But it is a song that never can be old, its meaning can never fade into com- Has not all this a "secret," such as a mon-place. From his patch of sod, up and great poet has lately found for us in the up to that point of heaven where he him- stream? This brightness of the spring self is lost and becomes a voice, that strain before its time, this short season, deployof varying cadence, but unvarying tone ing such myriad charms, and yet deployand power, comes down upon your ear, ing them half untruly has it not its against all fancied laws of sound, with a counterpart in the life of each of us? subtle attractiveness of its own. Has he There is a sort of analogy in most men's a thought of himself in it? a touch of lives to the order of the natural seasons; vanity that we well might pardon in him? from the first passive period of fallow Unlikely but if he had, how he would fields and dormant vitality they pass ondespise all other created things that might ward through the time of budding hopes try to rival his power! "Take me a lion to summer, and the inevitable decay. chained in a balloon," says Michelet's With some, it is true, there is no such apToussenel; "his dull roaring would be lost parent succession; life is all spring to in space. Infinitely stronger than he in them, or summer from their childhood voice and breath, the little lark soars as he onwards till the end comes in no wintry spins his song, which you hear when you' guise, but only as a summer storm. But,

From The Saturday Review.
LYING.

in general, the seasons of life are like Na- own springtide were here already. This ture's seasons: like the day subject to afternoon, as amid a shower of farewells early dawnlights and late afterglows, like the carriage rolled away, bearing with its the year subject to spells of sunshine be- precious burden the memory of a sunny fore the spring begins, and frosty nights happy time, when all that was fertile in at Midsummer. No life is wholly object-us was made manifest, all that was vocal less, and few are without a conception of stirred to speech and song, the thought a prime to be touched and passed. Pas- rose irresistibly that this passing season, sion plays a part in all lives, the chief part with the indescribable shadowiness that in almost all; and there are few and marred its thousand charms, had not been perhaps they are not the noblest - where the spring after all, but only a Spring's the balance is so evenly kept that one pas-Herald. sion has not made itself dominant. It is in the process of this towards its satisfaction, and in its final attainment, that human life finds its spring and summer. Ambition, or the search after knowledge, or the desire to benefit others, or that nameless longing which becomes love, when it has lost its vagueness - these are to life what its own laws of motion are to the world. They give it its April and its Midsummer, and the broad repose of its July: ambition, when the young mind first becomes conscious of influencing others, and on till the time when it feels its supremacy assured; intellectual search, from the beginning of real knowledge till the mind is full, and has learnt to rest; the desire of doing good, from the first dawn of contentment in the face of the wretched peasant whom you would console to the time when he and his begin to see a way to happiness; that other longing, from the moment of its first becoming definite to the time of love's final triumph. But all these modes of life, as they have their season, so they have their accidents of season mistakes or premature revelations of their perfection, like this mistake of Nature to-day. These brilliant hours between two dreary nights, with flush of diffused light, with balmy breath and smiling earth and myriad voices of earth's children, are but the symbol of the moments that furtively illumine denominations. They are incompetent; human life before its discipline of growth he is the sole judge of what is really for has been accomplished. Ambition gives their good. To "lie like a bulletin " has many a foretaste of its success before suc- been the proverbial recognition, if not cess is possible; and the foretaste passes sanction, of this reversal of moral law. away and may leave bitterness behind. La guerre, which condones everything, Knowledge, the passion of good-how condones this. Still, even with minds enoften do these seem to reveal quite sud-larged and reasoned into candour and toldenly the splendour of their height, and eration, the neutral world has been amazed yet fall back again as suddenly to their and almost scandalized at the lying in the naturally imperfect stages. Disappoint- war just brought to a close. Enormous ment is the normal atmosphere of that and unparalleled in other points, it has month of March through which life passes. been enormous also in lying. Paris may Most of all is it the atmosphere that super-number among its many privations a fast venes when that other vaguer, subtler from fact and verity of more than a hundesire, fancying itself no longer vague, dred days, having been fed instead with declares itself before its time as though its an airy diet of pleasing falsehood which

