man according to his rank, and the precision with which the loss or mutilation of every organ of the human body was appraised, reminds one rather of a butcher's shop, where Revenge might either purchase the whole carcase or haggle for a particular joint at its good pleasure. You might have a king, it seems, for thirty thousand thrymsas," or about a hundred and fifty pounds; a prince for half the money, and a bishop or earl for a third. Only think! if such laws were in force now, a millionnaire,— some Baron Rothschild, — might take off half the bench of bishops, and never miss the money !

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As to mutilations, nothing to a vindictive spirit can be imagined more convenient. Do you want to "break the thigh" of your enemy, or "cut off his ears?" Twelve shillings is the moderate price for the dainty gratification. If you are contented to "cut off the finger," you may save a shilling; if you simply "cut off his great toe," or tear off "his hair entirely," ten shillings will do; while if you are satisfied with merely "knocking out one of his front teeth," you will have it, surely cheap enough, at six shillings!

Methinks, in these civilised days, we should soon reduce the system to convenient commercial forms. We should make our revenge, like other luxuries, a question of expenditure and income, and put down so much for it, just as for wine or cigars. Ladies, in their marriage settlements, might bargain for their spite-money, as now for their pin-money; while neat little Christmas bills might be sent in, exhibiting the exact debtor and creditor condition of the feud between you and your adversary. What pleasant items!

John Smith, Dr. to John Brown.

But I suppose our Anglo-Saxon forefathers would have found out admirable reasons for their fantastical system; equally fantastical, whether we consider its general principle, or the capricious rate of valuation of particular injuries. Some, perhaps, would even have found out that, however anomalous, the thing worked well, and could not be disturbed without the most fatal consequences to the whole common weal! In the meantime, we can see that in one respect it had a solid recommendation; for, like most legislative expedients of a rude age, it seems to have been a transition from a worse system that of the unlimited prosecution of private revenge. Anything that will put a legal limit to that must be by comparison a blessing; otherwise each injury, sacredly consigned to revenge, must lead on to an infinite series of similar acts, or can terminate only when one party to a feud is absolutely exterminated. I do not see," said some one to a New Zealand chief, "how your wars, once begun, can ever be ended; for you say revenge is a sacred duty, and each retaliation becomes a new aggression." The New Zealand chief, it is said, was rather puzzled at so novel an argument; but on reflection admitted that it must be so. Of course it must; as was the case with our Gaelic forefathers; among whom injuries were heir-looms, and, pretty often, the chief part of the ragged inheritance. A kills B, C kills A, D kills C, and so on, down the whole alphabet to'Z, and then all to begin over again. Pleasant times to live in, upon my word! Thank God, we live in better. Yours very truly,

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R. E. H. G.

My dear West,

LETTER LXXXVI.

To the Same.

I knew your friend Mr. G. was hasty; from what you say, he seems also to be sulky, which I did not suspect, and can

less readily forgive. It is a beneficent arrangement of Providence, argues old Thomas Fuller, that a storm and a fog cannot come together; for if there is a storm, it clears away the fog, and if there is a fog, the wind is calm. Your quondam friend seems to show that that may be possible in the moral world which is impossible in the natural. The vapours in his soul, like those on a mountain side when the clouds lie low, may roll and tumble, it seems, with the gusts of passion, but do not disperse.

Anybody may be overtaken with sudden anger, and when frankly acknowledged and repented of, it is easily forgiven; nay, I have known some choleric persons so sweetly and ingenuously own their fault, that one can hardly regret that it has been committed. But at all events the temptation is sometimes so swift and sudden it is so difficult to intercept it by putting the soul into a posture of defence that one may easily be betrayed into a transient emotion of anger. Many are the prescribed prophylactics, but I know none that is infallibly effectual. Some say, "When inclined to be angry, bite your thumb or your tongue till the blood comes; that will operate a diversion, and give you something to think about." Very likely but whether it will tend to calm our passion may well be doubted. Others say, "Count a million or two, and by the time you get to the end, you will be quite cool." Very true but the worst of it is, the mind must be cool before it can think of any such remedy.

