 Chapter 36 of Paul Clifford by Edward Bower Lytton. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Chapter 36, and last, subtle, surly, mammon, doll, hot, ananias, dapper, drager, all with whom I traded. The alchemist. As when some rural citizen retired for a fleeting holiday, far from the cares of the world, strep pitum quay Rome my, and the roar of Rome, to the sweet shades of penton bill, or the remoter plains of Clapham, conducts some delighted visitor over the intricacies of that Daedalian masterpiece, which he is pleased to call his labyrinth or maze, now smiling furtively at his guests' perplexity, now listening with calm superiority to his feudal and earring conjectures, now maliciously accompanying him through a flattering path in which the baffled adventurer is suddenly checked by the blank features of a thorough, fearless hedge, now trembling as he sees the guest, stumbling unawares into the right track, and now relieved as he beholds him after a pause of deliberation, whined into the wrong, even so, o pleasant reader, doth the sage novelist conduct thee through the labyrinth of his tale, amusing himself with self-deceits, and spinning forth in prolet's pleasure the quiet yarn of his entertainment from the involutions which occasion thy fretting eagerness and perplexity. But as when, thanks to the host's good nature or fatigue, the mystery is once unraveled, and the guest permitted to penetrate even into the concealed end of the leafy maze, the honest sit satisfied with the pleasant pains he has already bestowed upon his visitor puts him not to the labor of retracing the steps he has so erratically trod, but leads him in three strides and through a simpler path at once to the mouth of the maze and dismisseth him elsewhere for entertainment, even so will the prudent narrator, when the intricacies of his plot are once unfolded, occasion no stale and profitless delays to his wearied reader, but conduct him with as much brevity as convenient without the labyrinth which has ceased to retain the interest of a secret. We shall therefore in pursuance of the tits policy relate as rapidly as possible that part of our narrative which yet remains untold. Ombranden's person was found the paper which had contained so fatal an intelligence of his son, and when brought to Lord Millevere, the words struck that person who knew Ombranden had been in search of his lost son whom we have seen that he had been taught, however, to suppose illegitimate, though it is probable that many doubts whether he had not been deceived must have occurred to his natural sagacity as sufficiently important to be worth an inquiry after the writer. Dummy was easily found for he had not yet turned his back on the town. When the news of the judge's sudden death was brought back to it and taking advantage of that circumstance, the friendly dunnaker remained altogether in the town, albeit his long companion, deserted it as hastily as might be. And while the time by presenting himself at the jail, and after some ineffectual efforts winning his way to Clifford, easily tracked by the name he had given to the governor of the jail, he was conducted the same day to Lord Millevere and his narrative confused as it was and proceeding even from so suspicious a quarter, thrilled those digestive organs which Millevere stood proxy for a heart with feelings as much resembling awe and horror as our good peer was capable of experiencing. Already shocked from his worldly philosophy of indifference by the death of Brandon, he was more susceptible to a remorseful and salutary impression at this moment than he might have been at any other. And he could not without some twinges of conscience think of the ruin he had brought on the mother of the being he had but just prosecuted to the death. He dismissed Dummy and after a little consideration he ordered his carriage and leaving the funeral preparations for his friend to the care of his man of business he set off for London and the house in particular of the secretary of the home department. We were not willingly wrong the noble penitent but we venture a suspicion that he might not have preferred a personal application for mercy to the prisoner to a written one. Had he not felt certain unpleasant qualms in remaining in a country house overshadowed by ceremony so gloomy as those of death, the letter of Brandon and the application of a lever obtained for Clifford a relaxation of his sentence he was left for perpetual transportation. A ship was already about to sail and a lever of content with having saved his life was by no means anxious that his departure from the country should be settled with any superfluous delay. Meanwhile, the first rumor that reached London respecting Brandon's fate was that he had been found in a fit and was lying dangerously ill at Malevera's and before the second and more fatally sure report arrived, Lucy had gathered from the visible dismay of Barlow whom she anxiously cross questioned and who really loving his master was easily affected into communication. The first and more flattering intelligence to Barlow's secret delight she insisted instantly on setting off to the supposed sick man and accompanied by Barlow and her woman the affectionate girl haste into Malevera's house on the evening after the day the Earl left it. Lucy had not proceeded far before Barlow learned from the gossip of the road the real state of the case. Indeed it was at the first stage that with a mournful countenance he approached the door of the carriage and announcing the in utility of proceeding farther begged of Lucy to turn back. So soon as Ms. Brandon had overcome the first shock which this intelligence gave her, she said with calmness. Well Barlow, if it be so we have still a duty to perform tell the post boys to drive on. Indeed madam I cannot see what you see can be fretting yourself and you so poorly if you will let me go I will see every attention paid to the remains of my poor master. When my father lay dead said Lucy with a grave and sad sternness in her manner he who is now no more sent no proxy to perform the last duties of a brother neither will I send one to discharge those of a niece and prove that I have forgotten the gratitude of a daughter drive on. We have said that there were times when a spirit was stricken from Lucy little common to her in general and now the command of her uncle sat upon her brow on sped the horses and for several minutes Lucy remained silent. Her woman did not dare to speak at length Ms. Brandon turned and covering her face with her hands burst into tears so violent that they alarmed her attendant even more than her previous stillness. My poor poor uncle she sobbed and those were all her words. We must pass over Lucy's arrival at Lord Millevue's house. We must pass over the weary days which elapsed till that unconscious body was consigned to dust with which could it have retained yet one spark of its haughty spirit it would have refused to blend its atoms. She had loved the deceased incomparably beyond his merits and resisting all remonstrance to the contrary and all the forms of ordinary custom she witnessed herself the dreary ceremony which bequeathed the human remains of William Brandon to repose and to the worm. On that same day Clifford received the mitigation of his sentence and on that day another trial awaited Lucy. We think briefly to convey to the reader what that scene was. We need only observe that Demi Deniker decoyed by his great love for little Paul whom he delightedly said he found not the least stuck up by his great fame and hallowation still lingered in the town and was not only aware of the relationship of the cousins but had gleaned from long dead as they journeyed down to blank the affection entertained by Clifford for Lucy of the manner in which the communication reached Lucy we need not speak suffice it to say that on the day in which she had performed the last duty to her uncle she learned for the first time her lover's situation. On that evening in the convict cell the cousins met their conference was low for the jailer stood within hearing and it was broken by Lucy's convulsive sobs but the voice of one whose iron nerves were not unworthy of the offspring of William Brandon was clear and audible to her ear even though uttered in a whisper that scarcely stirred his lips. It seemed as if Lucy smitten to the inmost heart by the generosity with which her lover had torn himself from her at the time that her wealth might have raised him in any other country far above the perils and the crimes of his career in this. Perceiving now for the first time and in all their force the causes of his mysterious conduct melted by their relationship and forgetting herself utterly in the desolation and dark situation in which she beheld one who whatever his crimes had not been criminal towards her. It seemed as if carried away by these emotions she had yielded altogether to the fondness and devotion of her nature that she had wished to leave home and friends and fortune and share with him his punishment and his shame. Why she faltered, why, why not? We were all that is left to each other in the world. Your father and mine were brothers. Let me be to you as a sister. What is there left for me here? Not one being whom I love or who cares for me, not one. It was then that Clifford summoned all his courage as he answered, perhaps now that he felt though here his knowledge was necessarily confused and imperfect, his birth was not unequal to hers. Now that he read or believed he read in her one cheek and attenuated frame that desertion to her was death and that generosity and self-sacrifice had become too