TRUTH is one of the arts of peace. The subject of lying is necessarily brought before us in war time, when in many people's opinions and in all practice, men are privileged to lie as much as their cause requires. All the dispensations of casuists in every variety of case or contingency may be made to serve the needs of strategy.. Lying is wrong because it is an injury to our neighbour, but the enemy pro tem. is not our neighbour; therefore we may lie to him. Again, it is lawful to lie by consent, even to our neighbour, when there is mutual understanding, and he gives up his right to be told the truth; therefore a system of lies may be concocted. The commander of a fort, for example, may report to head-quarters the exact contrary to the truth, and boast of abundance of food and ammunition when he nears his last biscuit and his last cartridge. Again, it is lawful to lie to madmen and children when it is for their good; and in the view of the military commander, the War Minister, or whoever is master of the situation, all civilians may be brought under one or other of these

seemed very much to its taste; for lies have never a very wide and general currency unless there is an appetite and relish for them, a sense of complacency in the victim "befooled into a friendly, favourable, propitious lie." War indeed is so bitter an infliction that such alleviations as fancy can invent are a universal craving; only, as if in illustration of the national want of moderation, there has been an immoderate indulgence of it.

Every nation has its pet virtues, and its vices towards which it is lenient. As our public opinion pronounces against lying as ungentlemanly, to be found out in a lie is especially annoying, because damaging, to an Englishman. Shame, we take it, visits most sinners, not in the moment of commission but of discovery. What Oriental found out in the most deliberate falsehood would experience the sensations attributed by Jeremy Taylor to the man taken in a All men are liars, says the Psalmist, and lie? "At first he knows not what to say no nation has a right to deny the axiom in or think or do, and his spirits huddle toits own case; but we think it no illiber- gether and fain would go somewhere, but ality to say of the French that their no- they know not whither, and do something, tions of taste and fine effects habitually but they know not what." A fine descripclash with unvarnished truth. It is not tion of shame, which would be felt to be only in war time that rude fact jars upon quite exaggerated where dissimulation is them; it must be adapted, and made a recognized accomplishment and art of graceful, to fall in with their views of art. policy. The British mind has no turn for The personages in their novels are always casuistry; it has always a scruple against a perpetrating high-flown lies of self-sacri- lie in the abstract. If it approves of the fice; a lie adds a grace to self-immolation. result, it does not defend but explain. They have positive scruples against naked What Protestant divine before an ordinary truth; whatever else goes bare, truth must congregation would venture on the aposbe draped to satisfy a squeamish, fastidious trophe of St. Chrysostom to his Greek delicacy. And this strikes us as so univer- audience? -"O excellent lie!" with resal a characteristic that we read the bi- gard to the act of Rahab; he would rather ography of a French saint with as much expend his energies in accounting or apolsuspicion as we read a French bulletin. ogizing for it. The Times' Correspondent It is conspicuously a work of art. Manip- who was saved the other day from an anulation and suppression on the one hand, gry mob by a Frenchwoman's excellent enhancement and skilful disposition of lie-if ever there was one - that she had lights on the other, make altogether a known him for years, knew his readers, sweet pretty picture: but it is glorified and only hoped she would be forgiven for human nature sitting for its portrait. La it. But though point-blank lying for a souveraineté du but, that widely recognized man's own advantage is a capital crime in argument, justifies what we vulgarly call our code of honour, the practice in some "cooking." So long as the end is good form or other obtains almost universal toland serves for edification, the means are eration. Because we are human we are comparatively immaterial. "Who wills prone to it. Every one has his region of the end wills the means," says piety. If licence, may we not say even the most the end is noble, all means are good, con- scrupulous? "Rarer than the phoenix," cludes un-pious patriotism. We are not saps De Quincey, "is the virtuous man assming that the French tell stories and who will consent to lose a prosperous anwe don't, but we submit that they tell sto- ecdote because it is a lie." Preaching on ries with a better conscience than we do. this very topic, an aged Colonial Bishop The British orator, statesman, biographer long ago lamented, "So and so is a good ignores and suppresses with a sheepish man, but he sold me a horse which he said misgiving, but French art recognizes a was worth a thousand rupees and it was duty to the Beautiful which rides over not worth fifty." Only let us hope that all petty scruples. There is no appetite the British limit is at its narrowest; that for bare reality: if it spoils a good thing whereas the Red Indian lies without scruple or shocks taste, mend it in the telling. in everything but the number of his scalps Thus tempered, it not only pleases them more, but seems to do them more good. It is this decorative tendency which was so bitterly combated by M. Thiers in his speech upon the general collapse. "As long as you are a nation of declaimers you will be nothing, you will only become something by respect for the truth."

and how he got them, the respectable Englishman is true in every respect but in telling a good story or selling a horse.

