and his withered arm. What of Newton? "Ah! Diamond, Diamond, thou little knowest," &c. What did those dwell upon in Napoleon who forgot all about Arcola and Austerlitz? His dying song of "O! Richard, O! mon roi, l'univers t'abandonne." And how many who care little about Catholic Emancipation and Free Trade are attracted by the beautiful prayer which Sir Robert Peel was supposed to employ for himself, for his family, for his country, and for the world; and so on for any number of cases which might be required.

And then to find that the great burning glass exploit of Archimedes was impossible; that Hannibal's vinegar operation was in the same predicament. That the vision of Constantine must have been a political trick, for his friend Eusebius does not even venture to mention it in his Eccleiastical History. That Julian's night visit was an obvious fable. That Belisarius never begged his bread, but left enough of his fortune to enable his worthless wife Antonina to found a convent, and that his affecting story was not invented till seven hundred years after his death. That the murder of Rosamond Clifford and the deformity of Richard rest on no sufficient authority, only upon vindictive monkish legends. That Newton never had a dog at all, and a fortiori not 'Diamond.' That Napoleon had not a note of music in his composition and could no more have warbled Blondell's plainte than he could have taken the second in-di tanti palpiti, or in one of the troubador songs picked up at Waterloo. And that Sir Robert Peel's beautiful prayer was the effusion of an eminent and pious dissenting minister, sent to Sir Robert and found amongst his papers and not his own at all. These instances occur first from a multitude of others.

Nor is the man less to be pitied in his disenchantment than the

boy; the latter has to strip off the tinsel dress and adjuncts of his facts. The former too frequently the facts altogether. Some of his cherished credenda he finds not only not true but the very reverse of truth.

When the drawer was opened where the beautiful new coins were deposited they were found to be only dead leaves, and the sheep dead men tied up by the heels. We need not, to dispel the illusions of life, "Listen to the History of Rasselas, Prince of Abysinnia,” our own desillusionment is at hand in youth and in age.

And is all this inevitable, must we be for ever "Dropping buckets into the empty wells of truth and growing old in drawing nothing up." I am afraid so, the world is so given to lying, the father of lies is the God of this world, and falsehood will only gradually abate as Christianity shall gradually obtain and gradually establish by its reflected light, an higher standard of truth, and a clearer perception of the criminality of falsehood. We should not, however, denounce too sweepingly. Lying is not always and necessarily criminal; I have known men, honest men, and lovers of truth in the abstract, on whom no dependance could be placed, but who do not know that they lie from inadequate conceptions of truth. "Par ma foi, (said Mons. Jourdain), il y'a plus de quarante ans que je dis la prose sans que j'en susse rien. Et je vous suis le plus obligé du monde de ́ m'avoir appris cela," and thus these persons disent les mensonges plus de quarante ans sans qu'il ne sussent rien.

There are two or three other considerations which are unfavourable to exact truth, I must say a few words as to each-first, there is not unfrequently an obliquity of mind, an aptitude to credit evil which I have observed in men conscientious and truthful, who might feel and declare

"The wealth of his three kingdoms I defy,

To bribe me to the meanness of a lie,"

And yet these persons have detected so much of evil in their intercourse with their fellows, that they give a too ready credence to its existence either in act or motive, without reasoning as to its likelihood, nothing too wild to believe if bad enough, credant quia impossibile est, and as it is an exercise of sagacity to hit blots, they are either finding them or searching for them-either fishing or mending their nets.

The next impediment to the march of truth is the habit of boastfulness; this may be indulged in till the self-complacency or vanity deceives (not others, but) the individuals themselves. They believe in their power, and in their importance, and in their exploits,

Glendower I can call spirits from the vasty deep,

Hotspur-Why so can I or so can any man, but will they come?

Glendower-Why I can teach you cousin to command the Devil,

Hotspur-And I can teach thee coz to shame the Devil, by telling truth.
Glendower-Cousin of many men, I do not bear these crossings,
For all the courses of my life do shew

I am not in the roll of common men,"

And so it has been at all times,

"Vixere fortes anțe Agamemnona,"

and boasters have lived and lied before Parolles or Glendower, and have since; and, lastly, as to the third particular, we lie from the poverty of our language. We have no terms, no graduated scale wherewith to measure the true amount of our sensations,

and we say, "I am dying with cold," "I am starving with hunger," "The most extraordinary thing I ever heard," "It is as dark as pitch," ," "What a monster," "She is an angel," and so forth, all of which are untrue, au pied de la lettre. Quakers try to correct these exaggerations; but their qualifications, and their thee and thou to oppose the regal and adulatory plural, is pedantry, affectation, and nonsense. They might know that, having no language exclusively belonging to the mind, we describe mental proceedings by physical terms, e.g., "That fact made a deep impression on my memory, I cannot find a trace of what you say in my mind." But the mind is not a material substance, and cannot be acted upon as I impress the wax with my seal. Our metaphysical talk, therefore, is literally untrue when we make use of analogical expressions. And the first step "The Friends" should take, when they insist upon literal truth, is to invent a philosophical language belonging exclusively to metaphysical operations; but this is far beyond their views, and it is humbling to the pride of human nature to see wise and moral men believe that the Deity is to be propitiated by phrases and fashions, and grammatical accuracy.

"Their Gospel is an accidence,

By which they construe conscience,

And hold no sin so deeply red

As that of breaking Priscian's head."

It is not that they are indifferent to more solemn matters of conduct; they are eminently observant of them, whilst they have a foolish regard to costumes of speech and dress. They by no means neglect the weightier matters of law and judgment and mercy and faith, but they attach a childish importance to mint and anise and cummin.

"But somewhat too much of this."

Bentinck did not like to call at Madeira after the account we had

heard at Santa Cruz of the cholera; and I think he was quite right, as we had no actual business there. He discovered also, in our ́examination at Madeira, that his copper is dropping off generally in consequence of its being fastened with nails too small in the heads; and being unwilling to sail his vessel without that wholesome integument, and wishing to take her into dock before his excursion to Scotland shall come off, he has resolved to push for home at once, instead of calling either at Lisbon or the Azores.

I should like to have done this, but, having been already partaking for a month of a man's hospitality, I cannot with decency propose that the one month should be two.

Bentinck and Murray both seem to suffer more from the heat than I do, and would not be sorry to get a little further from the sun; and I also shall be compensated for my disappointment in the matter of St. Michael's by getting back, like John Gilpin, to

"My wife and children three."

I do not feel altogether so happy on our return as on our outward bound cruize. Crabbe, I think, describes the different aspect of nature to the lover going to and coming away from his mistress; how, in the one case, "the soft, slimy, mallow of the marsh" and the screaming sea-gulls were delightful, and in the other detestable. I can hardly say I am disappointed, but just feel a little foolish. When

"The King of France, with forty thousand men,

Marched up the hill, and then-marched down again,"

he must have looked somewhat like a royal donkey.

Friday, August 8th, 1856.

Madeira still in sight, S. W., 60 miles; light airs stealing to the Northward; and now that we have fairly turned our head towards England I don't expect to have much to add to my journal