late. Perhaps these thoughts concurring with the love in himself beyond all words and the love in her which it was above humanity to resist altogether conquered and subdued him. Yet as we have said his voice, breathed calmly in her ear and his eye only which brightened with us steady and resolute hope, betrayed his mind, lived then, said he as he concluded, my sister, my mistress, my bride, live in one year from this day. I repeat, I promise it thee. The interview was over and Lucy returned home with a firm step, she was on foot. The rain fell in torrents, yet even in her precarious state her health suffered not. And when within a week from that time she read that Clifford had departed to the borne of his punishment, she read the news with a steady eye and a lip that if it grew paler did not quiver. Shortly after that time Miss Brandon departed to an obscure town by the seaside and there refusing all society, she continued to reside. As the birth of Clifford was known but to few and his legitimacy was unsuspected by all except perhaps by Malevera, Lucy succeeded to the great wealth of her uncle and this circumstance made her more than ever an object of attraction in the eyes of her noble adorer. Finding himself unable to see her, he wrote to her more than one moving epistle but as Lucy continued inflexible he at length disgusted by her want of taste seized his pursuit and resigned himself to the continued sterility of unwitted life. As the months waned Miss Brandon seemed to grow weary of her retreat and immediately on attaining her majority which she did about eight months after Brandon's death she transferred the bulk of her wealth to France where it was understood for it was impossible that rumor should sleep upon an heiress and a beauty that she intended in future to reside. Even Warlock that spell to the proud heart of her uncle she ceased to retain. It was offered to the nearest relation of the family at a sum which he did not hesitate to close with and by the common vicissitudes of fortune the estate of the ancient Brandon's house now we perceive by a weekly journal just passed into the hands of a wealthy alderman. It was nearly a year since Brandon's death when a letter bearing a foreign postmark came to Lucy from that time her spirits which before the subject to fits of abstraction had been even and subdued not sad rose into all the cheerfulness and the vastity of her earliest youth. She busied herself actively in preparations for her departure from this country and at length the day was fixed and the vessel was engaged. Every day till that one did Lucy walk to the seaside and ascending the highest cliffs spent hours till the evening closed and watching with seemingly idle gaze the vessels that interspersed the sea and with every day her health seemed to strengthen and the soft and lucid color she had once worn to re bloom upon her cheek. Previous to her departure Miss Brandon dismissed her servants and only engaged one female a foreigner to accompany her a certain tone of quiet command formerly unknown to her characterized these measures so daringly independent for one of her sex and age. The day arrived it was the anniversary of her last interview with Clifford on entering the vessel it was observed that she trembled violently and that her face was as pale as death. A stranger who had stood aloof wrapped in his cloak darted forward to assist her that was the last which her discarded and weeping servants beheld of her from the pier where they stood to gaze. Nothing more in this country was ever known of the fate of Lucy Brandon and as her circle of acquaintances was narrow and interest in her fate existed vividly and non save a few humbled breasts conjecture was never keenly awakened and soon cooled into forgetfulness. If it favored after the lapse of years any one notion more than another it was that she had perished among the victims of the French Revolution. Meanwhile let us glance over the destinies of our more subordinate acquaintances. Augustus Tomlinson on parting from Long Ned had succeeded in reaching Calais and after a rapid tour through the continent he ultimately betook himself to a certain literary city in Germany where he became distinguished for his metaphysical acumen and opened a school of morals on the Grecian model taught in the French tongue. He managed by the patronage he received and the pupils he enlightened to obtain a very decent income and as he wrote a folio against Locke proved that men had innate feelings and affirmed that we should refer everything not to reason but to the sentiments of the soul he became greatly respected for his extraordinary virtue. Some little discoveries were made after his death which perhaps would have somewhat diminished the general odor of his sanctity had not the admirers of his school carefully hushed up the matter probably out of respect for the sentiments of the soul. Pepper whom the police did not so anxiously desire to destroy as they did his two companions might have managed perhaps many years longer to graze upon the public commons had not a letter written somewhat imprudently fallen into wrong hands. This though after creating a certain story that apparently died away lived in the memory of the police and finally conspired with various peccadillos to produce his downfall. He was seized, tried and sentenced to seven years' transportation. He so advantageously employed his time at Botany Bay and arranged things there so comfortably to himself that at the expiration of his sentence he refused to return home. He made an excellent match built himself an excellent house and remained in the land of the blessed to the end of his days noted to the last for the redundance of his hair and a certain ferocious cox comery of aspect. As for fighting at tea and gentlemen George for Scarlet Gem and for O-Bags we confess ourselves destitute of any certain information of their latter ends. We can only add with regard to fighting at tea good luck be with him wherever he goes and for my host of the Jolly Angler that though we have not the physical constitution to quack a bumper of blue ruin we shall be very happy over any tolerable wine and in company with any agreeable convivialist to bear our part in the polished chorus of here's to gentlemen George God bless him. Mrs. Lopkins departed this life like a lamb and Demi Dunnaker obtained a license to carry on the business at Tim's court. He boasted to the last of his acquaintance with the great captain Lovett and of the affability with which that distinguished personage treated him. Stories he had to about Judd Brandon but no one believed a syllable of them and Demi indignant at the disbelief increased out of vehemence the marvel of the story so that at length what was added almost swallowed up what was original and Demi himself might have been puzzled to satisfy his own conscience as to what was false and what was true. The aerodite Peter McGraw returning to Scotland disempowered by the road a person singularly resembling the sage was afterwards seen at Carlisle where he discharged the useful and praiseworthy duties of Jack Ketch but whether or not this respectable functionary was our identical Simon Pure, our ex editor of the Assenium we will not take upon ourselves to assert. Lord Malever finally resolving on a single life past the remainder of his years in indolent tranquility when he died the newspapers asserted that his majesty was deeply affected by the loss of so old and valued a friend his furniture and wines sold remarkably high and a great man, his particular intimate who purchased his books startled to find by pencil marks that the noble deceased had read some of them exclaimed not altogether without truth ah, Malever might have been a deucid clever fellow if he had liked it. The Earl was accustomed to show as a curiosity a ring of great value which he had received in rather a singular manner. One morning a packet was brought him which he found to contain a sum of money the ring mentioned in a letter from the notorious Lovett in which that person in begging to return his lordship the sums of which he had twice assisted to rob him thanked him with earnest warmth for the consideration testified towards him in not revealing his identity with Captain Clifford and ventured as a slight testimony of respect to enclose the aforesaid ring with the sum returned. About the time Malever received this curious packet several anecdotes of a similar nature appeared in the public journals and it seemed that Lovett had acted upon a general principle of restitution not always it must be allowed the offspring of a robber's repentance while the idol were marveling at these anecdotes came the tardy news that Lovett after a single month sojourn at his place of condemnation had in the most daring and singular manner affected his escape. Whether in his progress up the country had been starved or slain by the natives or whether more fortunate he had ultimately found the means of crossing seas was as yet unknown there ended the adventures of the gallant robber and thus by a strange coincidence the same mystery which wrapped the fate of Lucy involved also that of her lover and here kind reader might we drop the curtain on our closing scene did we not think it might please thee to hold it up yet one moment and give the another view of the world behind. In a certain town of that great country where shoes are imperfectly polished see Captain Hall's late work on America and opinions are not prosecuted there resided 20 years after the date of Lucy Brandon's departure from England a man held in high and universal respect not only for the rectitude of his combat but for