LETTER VIII.

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CONCLUSION OF THE HERMETICAL PHILOSOPHY.

I HAVE learned another trick in this solitude. I have learned to separate the twin natures with which, it is my belief, every man is born, and to sit in judgment upon the vices, the follies, the high feelings, and grovelling appetites, that make up the double Make a trial of the process, reader. Quit the world for a season. Look boldly into yourself; and however high may have been your notion of the cleanliness of your moral temple, you

me.

will, if you look with steady, courageous eyes, blush and marvel

You

at its many dirty little holes and corners, the vile, unswept nooks —the crafty spiders and their noisome webs. And in this temple, to your surprise, you will behold two pulpits for two preachers. In the innocency of your knowledge you thought there was but one divine, and that a most respectable, orthodox, philanthropic creature; punctual in his discourses, exemplary in his discipline -indeed, the very pattern of a devout and cheerful man. look, and behold, there is another preacher, a fellow with no more reverence in him than in a Malay amuck; a pettifogging, mean-spirited, albeit quick-witted, shuffling scoundrel, whose voice, too, in the throng and press of the world has appeared to you so like the voice of the good, grave gentleman whom you deemed alone in his vocation, that you have a thousand times, without reflection, followed his bidding-unhesitatingly obeyed his behests, and only now, when you have set apart a season for consideration, only now perceive the imposture-recognise the counterfeit.

"Was

"What!" you exclaim, "and was it he who prompted me with that bitter answer to poor inoffensive Palemon ?” it he who bade me button up my pocket and growl—'No,' to such a petitioner on such a day?” "Was it he who whispered me to cross the road, and cut to the heart the ruined, shabbycoated Damon?" And still further considering the matter, you remember that the interloper monitor, the fellow whose very existence you never suspected, has had nearly all the talk to himself; the grave gentleman, whose voice has been so well imitated, and whom you thought your pastor and your master, having been silenced, out-talked, by the chattering of an unsuspected opponent. I say it, you are twin-souled. Step into my hermitage. Submit to wholesome discipline of thought, and, be

assured of it, you will, in due season, be able to divorce self from self; to arraign your fallen moiety at the bar of conscience; to bring against it a thousand score of crimes, a thousand peccadilloes, all the doings of the scurvy rascal you bear within you, and whose misdeeds are for the first time made known to you.

Well, the court is open.

Who,-you cry, is that beetle-browed, shuffling, cock-eyed knave at the bar? Is he a poacher, a smuggler, a suborner of false testimony, a swindler, a thief?

Gently, gently, sir: that unfortunate creature is your twinsoul. It was he who in the case of Mr. Suchathing advised you to

God bless me ! I remember-don't speak of it-shocking! -I'm very sorry.

And it was he who, when poor widow Soandso

There, hold your tongue! I recollect all about it. How have I been deceived by that scoundrel! But then, how could I ever have believed that I carried such a rascal about me?

For my own part, I am firm in the faith that I should never have discovered my own twin varlet had I not shut the door upon the world and taken a good inside stare at myself. No; my hair would have grown grey and my nose wine-coloured-for it hath a purpureal weakness, and as a distinguished statesman, whose name I forget, once said, I might have patted the back of my naughty twin soul, deeming him a remarkably fine sample of the article; and so gone on, working for a handsome epitaph, and dying with a Christian-like assurance that I had earned the same. I might have lived and died thus self-deluded, but for this retreat so happily opened to me by the illustrious nobleman aforesaid.

"A work of this nature is not to be performed upon one leg; and should smell of oil, if duly and deservedly handled.”

Such is the solemn avowal of a fantastically grave philosopher, on the completion of his opus magnum; but surely that vaunt hath a more fitting abiding-place in the present page. My subject, too, like that of my brother philosopher, from its innate dignity, its comprehensive usefulness, might employ the goosequills of a whole college. It were easy to tell off at least five hundred men-many of them having the ears of kings, and what is more, the purse-strings of nations at their command-all of them, by nature and practice, admirably fitted for the work. From their very successes, the world has a claim upon them for

D

the encyclopaedic labour. However, until the time arrive when these men, touched by a sense of their ingratitude, shall repair the wrong, let the present little book receive the welcome due to good intentions. I am content, in the whirl and mutation of all mundane things, to be trumped by a minister, a cardinal, a philosopher, a commercial philanthropist, by any one or one hundred of these. When such men shall have grown sufficiently ingenuous to respond to the crying wants of their fellowcreatures, and shall publish Humbug in extenso, I shall sleep quietly beneath the marble monument which the gratitude of my country will erect to my memory, although this little volume, superseded by the larger work, shall be called in like an old coinage, and no longer be made the class-book of the young, the staff of the middle-aged, and the solacing chronicle of the old.

