From The Saturday Review.
FOOLISH THINGS.

THE subject of folly is a wide one. Mr. Buckle's sixteen volumes would hardly exhaust its various manifestations; what, then, can be expected in a single page? But it is also attractive. Nobody is disinclined to have his belief in the universality of folly confirmed by a new instance-every one is ready to speculate on the motive or want of motive of ridiculous human action. But the foolish things we have here set ourselves to speak of are not attractive. They furnish food for anything rather than amused supercilious analysis. Are there any of our readers who never in their own persons say or do foolish things—who are never conscious of having been deserted by their good genius? If there are, we do not write for them. It is one's own foolish things which at present engage our attention, for which we assume the sympathy of fellow-feeling, and reckon on touching an answering chord in other breasts not a few. We are not speaking now of grave errors and mistakes, but of the inadvertencies, weaknesses, and follies which haunt our subordinate, social, man-fearing conscience—which we may not know to have been perceived by any but ourselves, but which nevertheless affect us, not because they are wrong, but silly, and because they may be thought more silly by others even than by ourselves-which leave a sense of self-betrayal, making us ask in bitterness :

made uneasy for days from the notion of having committed some unwarrantable familiarity, which under excitement seemed, and very likely was, perfectly natural.

We are advised to sleep upon certain designs, but it means really to wake upon them. Nothing is more curious than the revulsion a short interval makes in our whole view of things—no magic more bewildering than the transmutations which a few hours of insensibility produce-a few hours of being thrown absolutely upon ourselves. What an idea it gives us of the effect of association, of the action of man upon man! Nobody can allow himself to be real and natural in his intercourse with others, and act as he laid himself out beforehand to act, or as he wishes (we may too often say), on looking back, that he had acted. If this is true in the solemn and weighty affairs of life, it must of necessity be true in the light or less responsible contact of society where the little turns and accidents of the hour are constantly throwing us off our rules, and tempting us to ventures and experiments. All wit, all repartee, all spontaneous effervescence of thought and fancy are of the nature of experiment. All new unplanned revelations of self-all the impulses, in fact, which come of collision with other minds in moments of social excitement, whether pleasurable or irritating-are apt to leave qualms and misgivings on the sensitive and reflective temperament. Thus, especially, sins against taste fret us in the heavy yet busy When we are so unsecret to ourselves?" excitable hour which we have fixed on for They are the things which allow us to go to the levee of these spectres, when our sleep at night with an undisturbed conscience, thoughts, like hounds, scent out disagreeabut wake us with a start hours before the ble things with a miraculous instinct, drag dawn, and set us wondering, How could I them to light, fly from subject to subject, make such a fool of myself? Where was however remote and disconnected, and hem the impulse to that vain show-off? What us round with our own pecadilloes. Society could have induced me to talk of such an in the cold dawn looks on us as a hard taskone-to confide my private concerns to So- master, exacting, unrelenting, seeing everyand-so? For it may be noted that sins of thing, taking account of everything, forgetomission play but a small part in this peri- | ting nothing-judging by externals, and odical tragedy. It is not lost opportunities, but heedless ill-considered speech and action, that fret us at unseasonable hours-some thoughtless license of the tongue, perhaps, or some passing vanity leading to misplaced confidence and weak reliance on sympathy. In the young, the fear of presumption is a fruitful yet innocent source of these stings of memory. Young people are sometimes

"Who shall be true to us

holding its judgments irreversible. For, after all, it is a cowardly time. We are not concerning ourselves now with bonâ fide penitence, but only with its shadow and imitation-a fear of what people will think, a dread of having committed ourselves, whose best alleviation lies in empty resolutions of dedicating the coming day to a general reversal or reparation of yesterday, to a labo

rious mending and patching, which is to by a wise man certainly stands out with a leave us sadder and wiser men; along with startling prominence and distinctness, pointa certain self-confidence (also the offspring ing out the weak place there is in the best of the hour) that if we can only set the past of us. When our wise friend, under some to rights, rectify, explain, recant effectually, malignant influence, says or does something -our present experience will preserve us exceptionally silly, the thing assumes a sort from all future recurrence of even the ten- of life from contrast. It is quoted against dency and temptation to do foolish things. him, and perhaps in some quarters a permaWe own this to be cowardly. It is fortunate nently lower estimate of mind and character that we cannot mould ourselves on the model is the consequence. Do the same things of these morbid regrets; for the influences that in this case strike us strike the perpewhich make us seem to ourselves so different trator? Can a wise man say a foolish thing in the rubs of domestic and social life from and remain forever unconscious of it? One our solitary selves—so that we are constantly thing we must believe-it cannot be only a taking ourselves by surprise-are not all latent self-conceit in the midst of our hubad ones. They may be more unselfish miliations and self-reproaches that leads us than those which impel to remorse, and to assume them not universal. There are make us feel so sore against ourselves. people so uniformly foolish, so constantly There is a certain generous throwing of impertinent, rash, talkative, unsecret, or one's self into the breach in some crisis, blundering, that if revisited by their errors, whether grave or gay, which often brings solitude would be one long penance which us to grief. There is a certain determined could not fail to tell upon their outer aspect. devotion to the matter in hand, a resolution The fool par excellence is not, we gladly become what may to carry a thing through, lieve, haunted by his folly. It is when we which is better than caution, though by no have departed from our real charactermeans a subject for self-congratulation at when our instincts have failed us-when we five o'clock in the morning; or, indeed, so have gone against ourselves-that we writhe long as it lives in the memory at all. On under tormenting memories. the whole, it is better as it is. We are The subject is worth dwelling upon for gainers in freedom by living in a world one reason. If, with the exception of conwhere it is possible to commit one's self-to spicuous fools, we could realize that this go beyond intentions-to be impulsive, in-class of regrets are not due to our particular cautious. If everybody were' as self-pos- idiosyncrasy, but are a common scourge of sessed, as much on his guard as we wish we weak, vain, irritable, boasting humanity, it had been in these periods of harassed med- ought to conduce to charity in our judgitation, society would not be a very refreshments. If we could believe that the people ing or invigorating sphere.