But continued resentment has no such excuse. It is a sin of deliberation, and is persisted in by wilfully nursing and petting it.

Do you remember that eminently beautiful passage in Paley's "Moral Philosophy," one of the few in which he becomes genial and almost eloquent, in which he sets down the reflections proper for appeasing anger, and which he calls its sedatives? They are all well-imagined, and many of them very touching, and can scarcely ever be revolved by a mind in the condition described, without tranquillising it. But the real difficulty is to get the mind into the posture of pondering them; if that be done, the mind will already be comparatively calm. If Paley had been

more of a metaphysician, he would have added to his other sedatives of anger the salutary effect of the very attempt to apply these "sedatives ;" for the moment we begin to reflect upon and analyse our emotion, the emotion is gone. I hope your friend Mr. G. will begin to "analyse" without delay.

M. L. is going out as cadet to India, with all the sanguine feelings proper, at least natural, at his age, and utterly improper and impossible at any other. Enviable magic of youthful imagination! which thus converts all the future into golden dreams, and presages not a cloud on the horizon even as "big as a man's hand." Well, it is best that it should be so : for if it were otherwise, where were enterprise—that child of hope and fancy? A picture brighter in tints than ever artist painted, is the lure which leads all young vigour to action. "Knowledge is power," and so is ignorance, it seems; and if it were not, the world would stagnate. It is thus that Providence gently impels us to take our places in His School, and learn our lessons and endure His 'discipline; from all which we should resile fast enough, if we knew at the outset what a business it was like to be. Here is this lad already anticipating his return from India (his mother of course is to be alive), with no end of rupees in his pocket, and not a touch of liver complaint! In like manner, a young ensign no sooner puts on his uniform, than he becomes lieutenant, captain, major, colonel, in no time; nobody knows how great a man he is, which indeed is all very true; and it is well if he is not soon Commander-in-Chief, and returning home, after another Waterloo, to hear the plaudits of a grateful nation,—all unwitting that he may perish in a ditch before the beard on his chin is fairly established. In like manner, the young lawyer is apt to fancy himself already Lord Chancellor has a vision of the woolsack, and of himself sitting upon it almost as clear as in a dream— quite as clear, it ought to be, for it is a dream; while the young lover-but there is no end to his romances! What a paragon of excellences and beauties is that young lady! and what wonderful success, for her sake, attends him in life! Yet he can make shift with little but love; " a cottage of content," covered of course

with woodbines and honeysuckles, adorns the waste of the future. If he wants it, he has in imagination ten thousand a year—or if not, imagination tells him that a hundred or a hundred and fifty will do just as well; it is absolutely inexhaustible, and, with "love and content," can purchase, furnish, and maintain his paradise. Yet out of the dreams of hope, seldom to be fulfilled, are shaped the realities of the stern future.

Commend me to the moderate ambition of that New Zealand chief of whom I have somewhere read, who, on the distribution of some captain's gifts, said that "his heart would burst if he did not get a hoe," as some happier comrade had done. A strange paradox is the human heart, which not even the world can fill, and which yet, it seems, may go to pieces for want of a hoe. Believe me, Yours faithfully,

LETTER LXXXVII.

To the Same.

R. E. H. G.

Dec. 1854.

My dear Friend,

I have been reading, with intense interest, that curious and ingenious book (have you read it?) on the "Plurality of Worlds,”—and also a long article in reply. Like other folks, I of course muse with special eagerness on subjects which, like this, we have no possible means of deciding; and which, if they were decided, can in no way concern us. All that is quite natural. Here have I been spending the last two or three mornings in a "Fool's paradise," - debating whether or not other worlds are inhabited, while letters which I had to write, and business which I had to transact in this world (which unluckily is inhabited), were all neglected! But, doubtless, it is much the same all over