the energies of his mind and the purposes to which they were directed. If you asked who cultivated that waste the answer was Clifford who procured the establishment of that hospital Clifford who obtained the redress of such a public grievance Clifford who struggled for and won such a popular benefit Clifford in the gentler part of his projects and his undertakings in that part above all which concerned the sick or the necessitous this useful citizen was seconded or rather excelled by a being over whose surpassing loveliness time seemed to have flown with a gentle and charming wing there was something remarkable and touching in the love which this couple for the woman we refer to was Clifford's wife bore to each other like the plant on the plains of Hebron the time which brought to that love an additional strength brought to it also a softer and a fresher verger although their present neighbors were unacquainted with the events of their earlier life previous to their settlement at Blank it was known that they had been wealthy at the time they first came to reside there and that by a series of fatalities they had lost all but Clifford had born up manfully against fortune and in a new country where men who prefer labor to dependence cannot easily start he had been enabled to toil upward through the severe stages of poverty and hardship with an honesty and vigor of character which won him perhaps a more hearty esteem for every success of effort than the display of his lost riches might ever have acquired him his labors and his abilities obtained gradual but sure success and he now enjoyed the blessings of a competence earned with the most scrupulous integrity and spent with the most kindly benevolence a trace of the trials they had passed through was discernible in each those trials had stolen the rose from the wife's cheek and had sewn untimely wrinkles in the broad brow of Clifford there were moments too but they were only moments when the latter sank from his wanted elastic and healthful cheerfulness of mind into a gloomy and abstracted reverie but these moments the wife watched with a jealous and fond anxiety and one sound of her sweet voice had the power to dispel their influence and when Clifford raised his eyes and glanced from her tender smile around his happy home and his growing children or beheld through the very windows of his room the public benefits he had created something of pride and gladness glowed on his countenance and he said though with glistening eyes and subdued voice as his looks returned once more to his wife I owe these to thee one trait of mind especially characterized by Clifford indulgence to the faults of others circumstances make guilt he was wanting to say let us endeavor to correct the circumstances before we rail against the guilt his children promised to tread in the same useful and honorable path that he trod himself happy was considered that family which had the hope to ally itself with his such was the after fate of Clifford and Lucy who will condemn us for preferring the moral of that fate to the moral which is extorted from the jibbit and the hawks which makes scarecrows not beacons terrifies our weakness not warms our reason who does not allow that it is better to repair than to perish better too to atone as the citizen than to repent as the hermit oh John Wilkes Alderman of London and draw concern of liberty your life was not an iota too perfect your patriotism might have been infinitely pure your morals would have admitted indefinite amendment you are no great favorite with us or with the rest of the world but you said one excellent thing for which we look on you with benevolence they almost with respect we scarcely know whether to smile at its wit or to sigh at its wisdom mark this truth or ye gentlemen of England who would make law as the Romans made fascis a bundle of rods with an ax in the middle mark it and remember long may it live allied with hope in ourselves but with gratitude in our children long after the book which it now adorns and points has gone to its dusty slumber long long after the feverish hand which now writes it down can defend or enforce it no more the very worst use to which you can put a man is to hang him note in the second edition of this novel there were here inserted two characters of fighting Addy and gentlemen George omitted in the subsequent edition published by Mr. Bentley in the standard novels at the request of some admirers of those eminent personages who consider the biographical sketches referred to impartial in themselves and contributing to the completeness of the design for which men so illustrious were introduced they are here retained though in the more honorable form of a separate and supplementary notice fighting Addy when he dies the road will have lost a great man whose foot was rarely out of his stirrup and whose clear head guided a bold hand he carried common sense to his perfection and he made the straight path the sublimest his words were few his actions were many he was the Spartan of toby men and lecanism was the short soul of his professional legislation whatever way you view him you see those properties of mind which command fortune few thoughts not confusing each other simple elements and bold his character in action may be summed up in two phrases a fact seized and a stroke made had his intellect been more luxurious his resolution might have been less hardy and his hardiness made his greatness he was one of those who shine but in action chimneys to adapt the simile of sir thomas more that seem useless to you light your fire so in calm moments you dream not of his utility and only on the road you were struck dumb with the outbreaking of his genius whatever situation he was called to you found in hire what you look for in vain and others for a strong sense gave to addy what long experience ought but often fails to give to its possessors his energy triumphed over the sense of novel circumstance and he broke in a moment through the cobwebs which entangled lesser natures for years is I saw a final result and disregarded the detail he robbed his man without chicanery and took his purse by applying for it rather than scheming if his enemies wish to detract from his merit a merit great dazzling and yet solid they may perhaps say that his genius fitted him better to continue exports then to devise them and thus that besides the renown which he may just to claim he often wholly engrossed that fame which should have been shared by others he took up the enterprise where it ceased at labor and carried it onwards where it was regarded with glory even this charge proves a new merit of address and lessons not the merit less complicated they have allowed him before the fame he has acquired may excite our emulation the envy he has not appeased may console us for obscurity A stanza of Greek poetry thus not too vigorously translated by Mr. West but wrapped in error is the human mind and human bliss is ever insecure know we what fortune shall remain behind know we how long the present shall endure Gentlemen George for thee gentlemen George for thee what conclusive valediction remains alas since we began the strange and mumming scene wherein first thou went to introduce the grim foe hath knocked thrice at thy gates and now as we write in 1830 thou art departed thence thou art no more a new lord presides to thine easy chair a new voice rings from thy merry board thou art forgotten thou art already like these pages a tale that is told to a memory that retained if not where are thy quips and cranks where thy stately cocks comories and thy regal gods thine house and thy pagoda thy gothic chimney and thy Chinese signpost these yet ask the concluding hand thy hand is cold their completion and the enjoyment the completion yields are for another thou sowest and thy follower reaps thou buildest thy successor holds thou plantest and thy air sits beneath the shadow of thy trees neckway harm, cost, solace, arworm, tape, writer, in wesis, suppressus, ula brevum, dominum, sequitur nor will any of these trees thou didst cultivate follow thee, thou short-lived lord save the hateful cypress at this moment thy life for thou wort a great man to thine order and they have added thy biography to that of Aber Shaw and Shepherd thy life was before us what a homily in its events gaily ditch thou lap into thy youth and run through the courses of thy manhood whip set at thy table and genius was thy comrade beauty was thy handmaid and frivolity played around thee a buffoon that thou didst ridicule and ridiculing enjoy who among us can look back to thy brilliant era and not sigh to think that the wonderful men who surrounded thee and amidst whom thou were to a center and a nucleus art for him but the things of history and the phantoms of a bottleless tradition those brilliant suppers glittering with beauty the memory of which makes one spot yet inherited by a bachelor bill a haunted and a fairy ground all who gathered to that Armeida's circle the Gramments and the Bovilliers and the Rocha for calls of England and the road who does not feel that to have seen these though but as you blah saw the festivities of his actors from the sideboard and behind the chair would have been a triumph for the earth their feelings of his old age to recall what then must it have been to have seen them as thou didst see thou the deceased and the forgotten and seen them from the height of thy youth and power and rank for early work thou keeper to a public and reckless spirits and lusty capacities of joy what pleasures where since lavish did some counted varieties what revelings where wine was the least excitement let this