we dislike suffer these penances, and could give them credit for waking with a twinge an hour earlier than usual, under the re

This is a surer source of consolation, as far as our observation goes, than any argument from analogy that our fears delude us. If membrance of impertinence, vanity, unkindwe look round on those of our friends whose prudence we can scarcely hope to equal, far less to surpass-whom we trust for manner, discretion, and judgment-there is scarcely one who does not now and then disappoint or surprise us by some departure from his usual right way of thinking and acting, by committing some moral or social solecism, just one of the things to haunt the first waking hour. We are not meaning merely clever people for cleverness has a prescriptive right to do foolish things-but wise and sensible people who have a rule of action, and habitually go by it-habitually, but not always; and a foolish thing done or said

ness, persuaded that certain definite offences against our taste and feeling would haunt their solitary walk and make the trial of their day, we could not but learn patience and toleration. But we are apt to regard our annoyance as the penalty of an exceptionally sensitive social conscience. We and the people we care for cannot do foolishly without feeling sorry for it without going through the expiation of a pang; but the people we dislike are insensible, coarse, obtuse, dull, and brutish. Theirs has not been a mistake, which implies a departure from their nature, but an acting up to it and according to it. They are therefore showing

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themselves as they are when they show themselves most unpleasant and repulsive.

crushed by them. In the heat of composition we foresee those cooler, cautious hours in the distance, and defy them. We have a dim notion that we are doing a foolish thing, but we will act while conviction is supreme, and we send off our letter to repent sometimes how bitterly!

Another mode of reconciling ourselves to this prompt Nemesis of minor follies is that it may possibly preserve us from greater ones. It may both imply caution, and keep our caution in practice and repair. We have already made an exception in favor of It has been cleverly said that the whole fools; but are people subject to rash im- folly of this proceeding lies not in the writpulses-impulses swaying their whole des- ing, which is an excellent valve to the feeltiny and the fate of others-who find a ings, but in the sending; and certainly very pleasure in staking the future on some un- few letters, written under immediate provoconsidered chance, ever visited by regrets for cation, would be sent if the writers slept a having merely exposed themselves in no more night upon them. But the pen can do foolweighty matter than some foolish breach of ish things-things below the writer's standconfidence or lapse of propriety? Are peo-ard of speech and action-without provocaple habitually unguarded ever visited by tion. There are many people whose intellect lesser remorse? Is not this rather a conflict where habitual caution is every now and then betrayed by counter influences? Does a man who is always boasting ever remember any particular boast with a pang? Does one who is always betraying secrets and revealing his own and other people's privacy -always talking of himself, always maudlin, always ill-natured or sarcastic-ever writhe under the recollection of his follies? It is hard to be lenient towards some people, however much it is our duty to think the best.

and judgment would stand much higher in the world's estimation if they had never been taught to write. Men write letters and women write notes in total neglect of the rules which guide their conversation, and which win them sometimes an extraordinary reputation for good sense. A whole swarm of absurd impulses cluster round the pen, which leave them alone at other times. A propensity for interference and giving advice is one of these a passion for explanations, a memory for old grievances, and a faith in But whatever tenderness may be shown the efficacy of formal, prolix, minute statetowards foolish things acted or spoken, what- ments of wrong, along with querulous hints, ever beneficent purpose may be assigned to unpalatable suggestions and insinuations them in the social economy, our leniency generally-all of which are foolish because ends here. Little can be said ethically, and they cannot, in the nature of things, have a nothing prudentially, for foolish things writ- good issue, and flow from the ready pen in ten-for outbreaks of our follies and tempers oblivion of obvious consequences, which elseon paper; and yet what a fruitful source of where hold the writer in salutary check. these regrets has the pen been with some of Indeed, the pen often wakes a set of feelus! And never has the sting been sharper ings which are not known to exist without than when we realize that our imprudence is it. If we must be foolish sometimes, let us in black and white, beyond our reach, irre- then give our folly as short a term as possivocable. The pen gives us a power of hav-ble. If it must leave traces behind, our ing our say out which speech seldom does. We are free from the unaccountable, almost solemn, control that man in bodily presence has over man. Fresh from some injury, we have the plea, the retort, the reproof, the flippancy, the good things in our hands without danger of interruption. We will write it while the subject is fresh and vivid, and the arguments so clear that our correspondent cannot fail of being struck, persuaded,

memory is a better and safer archive than our enemy's, or even our friend's, writing table. Therefore, if any warning of the fit is granted, if a man have any reason for misgivings, let him, before all things, beware of pen and ink. Things are seldom quite hopeless till they are committed to paper-a scrape is never at its worst till it has given birth to a correspondence.