of the prevalent horror-not at guilt, but at our being discovered to be guilty-we shrink from the known culprit. We shrink from inflicting pain on him, but we also shrink from having any personal relations with him. In proportion as we over-estimate repute as compared with worth, do we shrink from the disreputable. Hence very much of the difficulty the liberated convict experiences in finding his way back to an honest livelihood. Not only are we backward to believe in his reform; we have a dislike to him quite apart from our imperfect confidence in its genuineness. In short, we fear that through being in any way connected with him, some portion of his disrepute may attach to ourselves. If we were more genuine weshould be at once more just and more truly compassionate. We should have less sympathy with the criminal when on trial and under punitive treatment, but more when his term of punishment has been completed-when he most needs our sympathy, and has the strongest claim upon it.

We may thus see how intimate the connection is between the amount and current characteristics of crime, on the one hand, and the treatment of the criminal class on the other, with the prevalent moral tone of society, -may clearly perceive that if we would really master crime we must strive to dry it up at its sources—the sin and vice which we hide from ourselves and others in reputable society. The criminal "difficulty will abate in proportion as we become more true and virtuous. We shall at once diminish the number of our criminals, and shall deal with them in a truer spirit both of justice and humanity. But we shall never deal vigorously and justly with crime till we deal more vigorously and justly with the vice and sin from which it springs. We shall have a safe and practicable course opening up to us in proportion as we endeavour to purge society at the core; we shall not, and we ought not to have it any other condition.

on

XXVI. "WHITE LIES."

A WRITER in the Saturday Review of November 15, 1862, closes an article, headed "White Lies," in these words

The great duty of truth, or the antagonism between a truthful and a false character, is not destroyed by the fact that there are falsehoods which it is con

sistent with truthfulness to tell, any more than the difference between the red and yellow ray in the rainbow is obliterated by the fact, that the exact point where one fades into the other, cannot be determined. That white lies are no impeachment on truthfulness, is evident from the fact that the most truthful people commit them in case of need, and that they must be committed if the business of the world is to go on at all. The contrary doctrine is well calculated to turn a truthful man into a liar. To teach a child, in the name of truth, that all falsehoods are equally guilty, and that he is likely to pass through life without ever being in duty bound to tell a lie, is a lie which can hardly be called white, for, when a child finds out the real state of the case, he is apt to conclude that all falsehoods are equally innocent.

Now this does seem to us somewhat extraordinary doctrine; and to be put forth by an organ which claims to be the exponent of the views and sentiments of the most select and educated portion of the society and churchmanship of England, in the latter half of this nineteenth century. The doctrine is very definite, and very broad. It is a justification, not indeed of the "lie direct," but, in certain circumstances, at least, of the direct lie-of downright, conscious falsehood. The writer does not merely say that it may not always be necessary to tell the whole truth, that it may not always be right or expedient to undeceive people; or, that a truthful man may, in certain critical circumstances, be justified in leading on the wrong scent one who means him harm; or in acting so as to produce an impression the contrary of the fact, in order to save the life or honour of a friend. None of these affirmations would have excited much surprise, had they come even from a moralist of a severer school. There is a measure of reticence which the very constitution of our being implies and sanctions. We do not move about with a win dow in our bosoms. Each soul has the power of keeping what thoughts and feelings it pleases to itself. A truthful man may not only refrain from declaring much that passes within the sanctuary of his own mind and heart, he will proclaim himself a very imprudent man if he does otherwise. How much of his mind he may speak; when to utter all his mind; and when to refrain from uttering his mind at all—will be questions of judgment and conscience with him daily. There is here no sharp line separating prudence from imprudence or duty from sin. In innumerable cases, ever arising, each has, according to his light and convictions, to judge and decide for himself. And men of truth and honour will be found coming to opposite conclusions in very similar circumstances. Temperament, training, the tone of the family, and of the social circle one moves in, have each and all their influence. One man is frank and outspoken by nature, and to such it is comparatively easy to be explicit on principle. Another is naturally reserved or timid, and shrinks from the sound of his own voice in company. No one will affirm that there is, or ought to be-(as, indeed, there cannot be) a rigid canon, equally applicable to

men of these two classes, and making it binding on each to declare himself to the same extent and no farther. That would leave no room for the exercise of prudence or of judgment, and would very much circumscribe the sphere of conscience itself.

But the writer in the Saturday Review goes much farther than all this. We have been accustomed hitherto to believe that downright lying was inconsistent alike with the code of honour and of Christian morals. And, if our memory does not greatly deceive us, there appeared only a few months since, an article, in the Saturday Review itself, taking very decided ground on the opposite side from that on which the writer before us has placed himself.

If a gentleman is convicted of a lie, there is an end to his claim to that character. That is the doctrine held by the former writer, as it is that (as we have ever understood) of honourable and Christian society. This more recent instructor, however, gives us another view of the case. He makes us feel how much there may be in a name. To tell "white lies" may not only be innocent, but a duty! To teach a child otherwise; to instruct him to cherish a sacred regard for truth, in all circumstances,-to instruct him that he is never to utter what he knows to be false, is to launch him on the sea of life with a chart which will -instead of proving a clear and sure guide-precipitate him into moral chaos. To teach a youth that he must never tell a lie is, according to this writer, the surest way to convert the truthful man into a liar ; whilst the way to maintain his truthfulness intact, is to instruct him, that practical life will now and again place him in circumstances where it will be, not only a necessity, but a duty to state what he knows to be false !