scene shift how stirring is the change triumph and glitter and conquest for that public was a public of renown there there came the warriors of the ring the heroes of the cross and thou their patron were elevated on their fame Principus pro Victoria Pugnant Sometus pro Principi chiefs for the victory fight for chiefs the soldiers what visions sweep across us what glories distal witness over what conquest distal preside the mightiest epic the most wonderful events which the world thy world ever knew of these was it not indeed and dazzlingly fine to share the triumph and partake the gaol let this scene shift manhood is touched by age but lust is healed by luxury and pomp is the air of pleasure due jaws and God instead of glory surround rejoice and flatter thee to the last there rise thy buildings there lie secret but gorgeous the tabernacles of thine ease and the earnings of thy friends and the riches of the people whom they plunder our waters to thine imperial whirlpool thou art lapped in ease as is of silkworm and profusion flows from thy high and unseen asylum as the rainforest from a cloud much didst thou do to beautify chimney tops much to adorn those snugries where thou didst dwell thieving with thee took a substantial shape and the robberies of the public passed into a metham psychosis of mortar and became public houses so there and thus building and planning didst thou spin out thy latter yarn till death came upon thee and when we looked around low thy brother was on thy heart and thy parasites and thy comrades and thy ancient pals and thy portly blow-ins they made a murmur and they packed up their goods but they turned ere they departed and they would have worshiped thy brother as they worshiped thee but he would not and thy signpost is gone and molded already and to the jolly angler has succeeded the jolly tar and thy picture is disappearing fast from the print shops and thy name from the mouths of men and thy brother whom no one praised while thou didst live is on a steeple of Panajariq built above the churchyard that contains thy grave oh shifting and volatile hearts of men who would be keeper of a public who dispense the wine and the juices that gladden when the moment the pulse of the band ceases the wine and the juices are forgotten to history for thy name will be preserved in that record which whether it be the calendar of Nugud or of nations tell if it's alike how men suffer and sin and perish to history we leave the sum and balance of thy merits and thy faults the sins that were thine were those of the man to whom pleasure is all in all thou work from root to branch sap and in heart what more or less termed the libertine hence the light wooing the quick desertion the broken faith the organized perfidy that manifested thy bearing to those gentler creatures who call the gentleman George never to one solitary woman until the last dull flame of thy dotage didst thou also behave as to give no foundation to complaint and no voice to wrong but who shall say be honest to one but laugh that perfidy to another who shall holy confine treachery to one sex if to that sex he hold treachery no offense so in thee as in all thy tribe there was a lackness of principle and insincerity of faith even unto men thy friends when occasion suited thou couldst forsake and thy luxuries were dearer to thee than justice to those who supplied them men who love and live for pleasure as thou are usually good natured for their devotion to pleasure arises from the strength of their constitution and the strength of their constitution preserves them from the irritations of weaker nerves so went thou good natured and often generous and often with thy generosity disthou unite a delicacy that showed thou hathst an original and a tender sympathy with men but as those who pursue pleasure are above all others impatient of interruptions so to such as interfered with thy main pursuit thou didst testify a deep elasting and a revengeful anger yet let not such vices of temperament be too severely judged for to thee were given man's two most persuasive tempters physical and moral health and power thy talents such as they were and they were the talents of a man of the world misled rather than guided thee for they gave thy mind that demi philosophy that indifference to exalted motives which is generally found in a clever rake thy education was wretched thou hathst a smattering of horrors but thou couldst not write English and thy letters betrayed that thou went woefully ignorant of logic the finest of thy taste has been exaggerated thou worked unacquainted with the nobleness of simplicity thy idea of a whole was grotesque and overloaded and thy fancy in details was gaudy and meritricious but thou hathst thy hand constantly in the public purse and thou haths plans and advisers forever before thee more than all thou didst find the houses in that neighborhood wherein thou didst build so preternaturally hideous that thou didst require but little science to be less frightful in thy creations if thou didst not improve thy native village and thy various homes with a solid aloft in a noble taste thou didst nevertheless very singularly improved and thy posterity in avoiding the faults of thy masonry will be grateful for the effects of thy ambition the same demi philosophy which influenced thee in private life exercised a far benigner and happier power over thee in public thou were not idly vexatious investries nor ordinarily tyrannic in thy parish if thou were ever arbitrary it was only when thy pleasure was checked for thy vanity wounded at other times thou didst leave events to their legitimate course so that in thy latter years thou were justly popular in thy parish and in the grave thy great good fortune will outshine thy few bad qualities and then will save thee with a kindly not an erring judgment in private life he was not worse than the roofers who came to this bar in public life he was better than those who kept the public before him hark those houses what is the burden of that course oh grateful and never time serving Britons have ye modified already for another the song ye made so solely in honor of gentlemen george and must we lest we lose the custom of the public and the good things of the taproom rust we roar with throats yet hoarse with our fervor for the old words our ardor for the new here's to mariner bill God bless him God bless him God bless him here's to mariner bill God bless him in of chapter thirty six Tom Lynn Soniana part one of Paul Clifford by Edward Boerlitten this LibriVox recording is in the public domain Tom Lynn Soniana part one or the posthumous writings of the celebrated Augustus Tomlinson professor of moral philosophy in the University of Blind addressed to his pupils and comprising one maxims on the popular art of creating illustrated by ten characters being an introduction to that noble science by which every man may become his own rogue to baccalaureate or essays critical sentimental moral and original introduction having lately been traveling in Germany I spent some time that university in which Augustus Tomlinson presided as professor of moral philosophy I found that that great man died after a lingering illness in the beginning of the year 1822 perfectly resigned to his fate and conversing even on his deathbed on the divine mysteries of ethical philosophy notwithstanding the little peccadillos to which I have alluded in the latter pages of Paul Clifford and which his pupils deemed it advisable to hide from the gaudy babbling and remorseless day his memory was still held in a tender veneration perhaps as in the case of the illustrious burns the faults of a great man in dear to you his genius in his latter days the professor was accustomed to wear a light green silk dressing gown and as he was perfectly bald a little black velvet cap his small clothes were pepper and salt these interesting facts I learned from one of his pupils his old age was consumed in lectures in conversation and in the composition of the little more so of wisdom we present to the public in these essays and maxims short as they are he seems to have concentrated the wisdom of his industries and honorable life with great difficulty I procured from his executors the manuscripts which were then preparing for the German press a valuable consideration induced those gentlemen to become philanthropic and to consider the inestimable blessings they would confer upon this country by suffering me to give the following essays to the light in the native and English dress on the same day where on they appear in Germany in the graces of foreign disguise at an age when while hypocrisy stalks simpers, sidles, struts and hobbles through the country truth also begins to watch or adversely in every movement I cannot but think these lessons of Augustus Tomlinson peculiarly well timed I add them as a fitting appendix to a novel that may not inappropriately be termed a treatise on social frauds if they contain within them that evidence of diligent attention and that principle of good in which the satire of vice is only the germ of its detection they may not perchance pass wholly unnoticed nor be even condemned to that hasty reading in which the indifference of today is but the prelude to the forgetfulness of tomorrow contents maxims on the popular art of cheating illustrated by 10 characters being an introduction to that noble science by which every man may become his own rogue brachylogia on the morality taught by the rich to the poor emulation caution against the scoffers of Humbug popular wrath and individual imprudence doom, defiant, ominous self glorifiers, thought unfortunate wit and truth auto