been dead ever since the night on which his tragedy was damned.

Yet the prima donna who sweeps past him, shooting onward like a star, and seeming to breathe empyreal air, is surely living in every atom of the bright dust whereof she is formed. So indeed it would appear, for to the eye she is life all over, the personification of whatever can be comprehended in the idea of existence. But what a bad judge of visible facts the eye is, and how necessary is it sometimes to see with the heart. Viewed through that medium, sympathy proclaims her to have been some time deceased. When her darling sister, cleverer, younger, and handsomer than herself came out with such brilliant success at the other house, the vital spark fled. All talk of life after that had about as much meaning in it as the song she excels in. She still gives, it must be admitted, the most startling tokens of an active and indestructible animation; but these are only the mock-heroic contortions of the eel, after it has been neatly skinned, and cut carefully into inches.

There is another popular phrase which clearly implies that death is not at all incompatible with a protracted stay within the precincts of existence. Poor So-and-so, say the commentators on mortality, "is dead and gone,” intimating that to die is not necessarily to go, and that the defunct are not always the departed; "dead and gone" describes the double event, whenever that takes place; the exception and not the rule. The currency of the phrase strengthens our argument that dying and going are not synonymous terms, and that we may long continue to have crowds of the deceased for our intimate acquaintances.

It is interesting to remark how varied are the periods of demise among the classes referred to, and how oppo

site are the causes which have rendered the obituary of the living so extensive. One who professes to be sixtyfive, and vows that he has lived all those years, died at the age of forty, in consequence of his success in a duel with a near relative. Another, who conceives himself to have attained to middle age, was, in reality, cut off in the very flower of his youth, by a shilling delicately introduced in his father's will. A third, a maiden, antiquated and thinner than all her tribe, by virtue of taking nothing but tea and cribbage, breathed her last (in spite of her hushed sigh, or her small sarcasm, that may seem to say she still survives), a long time ago, on the day when the gallant adventurer, who had twice danced with her after she was six-and-twenty, sailed for India without making the fondly expected offer.

For a pair of positive existences, as far as first appearances go, we need look no further than to this old sweeper at the crossing, and the occupant of the carriage rolling over it. Whosoever should conceive them to be actually living would decide wholly in the dark, and pronounce upon a case without a fact to judge it by. Sudden death overtook the unhappy cross-sweeper at the age of thirty, when he lost every sixpence of his large fortune; and the loller in the carriage expired in as sudden a manner at a later age, when he came quite unexpectedly into a fine estate. One lost a tin-mine, and the other found a canal; both perished prematurely.

Prosperity and adversity, satiated appetite, defeated ambition, brilliant success, wounded honour, blighted affection, filial ingratitude; the hundred incidents, dark or bright, which make up in their confused and yet consistent combination, the history of every human life; each of these, occurring at a critical moment, may bring the real finis long before the story appears to have arrived at its conclusion. The cold, formal, appointed

ending, is simply an affair for the apothecary and the gravedigger.

The sentiment which first suggested the wearing of mourning was beautiful and holy; but custom strips it of this sanctity; its poetry has become a commonplace; and in the adoption of the ceremony the heart silently heaving with sorrow and honour for the dead, has no concern. Still, if the fashion is to be continued, it may at least be turned to a higher use, and be made to serve sincerer ends. The suit of mourning is in few cases put on soon enough! If we would invest the custom with grace and dignity, elevating it with moral sentiment, we should sometimes wear the black dress while the mourned is yet amongst us. Letters to old friends must then be written, often perhaps on black-bordered paper, indicating our regret for their loss; and the crape upon the hat we touch to a former companion, as we pass him by, might be worn, poor moral skeleton! for himself.

It is painful, after an absence of a few years, to return to a family circle in which we had stored up a thousand friendly and affectionate memories; where we expected to find the bright deep well-spring of sympathy, bright, deep, and clear as of old, and see nothing there but dry sand; Time's glass pouring out its contents over and over again, only to increase the heap and make a desert of the garden, every hour adding a little handful to the disappointing, the desolate, the hideous waste.

What a mockery of the heart, as we stand in the midst and look mournfully around, to attempt to persuade ourselves that we are amongst the living; merely because they all regularly breathe and wear no shroud! Count the faces there; in number, but in number only, they are the same; look into them for the old recognition, and the death's head is grinning. We feel that

we have just shaken hands with the late Mr. Jones, who has forgotten to get himself buried. The act of friendship, in this case the ceremonial, has sent a chill to the soul. The momentary contact with that cold nature was freezing; at the bare touch of his hand, we feel horrid rheumatism running up the right arm.

It is the same as we proceed round the circle. The friends and companions of our youth are no more. The eldest son perished of a scarlet coat on obtaining a cornetcy, and the eldest daughter died a sadder death when she joined the saints. The remainder became defunct in succession, each in his own favourite way. When we take our leave, it is bidding adieu to the dead. The ordinary courtesies there would be anomalous and absurd to the last degree; for they must come in the form of inquiries concerning the departed, "How is your late lamented father?" or, "I hope your deceased sisters will go to the opera on Tuesday."

EVERY-DAY LYING.

Believe none of us!-Hamlet.

As speech was given unto the wise man that he might conceal his thoughts, so (vir sapit qui pauca loquitur) thought must have been given unto the same personage that he might conceal his speech. This apparent contradiction was necessary to the interests of truth. Many lies are thought which are never spoken, but there are as many spoken which are never thought.

If every deviation from truth's straight line constitute a falsehood, then the human tongue teems with lies; we breathe them in myriads. Not a creature has opened

its mouth this day without telling ten thousand. Plain speaking in that case is false speaking, and silence is the sole remedy for the evil. Lying is our language.

The best or the worst of it is, that the moralists who have written upon lying are so imbued, to the heart's core, with the universal vice that they are not to be believed on their oaths. Essays upon lying are only additions to the stock; and nobody who casts an eye upon this page is so absurdly credulous as to suppose that one grain of truth lurks in a single syllable that blots it. We write lies, speak lies, think lies, and dream lies while we are lying in bed.

Those who admit a multiplicity, only recognise two classes of lies, black and white. But there is the gray lie, which goes into black and white, and lives to be venerable; there is the green lie, which, from its simplicity, is easily detected; there is the red lie, which is glaring; and the blue, which is a favourite with the literary. These, however, are well known, though not classed. They are more or less premeditated, all of them. Some have their origin in utter malignity, some in mere selfishness, or wicked sport.

But the lies uttered in courtesy and goodnature exceed them in number as a thousand to one! They are spoken in perfect innocence, and never had in a single instance the slightest chance of harming any human being. The true white lie, which is selfish and defensive ("not at home," and "I promise to pay," may be received as illustrations), frequently takes people in; but the undeceptive conventional lie, uttered in pure tenderness for others, is as superior to the selfish white, as the white is to the scandalous black.

There is something consoling in the reflection, that great as is the vice of lying, nine-tenths of it as now in practice spring from the virtues! The vilest miscreant,