The poor man asked many questions, the last of which was "God will not chronicle our sandlike sins; Nor yet as others. But each is better than the other thinks. Thank God! man is not to be judged by man ;- 66 'Lici Humanity hopes, because it feels as if instinctively that with God is mercy, "et copiosa apud eum redemptio." He who is to judge man, He "qui in altis habitat, et humilia respicit in terra," knows all the frailties of the things that he has made, and therefore can like feelingly judge them. He will come, we are told, to repay sin with holiness, death with immortality; all evil with all good; for with no other claims can any of us, grave stranger, look as demurely as you will, be secure. "The first standing point from which men may view the world," says a moralist, who has even been taxed with monastic austerity, "is sensual pleasure. This is certainly a constituent element in the system of universal life, and on that account is perhaps not properly to be despised. It is nevertheless undeserving of deliberate thought or earnest attention; although," he adds with a boldness arising from his belief that the audience he is now addressing would not abuse his words, or turn them to their own injury, "although I must candidly confess that in a comparative point of view, he who can throw himself wholly and with undivided feeling into such an enjoyment is, in my opinion, of far greater worth in the eyes of the consequential philosopher, than he who from mere superficiality, vagrancy, and vague diffusiveness, is incapable of even rightly enjoying his senses." So far this grave moralist. There can be no doubt, and it is very indiscreet and culpable to deny it, for that is to throw difficulties in the way of a return,—but that in some offences there is a virtuous principle disorderedly at work, and that the devious paths of passion may sometimes possibly to goodness tend. "The indistinct feeling of the infinite and the struggling after its attainment exist,” as the same observer just cited says, even where the super-sexual is not clearly comprehended. Fickleness and frivolity," he adds, "are unerring signs that there is something growing within the heart from which we would escape, and just upon that account they are proofs that the noble nature which they disguise is not wholly dead. They are proofs of persons desiring, and of being unsatisfied." Ardently they betake themselves to this chase after happiness, devoting themselves, with their whole powers and affections to the first best object that pleases them and promises to satisfy their desires. But as soon as such an one returns unto himself and asks, 'Am I now happy?' he is loudly answered from the very depths of his soul, 'O no, thou art as empty and needful as before.' They now imagine that they have been mistaken in their choice of an object, and throw themselves eagerly into another. This satisfies them as little as the first. There is no object under the sun or the moon that will satisfy them. Nothing finite and perishable can satisfy them. This it is precisely which is the only tie that still connects them with the eternal and preserves them in existence. Did they find any one earthly object that could fill them with perfect satisfaction, then were they thereby irretrievably thrust forth from the Godhead and cast out into the eternal death of nothingness." No one, I repeat it, at the Lover's Seat, has the least desire to make himself look silly by coming forward, like a sophist, as the advocate of what every one blames, seeking to make libertinism interesting, and heartlessness to wear the garb of generosity; but there, as indeed elsewhere, there seems no great harm in being equitable, with respect to all the world; and therefore without letting ourselves be abashed by thinking of the significative frowns or the bitter irony that would be practised elsewhere by many, who would imitate Hippolytus, against the utterers of such thoughts, let us observe how some virtue lurks even in thoughts far removed, as many say, from all participation in it,— "For sure, not all the guilt and shame belong To her who feels and suffers for the wrong." Alas! what can she do? As another poet says, she "Cannot choose her friends. Each word of kindness, Come whence it may, is welcome to the poor." Though all libertines are excluded from this seat, and though we have taken care to ask the mistrustful stranger to leave us alone, it is still of course with great reserve that even between ourselves one would allude to these consequences of a Satanic malice when men calculate on what can be drawn to themselves from the misery of others, and a race is introduced of unconscious victims, poor human blossoms, that like the evening primrose and the flowers of the thorn-apple, seem to languish while the sun shines and to be reanimated at the approach of less favoured hours; but as Honoria says, mean women have their woes as well as queens ;" and may at least