theology, glorious constitution answer to the popular camp that goodness statesman is better than ability common sense love and writers in love the great entailed the regeneration of a knave's style maxims on the popular art of cheating illustrated by 10 characters being an introduction to that noble science by which every man may become his own rogue set a thief to catch a thief proverb one, whenever you are about to utter something astonishingly false always begin with it is an acknowledged fact et cetera Sir Robert Filmer was a master of this method of writing thus with what a solemn face that great man attempted to cheat it is a truth undeniable that there cannot be any multitude of men whatsoever either great or small et cetera but that in the same multitude there is one man amongst them that in nature hath a right to be king of all the rest as being the next heir to Adam two, when you want something from the public throw the blame of the asking on the most sacred principle you can find a common beggar can read you exquisite lessons on this the most important maxim in the art of popular cheating for the love of God, Sir Appenni three, whenever on any matter moral, sentimental or political you find yourself utterly ignorant talk immediately of the laws of nature as those laws are written nowhere lock they are known by nobody should any ask you how you happen to know such or such a doctrine as the dictate of nature clap your hand to your heart and say here four, yield to a man's taste and he will yield to your interest five, when you talk to the half-wise twaddle when you talk to the ignorant brag when you talk to the sagacious look very humble and ask their opinion six, always bear in mind, my beloved pupils that the means of livelihood depend not on the virtues but the vices of others the lawyer, the statesman, the hangman, the physician are paid by our sins nay even the commoner professions the tailor, the coachmaker, the upholsterer, the wine merchant draw their fortunes if not their existence from those smaller vices are foibles vanity is the figure prefixed to the ciphers of necessity wherefore, oh my beloved pupils never mind what a man's virtues are waste no time in learning them fastened at once on his infirmities due to the one as were you an honest man you would do to the many this is the way to be a rogue individually as a lawyer is a rogue professionally nays are like critics nulam simile est quod item editor flies that feed on the sore part and would have nothing to live on were the body in health titler seven every man finds it desirable to have tears in his eyes at times one has a sympathy with human lids providence have beneficially provided for this want and given to every man in his divine forethought misfortunes painful to recall hence probably those human calamities which the atheist rails against wherefore when you are uttering some affecting sentiment to your intended dupe think of the greatest misfortune you ever had in your life habit will soon make the association of tears and that melancholy remembrance constantly felicitous i knew my dear pupils the most intelligent Frenchman who obtained a charming legacy from an old poet by repeating the Bard's verses with streaming eyes how were you able to weep at will asked i i was young then my pupils je pensois and city amont pauvre paix qui est mort union of sentiment with the ability of swindling made that Frenchman a most fascinating creature never commit the air of the over shrewd and deem human nature worse than it is human nature so damnably good that if it were not for human art we naves could not live the primary elements about man's mind do not sustain us is what he owes to the pains taken with his education and the blessings of civilized society nine whenever you doubt my pupils whether your man be a quack or not decide the point by seeing if your man be a positive asserter nothing indicates in posture like confidence volney saith well that the most celebrated of charlatans Muhammad and the boldest of tyrants begins his extraordinary tissue of lies by these words there is no doubt in this book ten there is one way of cheating people peculiar to the British isles in which my pupils I earnestly recommend you to import either cheating by subscription people like to be plundered in company dupery then grows into the spirit of party thus one quack very gravely requested persons to fit up a ship for him and send them around the world as its captain to make discoveries and another patriotically suggested that ten thousand pounds should be subscribed for what to place him in parliament neither of these fellows could have screwed an individual out of our shilling had he asked him for it in a corner but a printed list with israel heinous at the top plays the devil with english guineas a subscription for individuals may be considered a society for the ostentatious encouragement of idleness impudence begary imposter and other public virtues eleven whenever you read the life of a great man i mean a man eminently successful you will perceive all the qualities given to him are the qualities necessary even to a media occur rogue he possessed say of the biographer the greatest address namely the faculty of weeding the most admirable courage namely the faculty of bullying the most noble fortitude namely the faculty of bearing to be bullied the most singular versatility namely the faculty of saying one thing to one man and it's reversed to another and the most wonderful command over the mind of his contemporaries namely the faculty of victimizing their purses or seducing their actions where for if luck cast you in humble life assiduously study the biographies of the great in order to accomplish you as a rogue if in the more elevated range of society be thoroughly versed in the lives of the rogueish so shall you fit yourself to be eminent twelve the hypocrisy of virtue my beloved pupils is a little out of fashion nowadays it is sometimes better to affect the hypocrisy of vice appear generously profligate and swear with a hearty face that you do not pretend to be better than the generality of your neighbors sincerity is not less occurring than lying a freeze great coat wraps you as well as a spanish quote thirteen when you are about to execute some great plan and to defraud a number of persons let the first one or two of the allotted number be the cleverest shrewd as well as you can find you have been a reference that will alone do the rest of the world that mister links is satisfied will amply suffice to satisfy mister mole of the honesty of your intentions nor are shrewd men the hardest to take in they rely on their strength invulnerable heroes are necessarily the bravest talk to them in a business-like manner and refer your design at once to their lawyer my friend john chamberry was a model in this grand stroke of art he swindled twelve people to the tune of some thousands with no other trouble than it first cost him to swindle whom do you think the secretary to the society for the suppression of swindling fourteen divide your arts into two classes those which cost you little labor those which cost much the first flattery attention answering letters by return of post walking across the street to oblige the man you intend to ruin all these you must never neglect the least man is worth gaining at a small cost and besides while you are serving yourself you are also obtaining the character of civility diligence and good nature but the arts which cost you much labor along subservience to one test the individual aping the semblance of a virtue or quality or a branch of learning which you do not possess to a person difficult to blind all these never begin except for great ends worth not only the loss of time but the chance of detection great pains for small gains is the maxim of the miser the rogue should have more grandeur dom greatness of soul fifteen always forgive sixteen if a man owe you a sum of money pupils will you be of mine you may once in your lives be so silly as to lend and you find it difficult to get it back appeal not to his justice but to his charity the components of justice flatter few men who likes to submit to an inconvenience because you ought to do it without praise without even self-gradulation but charity my dear friends tickles up human ostentation deliciously charity implies superiority and the feeling of superiority is most grateful to social nature hence the commonness of charity in proportion to other virtues all over the world and hence you will especially note that in proportion as people are hearty and arrogant will they laud arms giving and encourage charitable institutions seventeen your genteel rogues do not sufficiently observe the shrewdness of the vulgar ones the actual beggar takes advantage of every sore but the moral swindler is unpartnably dull as to the happiness of a physical infirmity to obtain a favor neglect no method that may allure compassion i knew a worthy curate who obtained two livings by the felicity of a hectic cock and a younger brother who is subsisted for ten years on his family by virtue of a slow consumption when you want to possess yourself of a small sum recollect that the small sum be put into juxtaposition with a great i do not express myself clearly take an example in london there are sharpers who advertise seventy thousand pounds to be advanced at four percent principles only conferred with the gentleman wishing for such a sum on mortgage goes to see the advertiser the advertiser says he must run down and look at the property on which the money is to be advanced his journey and expenses will cost him a mere trifle say twenty guineas