escaped, the world will soon hear of me, and the justice of my claim will soon become apparent, in London first, and then in the East." "And were they unkind to you in the asylum?" Grace inquired. "No. I had all material comforts-good food, and good lodging and attendance. But they deprived me of my liberty; they passed over my claim to greatness. In these things they were worse than unkind; they were in the pay of my enemies they were enemies themselves." And her eyes flashed. "And you escaped from them yesterday, and found your way at night, and by accident, to Tyne Hall?"" "Yes; and the woman who would have crushed you out of life—I saw her face by the lantern-she was one of my enemies-she would have killed me, too, if she could.” Grace did not understand this, and she passed it over. "And you do not know where to find your friends in London ?" she asked next. "No. I must proclaim my rights, and my friends will flock to my standard." "Ah! Have you enough money to live on in the mean time?" The Queen of the East displayed her resources-three half-sovereigns and some silver. "But that is not enough to take you to London," Grace remonstrated. "Is it not?" "Not by the first-class, and a queen would not think of travelling by any other. Now be advised by me, and give up this journey to London till I can go with you; till then, remain here with this honest Yorkshirewoman, who will take her directions from me. Can you trust me?" "Yes," she answered, unhesitatingly. "I trust you with everything now, even with my personal liberty; but do not leave me here very long." "Not more than a day or two, I trust," Grace answered; and she went into the other room to speak alone to their hostess. She explained that the lady, on one subject, was not perfectly in her right mind, but that she was sensible on all ordinary topics, and was quite harmless. She offered the woman fair remuneration if she would agree to do the best she could for her, for a time that might not exceed one day, but that might possibly extend to two or three. The lady was to be persuaded to remain in the cottage, and her presence there was to be denied to all inquirers. The shrewd Yorkshire-woman demurred at first, but brightened at the offered reward, and at Grace's assurance that it would be "honest gain." Grace's face and manner went for something, and the bargain was concluded. Grace took a tender farewell of the Queen of the East, advised her to keep very quiet in the inner room of the little cottage, lest her enemies should catch sight of her, and then she hastened on her way to the police-station at Basnet, from whence she intended to be taken before a magistrate to assert her identity, and to expose the plot that had deprived Mr. Josiah Meadows-Grace Meadows' legal heir-of his, rightful possessions. Now it will be obvious to the most casual observer that the kindest and most sensible thing that Grace could possibly do, would be to return the unfortunate monomaniac to the asylum, where, as she acknowledged, she had only met with kind treatment, and where the skill of an experienced practitioner would be exerted to effect her cure. But Grace was very far from being a strong-minded young lady, and she could not do this thing, although she had plenty of common sense, and knew very well that philosophers and moralists of every degree would see the propriety of it, and would urge that, for the sake of the poor monomaniac herself, no faith should be kept with her. Grace owed to her both life and liberty; she could not resolve to use these gifts in depriving her preserver of her liberty, in returning her to the living tomb that she evidently hated so much, although she had nothing definite to urge against it. Grace owed to her kindness the very dress that she was wearing; she could not walk away in it and betray her, although that betrayal might be justified on high and philanthropic grounds. She felt her way, rather than reasoned it, and this is what she resolved to do: she would put herself at once under the protection of the law, asserting her identity, and seeing that justice was done; she would be silent concerning the event of the past night, and the escape of the monomaniac; she would seek Mr. Renshaw's advice, in finding a home for herself, where she might live quietly on the small property that belonged to her under her father's will, and to that home the Queen of the East should be removed as quickly as possible. Grace had been told that William Brooks, believing her to be dead, had contracted another engagement; her natural ties were broken; she had nothing now to live for; she would give all her time and all her attention to this unfortunate woman, striving to alleviate her great misfortune, and even hoping that in time her loving care might