I can trap you by citing chapter and verse, where you think I have been extemporising !

66

Campbell says, and says truly, that we are not to suppose that everything which is unintelligible is absurd, since we cannot pronounce on its truth or falsity; therefore be pleased to regard the utterances above with mysterious reverence. "When the Teutonic theosopher," says the acute critic, enounces that all the voices of the celestial joyfulness qualify, commix, and harmonise in the fire which was from eternity in the good quality,' I should think it equally impertinent to aver the falsity as the truth of this enunciation."

And so you are really surprised at the inconsistency of your patient's sending for you, and requesting your advice and medicine, while he neglected the one and never took the other? Well, you can easily take your revenge by making him pay for both. He, at all events, is not so bad as patients sometimes are who ask whether they may do that they have already done. "Pray, doctor," says a patient in a wheedling way, "don't you think I might take a glass of wine now ?" "No-not yet— it would not be safe," says the doctor with a solemn air. “Oh, because I did take one yesterday, and it seemed to do me so much good!" I have heard a medical friend say that this sort of ex post facto justification (at the doctor's expense too), is the "unkindest" of all the cuts a doctor can receive from a patient.

-

An inhabitant of this world ought to wonder at nothing; at all events, pray keep any such emotion for greater rarities than human inconsistencies. The schism between the Pope and antiPope within us-between the Understanding and the Will, the Head and the Heart, the Conscience and the Passions, the thoughts and the lips, is daily manifesting itself, in effects sometimes ludicrous, sometimes lamentable. A whole volume might be filled, not only with instances of maxims consciously contradicted by practice (for if these were all recorded, "the world itself could not contain the books that would be written"), but of utterly unconscious inconsistency; of sense and wisdom often expressed in the dialects of folly — of vices that fancy themselves virtues, of religion masquerading itself in every form of blind zeal and ferocious cruelty. We laugh at Goldsmith's soldier, expressing, in profane oaths, his fears for the extinction of religion, and at the debtor in gaol, telling the said soldier, from behind the grating, that his chief alarm is for public liberty; but though these are fictitious examples, they may be matched in the history of human nature, and do not go beyond it. Similarly Sheridan's Sir Anthony, who, in a towering passion, asks his son "What the devil good can passion do? Can't you be cool like me?" is a picture most of us have seen under some modifications or other. Parson Adams, enchanted with the sentiments of his travelling acquaintance as to that contemptible vice of "vanity," regrets, as he fumbles in his pocket, that he has left behind him the sermon in which he had endeavoured to improve the topic, and which he would have felt such pleasure in reading to him! It is by no means without a parallel.

A Scotch friend of mine was recently at a public dinner. A clergyman of the town was requested to "say grace." He did it, with unusual propriety. On sitting down, a young man whispered to my friend, with all the seriousness in the world, “A devilish good grace that!"

Another, talking to some Scotch "Andrew Fairservice," whose religious "assurance" (in more than one sense) was such that he professed to live without the shadow of a doubt, fear, or perplexity

respecting his spiritual condition, asked him whether he really meant what he said?" De'il doot it, mon," was the reply.

There can be no doubt that Defoe had an unfeigned respect for morality and religion, and that he sincerely designed his writings to serve both. Yet how whimsical the practical inconsistency which led him to suppose that the "History of Moll Flanders," of "Roxana, the Fortunate Mistress," of "Colonel Jack," could by any possibility answer this end! One would as soon expect virtue to be promoted by the "prurient" discussions of certain casuists, whose canons for forming a superhuman purity contain, as Fuller wittily expresses it, "the criticisms of all obscenity."