let him speak competently let the gentleman very much want the money at the interest stated and three to one but our sharper gets the twenty guineas so paul to your sum in comparison to seventy thousand pounds those so serious as some have the matter related to half-pence nineteen lord coke is said to trace an error to its fountain head is to refute it now my young pupils i take it for granted that you are interested in the preservation of error you do not wish it therefore to be traced to its fountain head whenever then you see a sharp fellow tracking it up you have two ways of settling the matter you may say with a smile nay now sir you grow speculative i admire your ingenuity or else look grave color up and say i fancy sir there is no warrant for this assertion in the most sacred of all authorities the devil can quote scripture you know and a very sensible devil it is too twenty rosen for coal has said the hate of favorites is nothing else but the love of favor the idea is a little cramp the hate we bear to any man is only the result about love for some good which we imagine he possesses or which being in our possession we imagine he has attacked thus envy the most ordinary species of hate arises from our value for the glory or the plate or the content we behold and revenge is born from our regard for our fame that has been wounded or our acres molested or our rites invaded but the most noisy of all hatred says hatred for the rich from love for the riches look well on the poor devil who is always railing at coaches and for book him as a man to be bribed twenty one my beloved pupils few have yet sufficiently studied the art by which the practice of jokes becomes subservient to the science of swindlers the heart of an inferior is always fascinated by a jest men know this in the navery of elections know it now my pupils in the navery of life when you slap beyond cobbler so affectionately on the back it is your own fault if you do not slap your purpose into him at the same time note how shakespeare whom study night and day no man hath better expounded the mysteries of roguery causes his grandest and most accomplished villain richard the third to address his good friends the murderers with a jocular panagiaric on that hardness of heart on which doubtless those poor fellows most peak themselves your eyes drop millstones where fools eyes drop tears i like you lads can't you fancy the knowing grin with which the dogs receive this compliment and the little slight punch in the stomach with which richard dropped those loving words i like you lads 22 as good nature is the characteristic of the dupe so should good temper be that of the name the two fit into each other like joints happily good nature is a narcissist and falls in love with its own likeness and good temper is too good nature but the floramel of snow was to the floramel of flesh an exact likeness made of the coldest materials 23 being the praise of navery a nave is a philosopher though a philosopher is not necessarily a nave what hath a nave to do with passions every irregular desire he must suppress every foible he must weed out his whole life is spent in the acquisition of knowledge for what is knowledge the discovery of human errors he is the only man always consistent yet ever examining he knows but one end yet explores every means danger he'll repeat all that terrify other men dot not him he braves all but is saved from all for i hold that a nave ceaseth to be the nave he hath passed into the fool the moment mischief befalls him he professes the art of cheating but the art of cheating is to cheat without peril he is terraced at rotundice strokes fly from the lubricity of his polish and the shiftings of his circular formation he who is insensible of the glory of his profession who is open only to the prophet is no disciple of mine i hold of navery as plate who has set a virtue could it be seen incarnate it would be get a personal adoration none but those who are inspired by a generous enthusiasm will benefit by the above maxims nor and here i warn you solemnly from the sacred ground to your head be uncovered and your feet be buried in the awe of veneration enter with profit upon the following descriptions of character that temple of the ten statutes wherein i have stored and consecrated the most treasured relics of my tribal thoughts and my collective experience. End of Tom Lynn Soniana part one Tom Lynn Soniana part two of Paul Clifford by Edward Boer Lytton this lever box recording is in the public domain Tom Lynn Soniana part two 10 characters one the mild irresolute good-natured and indolent man these qualities are accompanied with good feelings but no principles the want of firmness events is also the want of any peculiar or deeply rooted system of thought a man conning a single and favorite subject of meditation grows wedded to one or the other of the opinions on which he revolves a man universally irresolute has generally led a desultory life and never given his attention long together to one thing this is a man most easy to cheat my beloved friends you cheat him even with his eyes open in the lens is dearer to him than all things and if you get him alone and put a question to him point blank he cannot answer no to the timid suspicious selfish and cold man generally a character of this description is an excellent man of business and would at first sight seem to baffle the most ingenious swindler but you have one hope i have rarely found it deceive me this man is usually ostentatious a cold a fearful yet a worldly person as ever and i upon others he notes the effect certain things produce on them he is anxious to learn their opinions that he may not transgress he likes to know what the world say of him nay his timidity makes him anxious to repose his selfishness on their good report hence he grows ostentatious likes that effect which is favorably talked of and that show which wins consideration at him on this point my pupils three the melancholy retired sensitive intellectual character a very good subject this for your neighbor is my young friends though it requires great discrimination and delicacy this character has a considerable portion of morbid suspicion and irritation belonging to it against these you must guard at the same time its prevailing feature is a powerful but unacknowledged vanity it is generally a good opinion of himself and a feeling that he is not appreciated by others that make a man reserved he deems himself unfit for the world because of the delicacy of his temperament and the want of a correspondent insensibility in those he sees this is your handle to work on he is peculiarly flattered to on the score of devotion and affection he exacts in love as from the world too much he is a Laura whose females must be madores and even his male friends should be extremely like callads poor man you see how easily he can be duped ma'am random among persons of this character are usually found those oddities humors and peculiarities which are each a handle no man lives out of the world with impunity to the solidity of his own character every new outlet to the humor is a new inlet to the heart for the bold generous frank and affectionate man usually a person of robust health his constitution keeps him in spirits and his spirits encouraged and in benevolence he is obviously not a hard character my good young friends for you to deceive for he wants suspicion and all his good qualities lay him open to you but beware his anger when he finds you out he is a terrible Othello when his nature is once stung memorandum a good sort of character to seduce into illegal practices makes a tolerable traitor or a capital smuggler you yourselves must never commit any illegal offense aren't there cats paws for the chestnuts as all laws are oppressions only necessary and often sacred oppressions which you need not explain to him and his characters especially hostile to oppression you easily seduce the person we describe into braving the laws of his country yes the bold generous frank an affectionate man has only to be born in humble life to be sure of a halter five the bold selfish close grasping man with an all probability she you my dear friends for such a character makes the master rogue the stuff from which nature forms a richard the third you'd better leave such a man quite alone he is bad even to serve he breaks up his tools when he has done with them no you can do nothing with them my good young men six the eating drinking unthoughtful sensual mechanical man the ordinary animal such a creature has cunning and is either cowardly or ferocious seldom in these qualities he preserves a medium he is not by any means easy to do nature defends her mental brutes by the thickness of their hide when his mistress if possible she is the best person to manage him such creatures are the natural prey of artful women their various validity covers all but sensuality to the samson the delilah seven the gay deceitful shrewd polished able man the courtier the man of the world in public and stirring life this is the fit antagonist often the successful and conquering rival of character five you perceive a man like this varies so greatly in intellect from the mere butterfly talent to the rarest genius from the person you see at cards to the person you see in cabinets from the blank to the chest to feel from the chest to feel to the pericles that it is difficult to give you an exact notion of the weak points of a character so various but while he dupes his equals and his superiors i consider him my attentive pupils by no means a very difficult character for an inferior to dupe and in this manner you must go about