There are purists who maintain that all deception, every attempt to mislead or put upon a false scent, is a lie; that every act of domestic strategy comes under this denomination, and is therefore a lie; but this

will not hold. Lies have to do with words. | ment that what ought to be is, fairly fudBirds and beasts are often cunning deceiv-dles the moral perception.

ers, but to lie is strictly human. The lips There is in many a converser a looseness speak guile, the hand indites it. To en- of statement that throws all he says into large the field of lying is virtually to tol- a sort of debatable land. He has been erate it. In seeming to be more strict we telling us things as facts which are not facts, become less so. The person who argues but whether he lies or not depends on the that Lord Chesterfield's man of the world, state of his own mind, whether it is capawho accosts with smiles men whom he ble of lying, which to deserve the term is would much rather meet with swords, is a always a deliberate act. This is called roliar, opens the floodgates to verbal false- mancing, in which the speaker may be hood. We connot do without some politic more mystified than his audience. He aldissimulation of expression; we do not allows himself undoubtedly a sort of liberty low ourselves the luxury of babbling countenances, but prefer to keep our thoughts to ourselves. If this is lying, as well be hanged for a sheep as for a lamb, and lie loudly and persistently whenever it suits us. Of course we much prefer a countenance that tells us the mind behind it to one that conceals it; but this does not hinder the frankest from the occasional necessary deception of blandness and smiles. No doubt Horner's "honest face, which had all the commandments written on it," was equal to this degree of untruth. Nor can we be less lenient to the innocent wiles and subterfuges of gaiety:

When melancholy had her look
Then mirth was in her heart.

To

which can hardly have been first contracted without design, but which, once fixing into a habit, renders severe truth impossible. Some minds are conscious of a keen delight in emancipation from hampering truth, when once satisfied of the expediency or necessity of departing from it. Mrs. Gaskell in one of her stories has an amiable old maid who feels it necessary to disguise the antecedents of her protegée. She has never fibbed before, but becomes sensible of a new pleasure in launching into fiction, and adorns the bare falsehood which would have served her purpose with much unnecessary but picturesque detail, relating with naïve elation how pleasant and easy she found it. A young curate imping his wings in a first flight of oratory Hypocrisy may indeed be a course of lying, at a public meeting began an appropriate but not necessarily through deliberate, anecdote, and forgot how it went on. spoken falsehood. M. Vambery gives it as break down was a degradation not to be his opinion that the Dervish's cloak is the thought of; he pursued his tale of converne plus ultra of hypocrisy. a patchwork sion through the aid of a ready fancy, and of jagged rags, tacked together with pack-could not conceal his exultation afterwards thread without, and often lined with rich silk within -an acted falsehood; yet it would serve the wearer little if his tongue were not ready on all occasions to back it. And if words are necessary to the lie it is not everybody that, even lying in word, need be called a liar in fact. Candour shines through the formula of falsehood. Thus the immortal Miss Bates of fiction is always planning little falsehoods and contradicting them. "I shall say she is lying on the bed. However, she is not. She is walking about the room." Or the ingenuous M. Jourdain, of whom his master inquires, "Vous savez le Latin?" Oui, mais faites comme si je ne le savais pas." On the other hand there are virtuous little falsehoods carried on all unconsciously in some dependent minds, which, with seeming goodness, really undermine the sense of truth; such as are indicated in the advice to the young wife to admire her Fluent lying is among the most wonderhusband for the qualities he has, not for ful feats of the intellect. Human nature those he has nota hocus pocus which, is not clever enough for a Mrs. Gamp in consistently maintained under the state-action. When the Colonel in the play runs