I met with a droll instance of practical inconsistency the other day in a sermon of my old favourite Jeremy Taylor. It is that on the "good and evil tongue." He takes occasion to illustrate the text, "for every idle word we must give account ;" and he does so by indulging in a whole paragraph of as idle words as ever came out of a preacher's mouth. They are full of Latin quotations which must have been utterly unintelligible to his audience, and not a few of them very solemnly impertinent had they been otherwise. He completes a long tesselation from the Fathers by telling his wondering hearers "that St. Gregory calls every word vain or idle, quod aut ratione justæ necessitatis aut intentione piæ utilitatis caret; and St. Jerome calls it vain, quod sine utilitate et loquentis dicitur et audientis-which profits neither the speaker nor the hearer." He then duly confirms it by Chrysostom and Gregory Nyssen, and says it seems intimated in the word κενὸν ῥῆμα οι ῥῆμα ἀργόν ! Would that al inconsistencies of men were as trivial as these! But how shall we wonder at any, when we find thousands daily indulging in habits which they themselves are persuaded will ruin them body and soul; and, while professing to desire happiness above all things, nevertheless persisting in walking right on with their eyes open in a path which they know beforehand can end only in misery? Yours ever,

R. E. H. G.

My dear West,

LETTER LVIII.

To Alfred West, Esq.

London, Tuesday, Oct. 18, 1849.

You know my old failing;-always a little behind the clock, five minutes or so; or else the clock is always a little before me-I sometimes think that is the real secret of my seeming want of punctuality.

This failing suggested to me the other night a very absurd dream. Methought I was striding up Fleet Street in the vain hope of overtaking an engagement the exact moment of which had already passed, for I was, as usual, a little behind my time, -when I saw in a window, in large characters, the inscription, "Waste time sold here." This, said I to myself, is the very thing for me; I will just step in and buy a quarter of an hour or so. But seeing other placards in the window, I stayed for a minute to examine them. "It does not matter," said I to myself, "about the loss of a minute or two which I can now so easily repair." I found the other notices of a piece with the first. In one place I read-"Some excellent lots of time, -consisting of a week and some days each,-to be immediately disposed of on the most advantageous terms,"-in another, "Fifty-two Sundays to be sold, a bargain,”—in a third, “The whole of that eligible month of February in leap year-twenty-nine days, to be sold; nothing charged for the odd day;" "Exchanges effected on the most reasonable terms-commission not exceeding five minutes per cent." You will perhaps think I was a little surprised at all this; perplexed with sundry impossibilities which might be naturally supposed to stand in the way of such bargains and exchanges. You are mistaken; I felt no such surprise at all. The only thing that surprised me was, that so admirable and reasonable an arrangement had not been hit upon long before. "In a world,”

said I to myself, "where money answereth all things, as the wise man saith, where goods and chattels, houses and lands, character and fame, are all bought and sold, it is very strange that we should never have thought of buying and selling time before." Your only true logician is sleep. It can make you incontinently believe anything, and unsay, in an instant, every fact, maxim, and principle which you had held indisputable up to the very moment you laid your head upon your pillow. It can prove any conclusion it pleases from any premises, or, if need be, without any premises at all. It can do all that logicians say cannot be done, and convince logicians themselves that their logic is wrong. No wonder then that I was not startled to find that I could, if I pleased, purchase a quarter of an hour at a shop counter, and come away with it safe in my pocket. On my waking, I certainly regretted that there was no such office—for I dare say I should often have dropped in to do a little business. I could not help indulging myself in fancying some of the odd scenes we should witness if the time which hangs upon men's hands, and which they know not what to do with, were an exchangeable commodity, instead of being simply suffered to run to waste, like the water of a stream when the mill is not at work.

It would be surely convenient, if those who have more time than they want could sell it to those who can employ it, or think they can employ it, to better purpose; or if we could effect exchanges of time with mutual advantage. You have a day you know not what to do with-another wishes for two days in one ; he has one a fortnight hence, which he would be glad to part with-you exchange yours for it; and thus tedium would be prevented on both sides! The last method, indeed, would be a reasonable bargain, and all could understand it, for human life would be none the shorter for it; longer indeed, if we measure life (as we surely ought) rather by what we do and enjoy, than by the hours which pass in vacant indolence. But it might be imagined at first that none would have any time absolutely to sell. Is it credible, we are ready to ask, that beings who are continually complaining of the brevity of human life can be will