daughter-in-law's case, so she decided to throw herself on their mercy, as her strongest and almost only hope. She therefore sat down to write, and, after many efforts, succeeded in composing the following letter, which she despatched accordingly, when she convinced herself that she had said all that she felt it was proper and right to say:

"Do not, my dearest Barbara, throw my letter aside upon seeing the signature, but read, with some feeling of early years, the few words addressed to you by a sister who will not be long in the world to offend or trouble any one. I am dying, dear Barbara; I know I am-not by any declared distemper, but by some slow consuming cause by which I feel myself gradually but certainly sinking. Had I no one to think of but myself, this conviction would be anything but unwelcome; but I shrink with horror from the thought when I gaze on my poor child-for I am again a mother, Barbara, the mother of a daughter. The father forsook me just before her birth, taking with him everything of value I possessed, and the money which I intended to have been a portion for this helpless infant; but it was only a just retribution for my weakness and folly. I felt it then, I feel it now; you cannot say so more strongly, and condemn me more decidedly, than I do myself. My life all throughout has been one of great and unpardonable weakness, though, except in this last unexampled act of infatuation, I always sought and prayed to do what was right; but I do not seek to excuse myself by saying that the error has been in my head, not my heart; that alone remains to be my excuse before the great tribunal where we must all at last appear. Hear me, then, my dear sister; by a great sacrifice of present advantages I have secured an independence for my poor little girl, and I should like to leave her in hands that, for her mother's sake, will watch over her infant years. I am therefore anxious to return to Scotland once more, in order to end my days beside you; to settle in some country place where I shall be near you, and arrange what is best to be done for the little delicate being I must leave so soon. I cannot hope for anything from my son now so far away, and so completely estranged from me and mine, and whose last communication was of a nature to prevent all application to him for protection for his sister, except, perhaps, at a moment when no unkind answer can agitate me more. Write to me soon, then, dearest Barbara, for no time is to be lost in settling, as far as I can, what remains for me to do in the world I feel vanishing before me; and whether your answer comes in kindness or displeasure, believe me ever your affectionate sister, "CHRISTINA SAN ISEDORA."

An answer came in due course, honest, kind, and comforting; in which no reproach was made about the past, but inviting Christina to come and join the family at their little country residence on the banks of the Tay, near Dunkeld, where they had just gone to spend the summer, and where Mr. Macintosh, who was a Writer to the Signet in Edinburgh, joined the circle from time to time when his profession allowed him sufficient leisure. With the least possible delay Christina prepared to leave France, and, with her darling in her arms, bade adieu to that city where she had lived through such varieties of happiness and

misery. Her faithful friend, Miss Scott, attended upon her to the last, and with eyes swimming in tears, marked in her own mind the difference in the pale, melancholy, attenuated, but elegant form before her, from the lovely, attractive, and confiding woman she had felt so proud of presenting to the gay and sparkling circle which had so eagerly welcomed her. Deeply did this faithful friend regret in her secret thoughts the wellmeant counsel she had so heedlessly given her early companion, to induce her to cast her cares upon the world, and seek in a foreign land an alleviation for the disappointments of domestic life. That Christina should have married again, she thought, would have not only been right, but, in her situation, very desirable; yet the infatuation that had induced her to throw herself so foolishly away upon a young penniless adventurer, Miss Scott's masculine good sense could never fully comprehend, so difficult it is to understand the secret springs which actuate the mind and feelings of another. Thus, whilst she loved her old friend deeply, and admired her greatly, yet at the bottom of her heart she felt a pity bordering on contempt for that feebleness of spirit that had led her first to act so imprudently, and then to sink so entirely under the consequences of her infatuation. While she kissed the tiny little infant she took from its mother's arms when bidding her farewell, a feeling of deep depression came over her—a foreboding fear that, in the cold clime of the north, and in the prejudices of her coarse though respectable relatives, she might not meet with the tender care and delicate attention necessary to rear to a happy future a plant which, from its singular precocity and premature sensibility, appeared to give the promise of those acute feelings and brilliant talents often so perilous to the possessor, even in the walk of life the most sheltered from the dangers and storms of the world.

