young ladies and gentlemen, often entirely mistake the matter, when they call a man hard-hearted only because he does not display all the sensations and clamorous sentiments of their own impotent benevolence, but just quietly does all that they talk of, and perhaps blubber about. We know that a benevolent medical man may take off a limb as coolly as he would eat his dinner, and yet feel ten times as much real sensibility for the sufferer as a fine lady who would run away, hide her face in her hands and throw herself on a sofa in the most approved attitude for fainting or hysterics at the sight of even a drop of blood.

My dear Mary, take it as a caution through life quite apart from the subject I have been preaching about;-Suspect-I do not say condemn and hang, but suspect all who indulge in superfluous expression of sentiment, all excessive symbols of sensibility. Those who indulge in these are always neophytes in virtue at the best; and, what is worse, they are very often among the most heartless of mankind. Sterne and Rousseau were types of this class, perfect incarnations of sensibility without benevolence, having, and having in perfection, the "form" of virtue but " denying the power thereof."

Your loving uncle,

R. E. H. G.

LETTER XLII.

To the Same.

Sutton, Oct. 12, 1846.

So you hope, my dear niece, that I shall soon send you another lecture on the "proprieties," for that my lectures are very amusing! Upon my word, you pay me a pretty compliment, you monkey: you are as bad as the fashionable lady, who,

having heard a very pathetic sermon on a very solemn text, was heard to remark, as she left the church, "Well, really we have had a very entertaining evening !"

Well, Mademoiselle, thanks to that little giddy pate of yours, I fancy there will be no lack of subjects whereon to admonish you. Your Mentor, believe me, will hold nos inecure. However, if I must lecture, hear me,-though speaking lightly,-on a very grave subject.

It is my purpose, my dear, to carry on your grammatical studies a little, by doing what I humbly venture to think your governess must have left partially undone,-I must indoctrinate you in the true theory and right use of "yes" and "no." Do not be alarmed; I am not about to trouble you with any tedious inquiry into the etymology or syntax of these important particles. These we leave to those whom it concerns; but as to the meaning and use of these atoms of speech, depend on it, they are of more importance than the meaning and use of the most centipedal polysyllables that crawl over the pages of Johnson's Dictionary.

You remember the last pleasant evening in my last visit to Shirley, when I accompanied you to the party at Mrs. Austin's. Something occurred there which I had no opportunity of improving for your benefit. So as you invite reproof,- an invitation which, who that is mortal and a senior can refuse,-I will enlarge a little.

The good lady, our hostess, expressed, if you recollect, a fear that the light of the unshaded camphine was too bright, in the position in which you sat, for your eyes. Though I saw you blinking with positive pain, yet, out of a foolish timidity, you protested" No,—oh no,—not at all!" Now that was a very unneighbourly act of the tongue, thus to set at nought the eye; the selfish thing must have forgotten that "if one member suffer, all the others must suffer with it." My dear, never sacrifice your eyes to any organ whatever; at all events not to the tongue, least of all, when it does not tell the truth. Of the two, you had better be dumb than blind.

Now, if I had not interposed, and said that you were suffering, whether you knew it or not, you would have played the martyr all the evening to a sort of a— a-what shall I call it?—it must out, a sort of fashionable fib? You may answer, perhaps, that you did not like to make a fuss, or seem squeamish, or discompose the company, and so, from timidity, you said "the thing that was not." Very true; but this is the very thing I want you to guard against; I want you to have such presence of mind, that the thought of absolute Truth shall so preoccupy you as to defy surprise, and anticipate even the most hurried utterances.

The incident is very trifling in itself; I have noticed it, because I think I have observed on other occasions, that from a certain timidity of character, and an amiable desire not to give trouble, or "make a fuss," as you call it, (there, now, Mary, I am sure the medicine is nicely mixed-that spoonful of syrup ought to make it go down,) you have evinced a disposition to say, from pure want of thinking, what is not precise truth. Weigh well, my dear girl, and ever act on, that precept of the Great Master which, like all His precepts, is of deepest import, and, in spirit, of the utmost generality of application. "Let your yea be yea, and your nay, nay."

