtonian" neur-ology?" What pleasure to enumerate the treasures of Croesus when "who steals my purse steals trash?" Or to be fully acquainted with the laws of light, when my eyes are shaded from its feeblest rays? Or, last, not least, to know that Socrates also had his Xanthippe? Most truly says Lord Bacon, "Certainly, wife and children are a kind of discipline of humanity."

Edmund Burke once said that his own life might be best divided into "fyttes" or "manias;" that his life began with a fit poetical, followed by a fit metaphysical, and that again by a fit rhetorical; that he once had a mania for statesmanship, and that this again had subsided into the mania of philosophical seclusion. Had I not so great an authority as this I should reproach myself with having passed a fickle life, for, as a boy when "running the ice," skips from cake to cake, now jumping upon a large piece and catching his breath, and then off to a smaller one which floats just long enough for him to spring to another, and another; so I have gone on, jumping from science to science, staying on each till I felt it yielding under the pressure of my mind, and then off for another and still another, driven constantly by the insatiate thirst for learning, farther and farther out in the boundless sea of knowledge. And now here I am. The last cake of ice has yielded, and I have sprung upon a small sandbank which barely affords me a standing place. Back of me, far in the distance, lie the shores of my childhood, lit up by the golden rays of the setting sun, between them and myself a wild waste of floating ice, with here and there a rash mortal leaping on over the same chilly path I have traversed, ambitious to overtake

me.

Before me surges the cold, dark ocean of Mystery, overhung with gloomy clouds which I cannot penetrate. To return is impossible. My strength is exhausted. The tide is rising fast and soon I shall be swept away to make room for the next one who reaches this dreary spot to die.

"Tell, if you can, what is it to be wise?
"Tis but to know how little can be known,
To see all others' faults and feel your own;
Condemned in business or in arts to drudge,
Without a second or without a judge,

Truth would you teach, or save a sinking land,
All fear, none aid you and few understand.
Painful preeminence, yourself to view

Above life's weakness and its comforts too!"

Place de la Concorde.

PLACE de la Concorde! on this starry night,、
My heart goes wandering o'er the stormy sea,
And touched by memories beautiful and bright,
It lingers, fair enchanted spot, with thee.

I hear again thy fountain's silver play,

I see the Champs Elysees from afar,

Where through the swaying boughs, each ruddy ray
Gleams through the long blue distance like a star.

I see along the dark and sluggish Seine,

The gliding boats flash out with sparkling prow. The cafés smile with light and flowers again,

And summer nights, o'er all their magic throw,

I see the gardens gleaming far away,

Their sylvan avenues, where strolls the crowd;
The dark Tuilleries, touched by moonlight ray,
Triumphal arch, and dome, and palace proud.

And through the moonlight lonely, dark and grand,
I mark old Luxor's obelisk arise,

The mute memento of an Orient land,

Looming still proudly 'gainst these colder skies.

It is a spot wherein the mighty Past

Links with the Present, and our lips are dumb,
For old time memories thronging round us, cast
Their shades, predicting storms which yet shall come.

Ah! through these avenues of misty light,

Are there not some, who think of years ago,

E. F. B.

And see, like me, across the vista bright,
Dark spectral shadows, flitting to and fro!

See Marie Antoinette, the fair young queen,
Who through reviling crowds, still regal, came,
Or Charlotte Corday with the guillotine,
Give to the ages her undying fame.

Or see the mingled flash of flame and sword
The thronging multitude, with frantic cries,
The tragic spot, where blood, like water, poured,
Made royalty a nation's sacrifice.

I would not now recall such scenes; too fair
The hour, the spot, for memories like these,
The balmy sweetness of this summer air
Should soothe my heart like woodland melodies.

Place de la Concordel rather let me keep

My dreams of thee, as when I saw thee last;
Let the wild sounds of fierce insurgents' sleep,
And blessed Peace close o'er the stormy Past,

B. G. E.

Hypocrisy.

The world's all title-page-there's no contents;
The world's all face; the man who shows his heart
Is hooted for his nudities and scorn'd.

YOUNG.