The carriage at last drove off, and the broken-hearted and humiliated woman rolled along the gay and busy streets of Paris, utterly unconscious of everything but the caresses of the little creature on her knee-now rather more than two years old-and who, with her large eyes fixed on her mother's face, kept kissing away the streaming tears that rolled over the pallid and sunken cheek, as if with the instinctive perception that with herself alone lay the balm for the sorrow which caused them to flow.

ZIG-ZAG PAPERS.

BY FRANCIS JACOX.

"NOT AT HOME."

A VEXED QUESTION.

To report yourself, by the lips of a servant, Not at Home, whenever, being at home, you don't care to be seen, is conventionally accepted as the commonest, if not the whitest, of white lies. What the degree of whiteness may be, or indeed whether so innocent and symbolical a colour can properly be predicated at all of so ugly a monosyllable as the word -fie, is a vexed question. No question, perhaps, is more vexed in the everyday casuistry of everybody's conventionalism. To deal with it casuistically, with a view to its definite solution, is far from our present intention. In treating of it at all, we do so, not on ethical grounds, or with a clear moral purpose, but merely as affording scope for a perhaps suggestive, and at any rate recreative, series of literary illustrations. At the same time, the ethical element will, necessarily, be involved throughout—if it do not, indeed, constitute the one sole underlying point of interest.

of

Had a man like Martin Luther been asked whether it was allowable for a householder to "deny himself" to unwelcome visitors, what may we presume would have been his reply? Thousands of good people will probably, with one accord, and without a moment's deliberation, cry shame on you for making a query of it at all: Luther, they will tell you, would have scouted with vehemence of indignation, the bare notion any such barefaced lying. But we are far from sure of that. True, we may not have Luther's opinion on that particular species of homemade white lying. But we know that Dr. Henning once proposed this question to him: "If I had amassed money and wished to keep it, and a man came and asked me to lend him some, might I with a good conscience say to him: I have no money"?" "Yes," replied Luther, "you may do so with a perfectly good conscience; for all it means is-I have no money I wish to part with." All it means is-a most convenient and comprehensive formula, plastic and elastic exceedingly, the application of which to the denials that morning-callers are so familiar withal is too obvious to need any process of proof.

In treating as a popular fallacy the maxim that the poor copy the vices of the rich" the force of example is so great"-Charles Lamb mentions, as something quite exceptional, his knowledge of a lady who was "so scrupulous on this head, that she would put up with the calls of the most impertinent visitor, rather than let her servant say she was not at home, for fear of teaching her maid to tell an untruth; and this in the very face of the fact, which she knew well enough, that the wench was one of the greatest liars upon the earth without teaching; so much so, that her mistress never heard two consecutive words of truth from her in her life.

*Tischreden, 64.

"But nature must go for nothing: example must be everything. This liar in grain, who never opened her mouth without a lie, must be guarded against a remote inference, which she (pretty casuist!) might possibly draw from a form of words-literally false, but essentially deceiving no one-that under some circumstances a fib might not be so exceedingly sinful a fiction, too, not at all in her own way, or one that she could be suspected of adopting, for few servant-maids care to be denied to visitors."*

No such pleasant sophistry would have imposed on so much sterner a moralist, and less attractive an essayist, as Samuel Johnson. When Boswell first had the privilege of inspecting the Doctor's rooms in Inner Temple-lane, his chief interest naturally was in the two garrets over his chambers, which contained his library-a dusty and confused heap of books. The place, to Boswell at least, seemed very favourable to retirement and meditation; and Johnson told him that he went up thither without mentioning it to his servant, when he wanted to study secure from interruption, for he would not allow his servant to say he was not at home when he really was. "A servant's strict regard for truth," said he, "must be weakened by such a practice. A philosopher may know that it is merely a form of denial, but few servants are such nice distinguishers. If I accustom a servant to tell a lie for me, have I not reason to apprehend that he will tell many lies for himself ?"+ Austere moralist as Molière's Alceste may be, even he can exclaim against Célimène's too facile accessibility,

say

Quoi! vous ne pouvez pas, un seul moment de tous,

Vous résoudre à souffrir de n'être pas chez vous ?