Imperfect as the work may be, it would, I feel, have been impossible to write at all upon Humbug amid the delicious distractions of a city. Is it asked,-wherefore? Alas! the writer would have been confounded by the quantity of his materials. Solitude-continued, profound solitude-was necessary to the gestation and safe delivery of this book. I have endeavoured to show that the true solemnities, the real sweetnesses of death-the mystery of our inner selves, which said mystery we walk about the world with, deeming it of no more complexity than the first mouse-trap, - are only to be approached and looked upon in their utter nakedness when safe from the elbows and the tongues of the world. Now, if life be a mystery, Humbug is at once the art and heart of life. A man may, indeed, get a smattering of moral philosophy in a garret within ear-shot of the hourly courtesies of hackney-coachmen; but Humbug, though she often ride in a coach of her own through the highways of the city, like a fine lady, suffers her pulse to be felt only in private. Humbug is the philosopher's Egeria, and to be wooed and truly known in secret.

Think you, reader, there is no other reason for the sundry prorogations of Parliament, than that the excellent men (selected only for their wisdom and their virtue from their less wise and less virtuous fellows,) having generously presented so many pounds to the state, their services are for a time no longer required? Such is not the profound intent of prorogation. Its benevolent purpose is to send every senator into healthful solitude, that he may fortify himself with a frequent contemplation of his past votes; that he may call up and question his twin soul, and rejoice himself to know that the Dromios within him have given their voices in accordance-that one of the

sneaking gemini, out of the baseness of expected gains, has not cried "6 Ay," when its nobler fellow stoutly intended

66

ON THE BEAUTY" AND "LUXURY" OF TRUTH.-THE UNALLOYED

GUINEAS.

So, my dear child, you have had enough of philosophy-have read enough of the speculations of the Hermit of Coney-hatch, to feel that your yearnings for solitary contemplation were but a passing weakness; to know, that it is in the bustling world about you, true wisdom finds its best, its most enduring reward? Parchment, my dear child, though writ and illuminated with all the glories of the human brain, is a perishable commodity: now, gold in bars will last till the world crack.

I now come to the principal subject of your last letter,—" the beauty of Truth.”

My dear boy, truth is, no doubt, a very beautiful object; so are diamonds, pearls, rubies, emeralds; but, like those sparkling, precious things, it is by no means necessary to your condition of life; and if sported at all, is only to be enjoyed by way of luxury. Beware, lest a vain conceit should ruin you. The nobleman, the man of independence, may speak truth, as he may wear a brilliant in his breast, worth a hundred guineas. Now, as you must be content with at best a bit of Bristol-stone, with a small imitation of the lustrous reality, so, in like way, can you not afford to utter the true sparkling commodity at all times. Do not suppose, however, that I would have you never speak the truth. Pray, do not misunderstand me. You may, as a man of the world, and a trader who would turn the prudent penny,you may always speak the truth when it can be in no way to your advantage not to utter it.

At the same time, my beloved boy, take heed that you obtain not the evil reputation of a liar. "What!"-I think I hear you exclaim," your advice, papa, involves a contradiction." By no means. What I wish to impress upon you, is the necessity of so uttering your verbal coinage, that to the superficial eye and

careless ear, it may have all the appearance, all the ring of the true article. Herein consists the great wisdom of life. The thousands who have grown rich by its application to all their worldly concerns are incalculable. The world, as at present constituted, could not go on without lying. And, I am convinced, it is only the full conviction of this fact that enables so many worthy, excellent people to club their little modicum of daily falsehood together, for the benevolent purpose of keeping the world upon its axis.

For a moment, consider the effect produced in London alone, if from to-morrow morning, for one month only, every man, woman, and child were to speak the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. You have read of towns besieged, of cities sacked, of the unbridled fury of a sanguinary soldiery; but all this would be as sport to the horrors of this our most civilised metropolis. Gracious Plutus ! Think of the bankruptcies! Imagine the confessions of statesmen! Consider the internal revelations of churchmen! Only reflect upon the thousands and thousands of-at present-most respectable, exemplary people, congregated in the highways and market-places, making a "clean breast" to one another,—each man shocking his neighbour with the confession of his social iniquity, of his daily hypocrisy, of his rascal vice that he now feeds and cockers like a pet snake in private ! If all men were thus to turn themselves inside out, the majority of blacks would, I fear, be most alarming. We might have Hottentot chancellors, and even Ethiopian bishops!

A wise German, named Goethe, has observed-" There is something in every man, which, if known to his fellow, would make him hate him." How, then, could the world go on with this reciprocal passion of hatred? Philosophic statesmen, conscious of this fact, have therefore leavened every social institution with a necessary and most wholesome amount of falsehood. Hence, too, we have what are called legal fictions. Hence, Justice, the daughter of Truth, debauched by Law, gives, with a solemn smirk, short weight to the poor, and a lumping pen'orth to the rich.

What are the fees paid to hungry, hundred-handed office, but offerings exacted by falsehood? What is the costliness of Justice, but the wilful extravagance of lying-the practical mendacity of life? Truth, by a paradoxical fiction, is painted naked; and Justice is robed in plain, unspotted white. Why, the old harridan must have as many gew-gaws-as many big-beaded necklaces-brooches-pins-chains, and armlets, as the wife of a Jew bailiff. These things she must have, or what does she with the presents made to her-the fees exacted?