HYPOCRISY was fashionable, it seems, in the days of Dr. Young. It certainly is in ours. Naturally enough, it has always been a favorite vice. It is most admirably adapted to popularity, and of all the social errors which have withstood the progress of Truth so stubbornly, it has been, perhaps, the most successful. In fact, it is from civilization that it actually borrows many of its most persuasive arts. It requires but little progress in intellect to be a thief, a profligate, a liar even; but, to clothe all these characters in the guise of honesty, is an accomplishment reserved for consummate genius. The scripture phrase, "as wise as serpents," expresses this truth to a nicety; for the Serpent is the wiliest as well as wisest of the beasts; and so among our human species, exquisite

knavery is but a synonym for wisdom. We see civilized and uneducated hypocrisy pitted against each other in the struggle of the simple Incas with their foreign foes; and how the awkward craftiness of the former proved no match for the refined duplicity of the enlightened and Christian Spaniard. We hold, therefore, that hypocrisy is one of the polite arts.

But it is, undoubtedly, also a vice; and as no vice in its natural, naked character could be fashionable, or of consequence successful in such an age as ours, the perfection of the art of hypocrisy consists in its most. effectual concealment. We are not surprised, therefore, that we really see so little of it. But it none the less exists. The self-same practised and calculating fashionableness which affects a holy horror of its palpable forms, flatters it in secret and with a ready ingenuity invents for it still more effectual disguises. Let us try to spy it out under some of its manifold forms. We have no limited field of research. It reaches deep as human thought-it embraces every phase of human life. There is a cynical spirit among us which sees no progress toward the good-which is always carping at the present and canonizing the past. Such is not our spirit or our faith. We believe that humanity is advancing, that the world is being filled with wiser and better men; but in respect to this individual vice we are persuaded that progress has been more in the way of refinement than of eradication. Indeed we are always liable to mistake the grossness and vulgarity of a sin for the sinful principle itself. Whatever does not offend a nice propriety is quite likely to be accepted as a virtue. However this may be, this, as we have said, is one of those insidious vices which civilization has failed to comprehend in the general wreck of great and flaring abuses. Like some subtle essence, working unseen and silently beneath the surface, it has insinuated itself throughout society. The fact of its universality is as assured as its adaptation to universal existence is complete. Can we doubt it? Who does not know that of all human faculties the rarest and most coveted is that of interpreting from men's actions their real character and motives? If men really were what they seem, of course the simplest mind could never be deceived. The nice precautions, also, which we everywhere remember in dealing with each other, point plainly to the same great fact. You cannot doubt it; at least you cannot practically disbelieve it-else you may know in your own experience the sad feeling of the poet:

Man's faith is but a shadow

Too late, too late, I find,
'Tis but a breath, a vapor
That's scattered by the wind.

By far the most common of the abettors of hypocrisy is tyrant custom. Hence come the forms under which it works itself into the affairs of common life, occupying every department of profesional and business enterprise, and vitiating every variety of social habits and every kind of social intercourse. We may adduce a few homely illustrations. Hypocrisy tempts the producer to alloy the products which he represents as pure and genuine, and teaches him to call it customary. It encourages the petty retailer to vaunt his little stock as "the largest and most select assortment ever offered to the public;" or to predicate of his meagre patronage such extravagancies as "unparalleled success," "the rush undiminished," "quick sales and small profits!" It emboldens the halfstarved manufacturer to thrust his flaming advertisement for "a thousand able-bodied operatives," into the very face of staring bankruptcy. All this is the work of hypocrisy, but is fathered upon custom. It does business under an assumed name.

The profession of the law, in spite of the great hearts and intellects that adorn it, has become in some sense a by-word among us. And why? It is because hypocrisy has crept in and dared to confront even honesty and justice. It has become customary for men to speak

To every cause, and things mere contraries
Till they are hoarse again, yet all be law.

And so they have forgotten that they are inconsistent. In short, business honesty in its purity and strictness has been abandoned for the present, save by the few who can afford to set custom at defiance; and but too often do we hear it said, "he was too honest to succeed, a man must use his shrewdness now-a-days."

But the customs which we may more strictly call social, customs which regulate social manners and intercourse, are still more generally subservient to this monster vice. The disguises which custom supplies to it here are wretchedly flimsey and transparent-just deep enough to hide it from those who are willing to be blind. Under all this show of refined, nay, exquisite politeness, there runs a current, deep and strong, of heartless insincerity. We make great parade of social feeling and back up the deception by brilliant gatherings and sumptuous entertainments, but of how many who profess to enjoy them, may it be said with reason, "they are liars and the truth is not in them!" In fine, politeness-pre-eminently a quality of the heart-is reduced to a rigid system, and practiced with the accuracy of mechanical law. How much more of earnest human feeling was there in the simple "good-morrow,

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