"Am I a liar ?" asks David Hume, "because I order my servant to I am not at home when I do not desire to see company?"§ David only put the question as an absurdity, to point his argument on a more serious subject, and coupling with it the query, Did ever one make it a point of honour to speak truth to children or madmen? He is standing up for what he calls an innocent dissimulation, or rather simulation, without which, says he, it is impossible to pass through the world. "The Duke of.... called," we read in Byron's Journal. "I have told them forty times that, except to half a dozen old and specified acquaintances, I am invisible. His Grace is a good, noble, ducal person; but I am content to think so at a distance, and so-I was not at home." The same day's diary comprises this noticeable entry; "Sharpe called, but was not let in-which I regret."||

The reader of Swift's Journal must needs have noted the extraordinary frequency of denials therein referred to. One time Swift waits on Harley, and, being denied by the porter, "I suspected every word he said," writes Jonathan, "though the fellow told me no lie." Of this porter it was that Jack Howe told Harley, "that if there were a lower place in hell than another, it was reserved for his porter, who tells lies só gravely, and with so civil a manner. Swift denied himself wholesale

*Last Essays of Elia, Popular Fallacies, No. v. Boswell's Life of Johnson.

Hume to Colonel Edmondstone, 1764.

Moore's Life of Byron, ch. xix.

Le Misanthrope, ii. 3.

and on system. "Dr. Raymond called often, and I was denied; and at last, when I was weary, I let him come up, and asked him, without consequence, 'How Patrick denied me, and whether he had the art of it?' So by this means he shall be used to have me denied to him, otherwise he would be a plaguy trouble and hindrance to me." Anon, weeks later: "He [Raymond] is gone, and will save Patrick some lies in a week: Patrick is grown admirable at it, and will make his fortune." Months later, Harley's mildly mendacious janitor is thus alluded to: "His famous lying porter is fallen sick, and they think he will die: I wish I had all my half-crowns again. I believe I have told you he is an old Scotch fanatic, and the damn'dest liar in his office alive. I have a mind to recommend Patrick to succeed him: I have trained him up pretty well." Again: "Cole Reading's father-in-law has been two or three times at me. He knows not where I lodge, for I told him I lived in the country; and I have ordered Patrick to deny me constantly to him." And what can beat the following?" He [Lord Shelburne] desires that he may not be denied when he comes to see me, which I promised, but will not perform."

Patrick being packed off, Swift gets a new man, who hardly answers the purpose. "Some puppies have found me out, and my man is not such an artist as Patrick in denying me." Three weeks later: "My present man has not yet learned his lesson of denying me discreetly." Six weeks later : 66 My present servant has not yet his lesson perfect of denying me. But courage! Some three months after that we read:

"My man begins to lie pretty well. My man knows all I will see, and denies me to everybody else."* This is the Swift in whose Houyhnhnmland never the meanest servant tells a fib.

Richardson makes it a distinctive characteristic of his chevalier sans reproche that he would have no fibbing done for him by those of his household. His Sir Charles Grandison is depicted as the one man in the world who is remarkable for his truth, while yet unquestionably polite. Sir Charles censures not others for complying with fashions established by custom; but he gives not in to them. "He never perverts the meaning of words. He never, for instance, suffers his servants to deny him, when he is at home. If he is busy, he just finds time to say he is, to unexpected visitors; and if they will stay, he turns them over to his sisters, to Dr. Bartlett, to Emily, till he can attend them."+

Richardson's great contemporary, rival, and literary torment, Henry Fielding, abounds in allusions to domestic denials. When Parson Adams, taking too literally at his word the most insincere of country squires, sends to him to borrow three half-crowns for travelling expenses, his messenger returns with the information (as early as breakfast-time) that the gentleman is not at home. Very well, is the simple parson's reply: but why, child, did you not stay till his return? Go back again, my good boy, and wait for his coming home: he cannot be gone far. and besides, he had no intention to go abroad; for he invited us to spend this day and to-morrow at his house. Therefore go back, child, and tarry till his return home.-The boy departs accordingly, but is back again with great expedition; bringing an account that the gentleman

*Swift's Journal to Stella, 1711-12, passim.

† History of Sir Charles Grandison, vol. iv. let. xxvi.