Let truth absolute truth take precedence of every thing; let it be more precious to you than any thing else. Sacrifice not a particle of it at the bidding of indolence, vanity, interest, cowardice, or shame; least of all, to those tawdry idols of stuffed straw and feathers, the idols of fashion and false honour.

It is often said that the great lesson for a young man or a young woman to learn is how to say "no." It would be better to say that they should learn aright how to use both "yes" and "no," -for both are equally liable to abuse.

The modes in which they are employed often give an infallible criterion of character.

Some say both so doubtfully and hesitatingly, drawling out each letter, "y-e-s,” “n-o,” that one might swear to their indecision of character at once. Others repeat them with such facility of assent or dissent, taking their tone from the previous question,

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that one is equally assured of the same conclusion, or, what is as bad, that they never reflect at all. They are a sort of parrots.

One very important observation is this, be pleased to remember, my dear, that "yes," in itself always means "yes," and "no" always means "no."

I fancy you will smile at such a profound remark; nevertheless many act as if they never knew it,—both in uttering these monosyllables themselves, and in interpreting them as uttered by others. Young ladies, for example, when the question, as it is called, par excellence, (as if it were more important than the whole catechism together,) is put to them, often say "no," when they really mean "yes." It is a singular happiness for them that the young gentlemen to whom they reply in this contradictory sort of way have a similar incapacity of understanding "yes," and "no;" nay, a greater; for these last often persist in thinking "no" means “yes,” even when it really means what it says.

"Pray, my dear," said a mamma to her daughter of eighteen, "what was your cousin saying to you when I met you blushing so, in the garden ?"

"He told me that he loved me, mamma, and asked if I could love him."

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Upon my word! And what did you say to him, my dear?" "I said 'Yes,' mamma."

"My dear, how could you be SO

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Why, mamma, what else could I say? it was the- truth." Now I consider this a model for all love-passages: and when it comes to your turn, my dear, pray follow this truth-loving young lady's example, and do not trust to your lover's powers of interpretation to translate a seeming "no," into a genuine "yes." He might be one of those simple, worthy folks who are so foolish as to think that a negative is really negative!

I grant that there are a thousand conventional cases in which "yes" means "no," and "no" means "yes;" and they are so ridiculously common, that every one is supposed, in politeness, not to mean what he says, or rather is not doubted to mean the contrary of what he says. In fact, quite apart from positive lying,

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—that is, any intention to deceive, the honest words are so often interchanged, that if "no" were to prosecute "yes,” and “yes” no," for trespass, I know not which would have most causes in court. Have nothing to do with these absurd conventionalisms, my dear. "Let your yea be yea," and your nay, nay." If you are asked whether you are cold, hungry, tired, -never, for fear of giving trouble, say the contrary of what you feel. Decline giving the trouble, if you like, by all means; but do not assign any false reason for so doing. These are trifles, you will say, and so they are; but it is only by austere regard to truth, even in trifles, that we shall keep the love of it spotless and pure. "Take care of the pence" of truth, "and the pounds will take care of themselves."

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Not only let your utterance be simple truth, as you apprehend it, but let it be decisive and unambiguous, according to those apprehensions. Some persons speak as falteringly as if they thought the text I have cited, ran, Let your yea be nay, and your nay, yea." And so they are apt to assent or dissent, according to the tenour of the last argument: "Yes- no”—“yes no —it is just like listening to the pendulum of a clock.

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It is a great aggravation of the misuse of "yes" and "no," that the young are apt to lose all true apprehension of their meaning, and think, in certain cases, that "yes" cannot mean "yes," nor 66 " "no." no,"

I have known a lad, whose mother's "no" had generally ended in "yes," completely ruined, because when his father said "no" in reply to a request for unreasonable aid, and threatened to leave him to his own devices if he persisted in extravagance, could not believe that his father meant what he said, or could prevail on justice to turn nature out of doors. But his father meant "no," and stuck to it; and the lad was ruined, simply because, you see, he had not noticed that father and mother differed in their dialects, -that, in his father's, no always meant "no," and nothing else. You have read "Rob Roy," and may recollect that that amiable young gentleman, Mr. F. Osbaldestone, with less reason, very nearly made an equally fatal mistake; for every word his

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