The principle which underlies this teaching is obvious enough. It is and can be no other than that "the end justifies the means." A thing so mean and unmanly as telling lies would be justified by no one on any other ground than that of the importance of the end it is expected to accomplish. But this principle has been generally regarded as bad in morals--as essentially immoral. And justly so, for the end never is, and never can be, higher than to avoid pain or loss, to ourselves or others; or, to secure a greater amount of profit or pleasure than the truth would secure. But once recognise this principle, and where are we to draw the line beyond which it is to be held mean and immoral to carry it? Once admit that we may tell lies to secure pleasure-to avoid enduring or giving pain-and where shall we stop? Who shall determine the amount of pleasure or the amount of pain--to secure which, or to avoid which, a lie becomes justifiable?

Were we to accept this writer's reading of the practice of society, we should find the license to be very wide indeed which it has actually

taken. "Politeness is," he assures us, a huge white lie. Its essence is to display towards all men the outward signs of friendliness we can never feel in reality, except towards a very few." Now, admitting, (as we must admit, so far as politeness is mere seeming or pretence), that this judgment is just, we have to ask-Why should people pretend what they do not feel? It can only arise from one of two reasons:-Either they are ashamed of their real sentiments, or they are afraid of the consequences that might ensue from their real sentiments being known. If the first be the true state of the case, then the proper remedy is to be found not in concealing their sentiments, but in striving to have them changed-in having them brought into conformity with the law of justice and love. To cherish and conceal sentiments we are ashamed to express is cowardice, and it is cowardice too, to conceal sentiments we should feel bound to declare, were it not for the pain their declaration may give or occasion. Politeness is beautiful, so far as it is the expression of what we feel to be due to others; it is an hypocrisy and a nuisance when it is assumed to cover what we are either afraid or ashamed to declare. It is then essentially a lie, and a lie which we dare not pronounce "white."

But to whatever extent the politeness current in Society may merit the character assigned to it by the writer before us, there can be no justification, thence derived, of the more aggravated and conscious form of falsehood-the telling of direct, downright lies. "Two blacks don't make a white,' " here, more than anywhere else. To tell lies, is in all circumstances, the mark of a low morale, and a low culture—of a mean and unmanly character. In proportion as we become men and Christians, truth becomes natural and easy to us and falsehood not only unnatural, but impossible. Manly and Christian sentiments are sentiments of which no one ever needs to be ashamed. In proportion as we come to honour all men for whatever of manhood there is in them; in proportion as we come to love our neighbour as ourselves, in like proportion can we afford to be truthful. When we are what we ought to be, it will never be necessary for us to seem other than we are. Falsehood is excluded under all conditions; but in proportion as Society makes real-and not merely surface or sham advances-concealment will become less and less necessary. Everyone will be prepared to hear the truth when the truth is dearer to him than aught besides. But the world is never likely to reach this state, if telling lies is to be held innocent (not to speak of a duty) under any circumstances.

XXVII.-POPULAR INSTRUCTION-PROVERBS AND NOVELS.

READER did you ever run your eye over a collection of national Proverbs? -let it be Spanish, Italian, or English. You could hardly give such a collection the most cursory perusal without being struck with the vast amount of true philosophy-of deep, far-reaching, practical wisdomtreasured up in those brief and unpretending sentences. A profound interest now attaches to the study of language, as treasuring many a hitherto unsuspected feature of early-world life. To us a still deeper interest attaches to proverbs as the indubitable embodiment of the great guiding principles and life-thoughts of early times. We moderns have made vast progress in physical science, but no such advance in wisdom. For true life-guidance a few of the Proverbs of Solomon would outweigh all the discoveries of our Baconian Science. This great collection shows how early moral intuitions, and a widely generalised experience, had taken the proverbial form. Indeed, when the art of printing was unknown, books rare, and found in the hands of few if any of the common people, it was a necessity that the rules which guide to a virtuous and prudent life, should be put into the most brief, terse, and enduring form. Under such conditions, the wisdom of a people, if preserved at all, must be preserved in this way, as its storied sentiment and heroic achievements were in ballads and poems.

But the modern printing press has not only put an end to this necessity, it seems to have induced the very opposite. Periodicals and books now compete for public favour, not by presenting knowledge and wisdom in the tersest and most condensed form, but by diffusing the smallest modicum over the largest possible space. The consequence is, that we stand by no means on so high a vantage-ground above our benighted forefathers, as we are, in our inconsiderate vanity, so apt to imagine. For our intellectual food and moral aliment we have got novels where they had proverbs. As literature advances proverbs disappear. Polite society thinks itself above them, and cultivated intellect seeks its own modes of expression. They were going without the social ban which Lord Chesterfield recorded and endorsed-"A man of fashion never has recourse to proverbs or vulgar aphorisms." They now linger only in those few rural retreats where primitive manners linger, and threaten to disappear entirely along with the vernacular in which many of the most expressive of them were couched. Their great displacer and substitute is the tale