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at his success. The romancing faculty generally, to which we owe so much, needs looking after, or it is apt to accompany a man into the common road of life. A plain man can hardly get over the figments which authors permit themselves in the matter of their works. Southey wrote a letter to the Quarterly disowning his authorship of the Doctor, in terms which induced the editor to confess himself mistaken. Gifford mislaid the letter, so could not refer to it when the authorship was brought home to Southey. In its absence he could only assume that there was a loophole, but could remember none. Some observers have even noticed that inherited imagination is prone to indulge itself in the field of real life, that the children of novel-writers are under a special temptation to subtleties which mislead more matter-of-fact intelligences.

they are aimed. A purpose may be successful or it may be foiled, but the effort reacts upon the mind and character from which it springs, and it also operates directly, and, as an example, upon others. The reflex action, and the collateral effects are determined by the motive and nature of the efforts put forth rather than by the end they were intended to gain. Remembering, therefore, the several steps and endeavours it commonly requires to accomplish any serious purpose, it will be evident how much more important the consequences of any course of conduct or policy must be, than the simple result which we call success; and how entirely erroneous is the presumption that nothing succeeds like success, or is entitled to the same esteem.

on in a string of inventions, his accomplice | exerts two sets of influence which are cannot withhold his admiration, "Faith, wholly distinct from, and entirely unafone would swear he had learnt to lie at fected by, the particular object at which school!" This is the genius of imposture; a great imposture carried on vivâ voce is a first-class achievement. When once the lie is viewed in its æsthetic aspect, there are many modes of meeting it. Besides the plain tale that sets it down summarily, there is the compromise, involving perhaps some confusion of ideas; as in the case of the American editor who was thankful that only half the lies told about him were true. Swift says the only effectual way of meeting a lie is not by truth, but by another lie, which is the system practised in a Hindoo trial. Considering, he argues, the cylindrical surface of the soul, and the great propensity to believe lies in the generality of mankind, the properest contradiction to a lie is another lie; e. g. if it should be reported that the Pretender was in London one would not contradict it by saying he never was in England, but you must prove by eye-witnesses that he came no further than Greenwich, and then went back again. The only thing to be said for this mode is that experience shows us that every flight of imagination has a way of verifying itself sooner or later. The Pretender had not been in England when Swift wrote, but he came in the end, and went back again very much after this programme: and the fluent liar who might have learnt his art at school had a theory about the sun, which was received by the audience as arrant nonsense, but which is uncommonly like the conclusions of modern

science.

From The Globe.

THE ETHICS OF SUCCESS.

THE Worship of success is a form of idolatry against which a wise philosophy would wage remorseless warfare. The discovery that, although mortals cannot command, they may deserve it, takes it out of the catalogue of those inscrutable mysteries to which a limited intellect must needs succumb. Moreover, it is by no means so great and overpowering a thing in itself as we are apt to suppose. It is very far from absorbing all the consequences of the train of actions to which it stands as an end. The ways and the means by which the goal is reached and the prize won, are left behind or cast aside and forgotten, but they are not destroyed. Human action is indestructible, and it always

An exaggerated notion of the nature and importance of success tells directly in support of that most pernicious heresy that "the end justifies the means "— a false doctrine, quite as disastrous to sound morals or common honesty as to sincere and genuine religion. The special conceit in which tender, or more correctly, weak, consciences take refuge, is that "the end may condone the means: " but the general idea is the same, and equally mischievous in any shape. If the result be good the process by which it has been attained is too commonly regarded with a charity which thinketh no evil of unworthy acts and principles of action, for which it ought to exhibit nothing but abhorrence. But this is not the only, or by any means the worst, consequence of worshipping success. In case of failure, all the good, well-aimed, and self-sacrificing efforts which have been put forth count for nought. Nothing can be more unfair in itself or injurious to the cause of well-doing, than the neglect to appreciate effort as well as effect, and to reward good endeavours and honest work for their own sake. The theory that everything must be judged by results is by no means universal in its application or sound in its philosophy. Another effect of ignoring the importance of "means," apart from the "ends" to which they are directed, is their unscrupulous use and careless handling. To use any means, regardless of its character, is the first temptation To rely on the power of employing "whatever may turn up" as means to the end in view," is the second and more seductive allurement.

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