as the principle itself is diffusive throughout society. If therefore a particular application is made, it will be rather for the sake of the illustration than to fasten any charge, or bring any reproof to a distinctive class or party, either political or otherwise. We have said that the doctrine of authority, or in other words the argumentum ad verecundiam, is made an instrument for the enforcement, oftentimes unjust, and sometimes tyrannical, of opinion in political combinations. The truth of this position is apparent to every one who is accustomed to watch with a careful eye the promulgation of opinion, and the manner of its reception by that indefinite, intangible something which we call the Public.

To illustrate again. The doctrine of protection to Home Industry becomes a living and active faith with the great body of a powerful party. It is received with as much enthusiasm and applauded as warmly as could be desired by the most zealous 'Home Leaguer,' or even the great champion of American Industry himself. Whence, let us ask, originates this faith, that is indeed "the substance of things hoped for, and the evidence of things not seen?" Does it spring from the people-that class of them that give it their most cordial sanction? No; no-what have the people to do with these matters? with making political maxims, and manufacturing opinions? What have the people to do but believe, and trust to the superior wisdom of the directors of public sentiment? It is their business quietly to open their ears and listento apply their minds to the things that pertain to their political well-being, simply as humble receivers of the truth, and to make no wry faces at the prescriptions, nauseous though they be, of the learned doctors of the political faculty. The science of party, like that of medicine, is somewhat empirical. Experiment is the order of the day. We must exercise a living faith in the skill, ability, and honesty of the political as well as the medical practitioner. We may, it is quite certain, sometimes place a mistaken confidence in a quack. But this is our own fault. We must judge of the men—that is our legitimate province-not of the nature of the remedy. Every man who does not belong to the regular practice is presumed to be a quack, and e converso.

"What is this medicine?"—a sick

man asked of a somewhat celebrated physician-(the poor man was unreasonably apprehensive of the efficacy of the potion, his adviser's skill, or the safety of his own life). "Oh!" answered the doctor, "it is a little of the Tityre tu patula." The man swallowed the potion and-recovered. In every succeeding disorder, he wished no other remedy but the genuine Tityre tu patula.

How many prescriptions have the doctors in politics administered, in a similar manner, to their suffering patients, though not always attended with the same happy results! And how often have they inspired a perfect faith, and a serene confidence, by communicating in a like frank and candid spirit the nature of their remedies! Now how absurd would it have been for the poor patient, with his parched lips and fevered brow, to have questioned the virtue of Tityre tu patula, so long as it came to him on such excellent authority! And, of course, following up the analogy, how foolish it is to inquire into the nature, to examine the effects, or to question the fitness of the remedies applied to our social and political disorders, so long as we receive them labelled and signed, and fresh from the hands of the regular practice!

"But," says one, "I know the nature of the remedy. I don't swallow every man's drugs. I am in favor of internal improvement, home industry, and a sound currency.' Stop, gentle patient, are you certain you are not imposed upon by a name? Are you quite sure you understand the nature of the Tityre. tu patule? Your physician may be an empiric and a quack, or at least an honest man not thoroughly acquainted with his art. He may recommend for the body politic the profuse blood-letting of monopoly and money corporation, and call it internal improvement. He may prescribe the deadly poison of the credit system and a government bank, and call it a remedy for equalizing the circulating medium and restoring a sound national currency. He may apply the galvanic battery of prohibitory duties and high tariff, for the purpose of resuscitating the dead body of commercial enterprise, and call it protection to American industry.

"But," says a very worthy and right minded man, who, though in opposition to what we conceive to be the true popular movement of the age, is yet a man of honest belief and right principles, "these

are the doctrines of the party. If I would be a consistent supporter of that party and contribute to its ultimate success, I must yield my full assent to the whole. It is true, my sober judgment condemns the doctrine of protection, but if I advance such a proposition openly, I shall be publicly denounced. Not only my consistency and principles, but my honesty, would be doubted. I should be reduced politically to a mere cypher, without standing, character, or influence. Political friends would regard me as an unsafe man; and every vote, even upon the most unimportant and local questions, would be scrutinized with an eye of jealousy.”

And it is the truth; and this is the curse, the deep and abiding curse, of the despotism of political opinion. What! cannot a man be sound-can he not be honest-can he not yield a consistent and earnest support to a set of measures, and yet enjoy his own free thought, and write and speak boldly and fearlessly that thought upon every measure, or upon every man engaged in its advancement, though perhaps it may be in conflict with the prevailing opinion? Can he not be an earnest and ardent supporter of a policy, which, in the main, he believes in his heart to be right, though he may maintain-yes, and openly advocate-a heterodox notion upon a dozen collateral questions?

Away with this despotism of thought away with this false authority, that would fetter to the earth the immortal part of man's nature-away with that party tactics whose only end is utility which prepares the Procrustean bed for every opinion, and cringes with a servile and abject sycophancy beneath the selfconstituted exponent of the popular will! We neither desire nor expect individual opinion to be received in opposition to that of the great public. All we can claim for ourselves is immunity for the full and free expression of individual sentiment. All we can ask for others is a guaranty of the right, irrespective of all party discipline and political authority, to think, to speak, to act for ourselves. Let us have back again those good old days, and that good old healthy feeling of the past, rara temporum felicitate, ubi sentire quæ velis, et quæ sentias dicere licet.