it do not attempt hypocrisy he will see through it in an instant let him thank you at once and at first sight a rogue be kind on that matter yourself but let him thank you a useful rogue serve him well and zealously but own that you do so because you consider your interest involved in this this reasoning satisfies him and his men of this character are usually generous he will acknowledge its justice by throwing you plenty of sops and stimulating you with bountiful cordials should he not contend you herein appear contented and profit in betraying him that is the best way to cheat him not by his failings but by opportunity watch not his character but your time eight the vain arrogant brave amorous flashy character this sort of character we formally attributed to the french and it is still more common to the continent than that beloved island which i shall see no more a creature of this description is made up of many false virtues above others it is always profuse where its selfishness is appealed to not otherwise you must find then what pleases it and pander to its taste so will you cheat it or you will cheat it also by affecting the false virtues which it admires itself rouge your sentiments highly and let them strut with a buskin there thirdly my good young men you will cheat it by profuse flattery and by calling it in a special the mirror of chivalry nine the plain sensible honest man a favorable but not elevated specimen of our race this character my beloved people you may take in once but never twice nor can you take in such a man as a stranger he must be your friend or relation and have known intimately some part of your family a man of this character is always open though in a moderate and calm degree to the duties and ties of life he will always do something to serve his friend his brother or the man whose father pulled his father out of the serpentine effect with him no varnish exert no artifice in attempting to obtain his assistance candidly state your wish for such or such a service sensibly state your pretensions modestly hint at your gratitude so may you deceive him once then leave him alone forever 10 the fond silly credulous man all impulse and no reflection how my heart swells when i contemplate this excellent character what a canan for you does it present i envy you launching into the world with the sanguine hope of finding all men such delightful enthusiasm of youth with that the hope could be realized here is the very incarnation of gullibility you have only to make him love you and no hedgehog ever sucked egg as you can suck him never be afraid of his indignation go to him again and again only throw yourself on his neck and weep to call him once is to call him always get his first chilling and then calculate what you will do with the rest of his fortune never desert so good a man for new friends that would be ungrateful in you and take with you by the way my good young gentleman this concluding maxim men are like lions you will get more by lavishing all your labor again and again upon the easy then by plowing up new ground in the sterile legislators wise good pious men the tom thumbs of moral science who make giants first and then kill them you think the above lessons villainous i honor your penetration they are not proofs of my ability but of your folly look over them again and you will see that they are designed to show that while you are in prison transporting and hanging thousands every day a man with a decent modicum of cunning might practice every one of those lessons which seem to you so heinous and not one of your laws could touch him brachologia or essays critical sentimental moral and original addressed to his pupils by augustus tomlinson the irony in the preceding essays is often lost cited in the present the illness of this great man which happened while composing these little gems made him perhaps more in earnest than when in robust health editor's note on the morality taught by the rich to the poor as soon as the urchin pauper can taught her out of doors it is taught to pull off its head and pull its hair to the quality a good little boy says the squire there's a hay penny for you the good little boy glows with pride that hay penny instills deep the lesson of humility now goes our urchin to school then comes the sunday teaching before church which enjoins the poor to be lowly and to honor every man better off than themselves a pound of honor to the squire and an ounce to the beetle then the boy grows up and the lord of the manner instructs him thus be a good boy tom and i'll befriend you treading the steps of your father he was an excellent man and a great loss to the parish he was a very civil hard-working well-behaved creature knew his station mind and do like him so perpetual hard labor and plenty of cringing make the ancestral virtues to be perpetuated to peasants till the day of judgment another insidious distillation of morality is conveyed through a general praise of the poor you hear false friends of the people who call themselves liberals and tories who have an idea of morals have chivalric have pastoral agree in lauding the unfortunate creatures whom they keep at work for them but mark the virtues the poor are always to be praised for industry honesty and content the first virtue is extolled to the skies because industry gives the rich everything they have the second because honesty prevents an iota of the said everything being taken away again and the third because content is to hinder these poor devils from ever objecting to a lot so comfortable to the persons who profit by it this my pupils is the morality taught by the rich to the poor emulation the great era of emulation is this we emulate effects without inquiring into causes when we read of the great actions of a man we are on fire to perform the same exploits without endeavoring to ascertain the precise qualities which enabled the man we imitate to commit the actions we admire could we discover these how often might we discover that their origin was a certain temper of body a certain peculiarity of constitution and that wish we for the same success we should be examining the nature of our bodies rather than sharpening the faculties of our minds should use dumbbells perhaps instead of books nay on the other hand contract some grievous complaint rather than perfect our moral solubility who should say whether alexander would have been a hero had his neck been straight or voila a satirist had he never been pecked by a turkey it would be pleasant to see you my beloved pupils after reading quenches courteous twisting each other's throat or fresh from wallow hurrying to the poultry yard in the hope of being mutilated into the performance of a second lutron caution against the scoffers of humbug my beloved pupils there is a set of persons in the world daily increasing against whom you must be greatly on your guard there's a fascination about them they are people who declare themselves vehemently opposed to humbug fine liberal fellows clear-sided yet frank when these sentiments arise from reflection well and good they are the best sentiments in the world but many take them up second hand they are very inviting to the indolence of the mob of gentlemen who see the romance of a noble principle not its utility when a man looks at everything through this dwarfing philosophy everything has a great modicum of humbug you laugh with him when he derives the humbug in religion the humbug in politics the humbug in love the humbug in the plausibilities of the world but you may cry my dear pupils when he derives what is often the safest of all practically to deride the humbug in common honesty men are honest from religion wisdom prejudice habit fear and stupidity but the few only are wise and the persons we speak of deride religion are beyond prejudice on odd by habit too indifferent for fear and too experienced for stupidity popular wrath at individual improvements you must know my dear young friends that while the appearance of magnanimity is very becoming to you and so forth it will get you a great deal of ill will if you attempt to practice it to your own detriment your neighbors are so invariably though perhaps insensibly actuated by self-interest self-interest mr. tomlinson is wrong here but his ethics were too much narrowed to utilitarian principles attitude is so entirely though every twidler denies it the axis of the moral world that they fly into a rage with him who seems to disregard it when a man ruins himself just here the abuse he receives his neighbors take it as a personal affront doom death loat ominous one main reason why men who have been great are disappointed when they retire to private life is this memory makes a chief source of enjoyment to those who see seagull to hope but the memory of the great recalls only that public life which has disgusted them their private life have slipped insensibly away leaving faint traces of the sorrow or their joy which found them too busy to heed the simple and quiet impressions of mere domestic facissitude self-glorifiers providence seems to have done to a certain set of persons who always view their own things throughout magnifying medium deem their house the best in the world their gun the truest their very pointer a miracle as colonel hangar suggested to economists to do namely provide their servants each with a pair of large spectacles so that a lark might appear as big as a foul and a two penny loaf as large as a quarter thought unfortunate it is often the easiest move that completes the game fortune is like the lady whom a lover carried off from all his rivals by putting an additional lace upon his liveries