bring about a cure. She did not consider that in the mean time the relations of the monomaniac must be exceedingly unhappy about her; she had learnt rather to distrust and question the kindness of relations, and, considering her experiences, she was not, perhaps, so much to blame. She went on quickly, though she was very tired with her previous walk, for every minute seemed long to her until the conspiracy to which she had nearly fallen a victim was exposed, and Mr. Meadows was restored to his legal rights. ABOUT SOPHISMS THAT PLAIN SENSE CAN NEITHER ANSWER NOR ACCEPT. A CUE FROM SHAKSPEARE. BY FRANCIS JACOX. WOLSEY'S dialectics before the court, to the prejudice of Queen Katharine's matrimonial status, and in vindication of his own impartiality and integrity in the cause, elicit from her the impatient protest, My lord, my lord, I am a simple woman, much too weak To oppose your cunning.* When with another Cardinal, Campeius, Wolsey afterwards waits on Katharine at the palace at Bridewell, and the two together perplex her with their proffered services and counsel,— is her sceptical response: To betray me, My lords, I thank you both for your good wills, In such a point of weight, so near mine honour In truth, I know not.t And in dismissing their Eminences, once again she bids them remember, if they have thought her unmannerly, that she is a woman, lacking wit to make a seemly answer to such persons. When the Grand Master of the Templars bids the chaplain of the order stand forth, and refute the tenets of the Jewish maiden, Rebecca, that "obstinate infidel" meekly breaks in upon Beaumanoir's flowing mandate, and simply says: "Forgive the interruption; I am a maiden, unskilled to dispute for my religion, but I can die for it, if it be God's will."+ So true as to be a truism is Dr. Holmes's remark, that we all have to assume a standard of judgment in our own minds, either of things or persons; that a man who is willing to take another's opinion has to exercise his judgment in the choice of whom to follow, which is often as nice a matter as to judge of things for one's self. "It does not follow, of course, that I may not recognise another man's thoughts as broader and deeper than my own; but that does not necessarily change my opinion, otherwise this would be at the mercy of every superior mind that held a different one. How many of our most cherished beliefs are like those drinking-glasses of the ancient pattern, that serve us well so long as we keep them in our hand, but spill all if we attempt to set them down !”"§ * King Henry VIII., Act II. Sc. 4. Ivanhoe, ch. xxxix. † Act III. Sc. 1. § Autocrat of the Breakfast-table, 16. To Balfour of Burley expatiating upon the inspiration claimed by fanatics of his sect, and its bearing on the deed of blood in which he has lately borne a leading part, Henry Morton can only reply, "These are subjects, Mr. Balfour, on which I am ill qualified to converse with you; but I own I should strongly doubt the origin of any inspiration which seemed to dictate a line of conduct contrary to those feelings of natural humanity, which Heaven has assigned to us as the general law of our conduct.”* Mr. Froude gives it as his opinion that there is no just ground on which to condemn conscientious Catholics on the score of persecution, only this: that as we are convinced of the injustice of the persecuting laws, so among those who believed them to be just, there were some who were led by an instinctive protest of human feeling to be lenient in the execution of those laws; while others of harder nature and narrower sympathies enforced them without reluctance, and even with exultation. "The heart, when it is rightly constituted, corrects the folly of the head; and wise good men, even though they entertain no conscious misgiving as to the soundness of their theories, may be delivered from the worst consequences of them, by trusting their more genial instincts.”† 66 and It is not always possible, as Hazlitt says, to assign a reason for the faith that is in us," not even if we take time and summon up all our strength; but it does not therefore follow that our faith is hollow and unfounded. The feeling of the truth of anything, or the soundness of the judgment formed upon it from repeated, actual impressions, he shows to be one thing; the power of vindicating and enforcing it, by distinctly appealing to or explaining those impressions, quite another. "The most fluent talkers or most plausible reasoners are not always the justest thinkers." One of Hazlitt's illustrations is the peasant who is able to foretel rain from the appearance of the clouds, because (time out of mind) he has seen that appearance followed by that consequence; shall a pedant, it is asked, catechise him out of a conviction