within this bower be spoken of. "These fond and often broken-hearted creatures with whom sometimes hardened men would laugh," are not always, why should Christians fear to say it? what the self-approving scorner thinks them to be; for in the first place it cannot be denied that some positive virtues, as a link to heaven, that man at least should not sever, do belong to them. Hear the poet: That woman in her deepest degradation, * Longfellow. However, let us cite in evidence not poets or romantic writers, as if we wanted to do away with shame, but grave statists and the poor, who are least inclined to flatter any one, and least of all, those who are without common goodness. I know that offence may be given by merely hearing these witnesses; and I am scared by the axiom of the old philosophy, which says,— "Est verum vitæ, doctrinæ, justiæque ; Primum semper habe, duo propter scandala linque." . But we are in a dilemma; for if we suppress their testimony, we seem to throw up our cause, as if afraid of truth, though alleged in behalf of a favourable sentence on some of our fellowcreatures; and if we cite it, we shall be blamed for seeming to invite consequences that we abjure. Nevertheless we must proceed, armed with that dictum of the old scholastics, who said, "utilius scandalum nasci permittitur, quam veritas relinquatur.” Only let us remember, while we listen, that where courts of justice are opened, those who preside are supposed for the time to be invested with a kind of sacerdotal innocence; for our ancestors used even to say the priesthood of the law, and, for the moment, though like children, and perhaps in fact wild ones, we are here to represent judges. If this be too much to expect, let us proceed as if our audience were composed of children aspiring to play no higher part than what belongs to them; for as such, they can only distinguish sorrow in the details we shall have to offer; since being little, all deadly bolts which pride attracts fly far above their heads and never hit them. For the rest we may trust even to the charitable construction of others, whoever they may be; whom I would however first remind of one fact that will go far perhaps to excuse our present discussion; for if there be one thing more certain than another, it is that we are all of us of one clay, compounded of one mass, to which the common and impenetrable wonder of life is attached. We see how beautiful can be made this substance of humanity which we cannot look at without loving; and we see also, if we reflect deeply for one moment, that the worst of us would be among the best if it were not for circumstances and privations over which in nine cases out of ten they had no control. This is a mystery; but is that a reason for our becoming inhuman? There seems to be no great objection therefore to our trying to keep in others this common clay, mass, or whatever you choose to call it, soft and impressionable, fit to receive forms of good, by not confounding it with mere absolute corruption, but by treating it gently, lovingly, taking it in our hands without fear of defiling them, and moistening it with our breath, and kneading and rolling it about as if it only needed a touch by the great Artist to be made loveable and beautiful and divine. Is not this dirty work, if you will call it so, more manly and becoming in us than consigning the said material over to oblivion and something worse, as if nothing could ever be made of it, and so leaving it, through our own dainty fastidiousness and pride, as far as we are concerned, to grow cold and dry, hard and frozen, heartless and dead? Certainly it is, will they of the bower answer. Call up then these witnesses, and let the inquiry pro ceed. "The sacrifices," says Mayhew, "which these persons make for others to whom they become attached are great; and there are certainly many noble actions to be told concerning them in this respect. There are many of them who will say and prove by their conduct that they are wholly beyond the influence of money." "Impropriety of language or actions," continues this witness, "I do not think to be at all general among them. Kindliness of feeling and attention to one another in case of illness exist, I think, to a considerable extent." When Preciosa is brought before the Cardinal in the Spanish Student, he exclaims,― “Oh, what a fair and ministering angel Was lost for a time when this sweet woman fell. And lead her to a better life! Her acts are modest and her words discreet, I did not look for this." But let us hear the disinterested testimony of frank, unflattering poor people, given in their bold, simple language as recorded by the above grave writer; and I am sure no one at this seat will be offended at our calling up such rude witnesses in a cause that resembles one of the old pleadings against the enemy of the human race; for it is to take part in them, externally at least, with our common enemy, that some later moralists seem |