wit and truth people may talk about fiction being the source of fancy and wit being at variance with truth now some of the wittiest things in the world are witty solely from their truth truth is the soul of a good saying you assert observes the socrates of modern times that we have a virtual representation very well let us have a virtual taxation to hear the wit is in the fidelity of the sequitur when columbus broke the egg where was the wit in the completeness of conviction in the broken egg auto theology not only every sec but every individual modifies the general attributes of the deity towards assimilation with his own character the just man dwells on the justice the stern upon the wrath the attributes that do not please the worshipper he insensibly forgets wherefore o my pupils you will not smile when you read in barns that the pygmies declared jove himself was a pygmy the pies vanity of man makes him adore his own qualities under the pretense of worshipping those of his god glorious constitution a sentence is sometimes as good as a volume if a man asked you to give him some idea of the laws of england the answer is short and easy in the laws of england there are somewhere about 150 laws by which a poor man may be hanged but not one by which he can obtain justice for nothing answer to the popular can't that goodness in a statesman is better than ability as in the world we must look to actions not motives so a naïve is the man who injures you and you do not inquire whether the injury be the fruit of malice or necessity place then a fool in power and he becomes unconsciously the naïve mr. addington stumbled on the two very worst and most villainous taxes human malice could have invented one on medicines the other on justice what tyrants fearful ingenuity could afflict us more than by impeding at once redress for our wrongs and cure for our diseases mr. addington was the fool in say and therefore the naïve in office but bless you he never meant it common sense common sense common sense of all phrases all catch words this is often the most deceitful and the most dangerous look in a special suspiciously upon common sense whenever it is opposed to discovery common sense is the experience of every day discovery is something against the experience of every day no wonder then that when Galileo proclaimed the great truth the universal cry was push saw common sense will tell you the reverse talk to a sensible man for the first time on the theory of vision and hear what his common sense will say to it in a letter in the time of bacon the writer of no mean intellect himself says it is a pity the chancellor should set his opinion against the experience of so many centuries and the dictates of common sense common sense then so useful in household matters is less useful in the legislative and in the scientific world than it has been generally deemed naturally the advocate for what has been tried and a verse to what is speculative it opposes the new philosophy that appeals to reason and clings to the old which is propped by sanction love and writers on love my warm hot-headed ardent young friends you are in the flower of your life and writing verses about love let us say a word on the subject there are two species of love common to all men and to most animals most animals for some appear insensible to the love of custom one springs from the senses the other grows out of custom now neither of these my dear young friends is the love that you pretend to feel the love of lovers your passion having only its foundation and that unacknowledged in the senses owes everything else to the imagination now the imagination of the majority is different in complexion and degree in every country and in every age so also and consequently is the love of the imagination as a proof observed that you sympathize with the romantic love of other times or nations only in proportion as you sympathize with their poetry and imaginative literature the love which stalks through the arcadia or a modus of gall is to the great bulk of readers coldly insipid or solemnly ridiculous alas when those works excited enthusiasm so did the love which they describe the long speeches the icy compliments express the feeling of the day the love madrigals of the time of shen stone or the brocade gallantries of the french poets in the last century any woman now would consider hollow or childish imbecile or artificial once the songs were natural and the love seductive and now my young friends in the year 1822 in which i write and shall probably die the love which glitters through more and walks so ambitiously ambiguous through the verse of baron the love which you consider now so deep and so true the love which tingles through the hearts of your young ladies and such you young gentlemen gazing on the evening star all that love too will become unfamiliar or ridiculous to an after-age and the young asparings and the moonlight dreams and the big fiddle-de-dees which you now think so touching and so sublime will go my dear boys where cowleys mistresses and wallors saccharissa have gone before go with the sapphoes and the clovies the elegant charming fairs and the chivalric most beautiful princesses the only love poetry that stands through all time and appeals to all hearts is that which is founded on either or both the species of love natural to all men the love of the senses and the love of custom in the latter is included what middle-aged men call the rational attachment the charm of congenial minds as well as the homely and warmer accumulation of little memories of simple kindness or the mere brute habit of seeing a face as one would see a chair these sometimes singly sometimes skillfully blended make the theme of those who have perhaps love the most honestly and the most humanly these yet render taboulus pathetic and obid a master over tender affections and these above all make that irresistible and all touching inspiration which subdues the romantic the calculating the old the young the courtier the peasant the poet the man of business in the glorious love poetry of robert burns the great entailed the great inheritance of man is a common wealth of blunders one race spend their lives in botching the errors transmitted to them by another and the main cause of all political that is all the worst and most general blunders is this the same rule we apply to individual cases we will not apply to public all men consent that swindling for a horse is swindling they punish the culprit and condemn the fault but in a state there is no such unanimity swindling lord help you is called by some fine name and cheating grows grand deliquent and styles itself policy in consequence of this there is always a battle between those who call things by their right names and those who pertinaciously give them the wrong ones hence all sorts of confusion this confusion extends very soon to the laws made for individual cases and thus in old states though the world is still agreed that private swindling is private swindling there is the devil's own difficulty in punishing the swindling of the public the art of swindling now is a different thing to the art of swindling a hundred years ago but the laws remain the same adaptation in private cases is innovation in public so without repealing old laws they make new sometimes these are effectual but more often not now my beloved pupils a law is a gun which if it misses a pigeon always kills a crow if it does not strike the guilty it hits someone else as every crime creates a law so in turn every law creates a crime and hence we go on multiplying sins and evils and faults and blunders till society becomes the organized disorder for picking pockets the regeneration of a name a man who begins the world by being a fool often ends it by becoming a name but he who begins as a name if he be a rich man and so not hanged may end my beloved pupils and being a pious creature and this is the wherefor a name early soon gets knowledge of the world one vice worn out makes us wiser than fifty tutors but wisdom causes us to love quiet and in quiet we do not sin he who is wise and sins not can scarcely fail of doing good for let him but utter a new truth and even his imagination cannot conceive the limit of the good he may have done to man style do you well understand what a wonderful thing style is i think not for in the exercises you sent me your styles betrayed that no very earnest consideration had been lavished upon them know then that you must pause well before you take up any model of style on your style often depends your own character almost always the character giving you bite the world if you adopt the lofty style if you string together noble phrases and swelling sonora you have expressed about a frame of mind which you will insensibly desire to act up to the desire gradually begets the capacity the life of dr par there's dr par's style put in action and lord baron makes himself through existence unhappy for having accidentally slipped into a melancholy current of words but suppose you escape this calamity by a peculiar hearty hood of temperament you escape not the stamp of popular opinion adison must ever be held by the vulgar the most amiable of men because of the social amenity of his diction and the admirers of language will always consider Burke a nobler spirit than fox because of the grandeur of his sentences how many wise sayings have been called jest because they were wittily uttered how many nothing's swell their author into a sage i a saint because they were strung together by the old hypocrite nun gravity the end end of tom then sony anna part two end of paul clifford by edward bober liton