which he has found true in innumerable instances, because he does not understand the composition of the elements, or cannot put his notions into a logical shape? The essayist maintains that in what "comes home to the business and bosoms of men" there is less of uncertainty and presumption than in the vexed questions of world-wide controversy; and that here, in the little world of our own knowledge and experience, we can hardly do better than attend to the "still, small voice" of our own hearts and feelings, instead of being browbeaten by the effrontery, or puzzled by the sneers and cavils of pedants and sophists, of whatever school or description. A Saturday Reviewer objects to the "arbitrary principles" on which writers of Sir William Hamilton's school (of logic) endeavour to confine reasoning, on various subjects, within the circle of those abstract arguments which exhaust, not the matter itself, but their knowledge of it. At the present day, for instance, as he points out, it is perpetually dinned into one's ears that there is "no logical standing-ground" between some pinnacle of supposed wisdom or orthodoxy, and some abyss of absurdity or dissent. Despotism or Universal Suffrage, Suppression of all doubts 66 * Old Mortality, ch. vi. Froude, History of England, i. 155. Hazlitt's Essay on Prejudice. or Universal Scepticism, Romanism or Atheism, Anglicanism or Atheism, Verbal Inspiration or Atheism, are the alternatives of those who wilfully close their eyes to all but a few abstract ideas, and wish others to do the like. Usually, such arguments, however unimpeachable hypothetically, are the refuges and strongholds of ignorance, and are best answered by declining to follow suit in self-mutilation." The foxes in the fable, we are pertinently reminded, listened respectfully to their adviser's dissertation on the advantages of having no tail, but they laughed at his proposal that they should cut off theirs.* Again, in a review of Professor Mansel's Bampton Lectures,† the inquiry occurs, how are we to distinguish between a regulative truth and a delusion? Not by the intellect, because it is met by contradictions in both, though in the falsehood at an earlier stage. Perhaps, then, it is suggested, by the moral nature-by the feeling in the soul of a deep and cogent need? "Let Philosophy say what she will, the fact remains unshaken," is Mr. Mansel's own assertion. A practical application of the subject occurs in an exposition of the almost no effect at all produced by the Christian missionary by preaching to Hindoos that Hindooism is sanguinary, tyrannical, capricious, absurd, obscene, and inconsistent with any reasonably benevolent economy of the earth and man. "It may be so; but how is the Hindoo touched by it, if his creed is true, and his gods are really what he takes them to be? The cogency of the objection will be understood by every one who has any idea what an ancient superstition is when it is so firmly enthroned as not to feel itself accountable either to science or to the moral sense."+ Hume enforces his celebrated argument that all our reasonings concerning causes and effects are derived from nothing but custom, and that belief is more properly an act of the sensitive than of the active part of our natures, by appealing to any reader's experience, which, says Hume, "will sufficiently convince him, that although he finds no error in my arguments, yet he still continues to believe and think and reason as usual," -so that "he may safely conclude that his reasoning and belief is some sensation or peculiar manner of conception, which 'tis impossible for mere ideas and reflection to destroy."§ Locke alleges as one of the reasons which made him doubt whether syllogism be the only proper instrument of reason in the discovery of truth, the fact that scholastic forms of disputation are not less liable than the plainer sort to very egregious fallacies. They entangle, not instruct, the mind. Whence it results, on his showing, that men, even when they "baffled and silenced in this scholastic way, are seldom or never convinced, and so brought over to the conquering side: they perhaps are * Saturday Review, No. 295. Art. "Hamilton's Logic." † Ibid., No. 197. Hence it would seem there is more plausibility than is usually supposed in the arguments of those who would make instruction in morals the first step in the evangelisation of India. "The scheme has been suspected as smacking of the spiritual coldness of the last century, but the deeper insight we get into the religions of the East, the more shall we be convinced that the first thing is to elevate the moral instincts of the people to their rightful ascendancy," &c.Christianity in India and China (Ibid., vi. 224). § Treatise of Human Nature, part iv. sect. 1. |