But no. Submit cheerfully to the public will, no matter from whence it originates; conform to the expression

of the popular voice, no matter what it may be such is the doctrine of the day. It is in vain for one man to raise his voice amid the shouts and huzzas of thousands! What presumption in you to claim tolerance for a doctrine that has not received the sanction of the political chiefs, and consequently has not been adopted as a distinctive principle by the people! What presumption in you to call in question the sincerity of some gross popular flattery, that has been reiterated again and again, with the most indignant and patriotic emphasis, from the hustings and the stump into the ears of the people, and which this same people always listen to with the extreme of complaisance and applaud with the utmost feeling, like Coleridge's man, who always took off his hat with the most profound demonstration of respect whenever he spoke of himself! You are but an individual, and are therefore not entitled to a separate opinion. You are but a drop in the whirlpool, an atom in the mass, a solitary monad that scarcely forms a part of the great universe of being. Here we go for things in the aggregate. We generalize and recognize no individuality, no personal development. Abstractions are the order of the day. We have plenty of public, but have very little room for individual opinion.

Such are some of the consequences that result from this principle of authority. Its tendency is to destroy all independence of thought and freedom of action. Its business is to enforce the arbitrary power of that unseen, all-controlling something, termed popular sentiment. It merges the man into the multitude-the individual will into that of the public-a distinct, independent unity of existence into a broad and general universality.

It is to this point we have traced it; and with this rapid and hasty glance at the subject, we must for the present take leave of it; feeling that but little more has been accomplished than an imperfect sketch or outline, although these remarks have extended themselves far beyond the space originally intended. The subject we conceive to be one of magnitude and importance, opening an ample field for future speculation, and well worthy, from its practical_importance, of the most candid consideration and fearless inquiry.

pleasures or the business which they would still pursue there, and the daily occurrences of Paris reached there only by hear-say, as in any remote provincial town. On Sundays, indeed, and by night, all were free to scatter over the city, where they might defy their creditors in the places of public resort, and even insult them with the effrontery of the most luxurious parade. But as soon as the sun began to dawn above the horizon, all speed must be made to return; and many an imprudent victim had to repent his forgetfulness of the hour in the company of the woman beloved, or the bottle adored.

Such was the enclosure of the Temple, to which the reader is now to be introduced, about a year after the date of the robbery of Master Poliveau's ten thousand crowns, which had consummated the honest draper's ruin.

One summer evening, at about the hour of sunset, in the lower hall of a retired tavern within its limits, frequented chiefly by the tradesmen and bourgeois residents of the enclosure, two persons were seated at a small table, each with an ample goblet of hypocras before him, with which they moistened the conversation in which they were engaged. The one was a tall, powerful man, in a faded military costume, with a buff collar; whose face, divided in two by a long red scar, presented one of the most repulsive countenances often to be encountered. A heavy iron-hilted sword, of most formidable aspect, lay before him across his knees. His companion, whom he had shortly before met at this spot on a rendezvous, was no other than our old friend, the Count-or the selfstyled Count, de Manle; no longer indeed, brave in all the finery which he had displayed on the occasion of our former introduction to him in the Rue de la Tixeranderie, but in a costume of showy shabbiness which revealed a wofully altered fortune on the part of the wearer. His moustache was, however, as well waxed, his feather as high, and his swagger as insolent as ever, though he was no longer attended by the faithful lackeys who had before composed his retinue. They had been sent to the galleys for the little affair of Poliveau's robbery; a well-deserved destination which De Manle had himself with difficulty escaped, through the power of the Villenègre family—which he had contrived to enlist in his behalf, by so con

necting the young Marquis with the affair, as to involve the latter very seriously in his own fate. The other worthy individual was Captain Corbineau, once in the military service, but of late years a professional cut-throat in a more private way, in addition to the varied accomplishments of a bully and blackleg rendering him ready for any honorable enterprise in his line that might turn up. He had been for three years under sentence to be hung, but had hitherto succeeded in eluding the best efforts of the lieutenant-criminal, Defunctis, for his apprehension.

There were some half-dozen other persons in the room, chiefly quiet bourgeois of the kind by whom the tavern was mainly frequented; they were engaged at lansquenet and other games of chance of the day. One old man was seated apart from the rest, near a window opening upon the street, into which he was looking as though in expectation of some person to pass. He had entered shortly before, and, without ordering any refreshment, had seated himself, with humble patience, in the background. With his elbow on the table, and his head resting on his hand, the poor old man, besides his evident feeble weariness, appeared possessed by a dejection too profound and painful to permit him to take any interest in or even notice of the scene around him.

De Manle, who had been invited to this rendezvous by his ferocious-looking friend, was giving the latter, in reply to his inquiries, some account of the Poliveau affair; of which, to his present companion, he spoke with little attempt at disguising its true character on his own part. Of Villenègre's participation in it he spoke of it with equal recklessness and less truth, as an amorous adventure, in which he treated with but little delicacy the poor maiden who had been the unhappiest victim of the whole affair. He spoke loudly, as though for the information of all the company present; by scarcely any of whom, however, was he heeded, except by the poor and feeble old man just noticed. The latter rallied from his state of lethargic dejection to listen, and more than once made a motion as though to spring toward the narrator, though he checked himself in it, and remained as before, entirely unnoticed by the rest of the company.

This was poor master Poliveau himself-now a fugitive bankrupt within