haps, a wholesome one, it grapples with our best and our worst feelings. We fear its irony, we so dread its pity, we dare not be unlike all others—for who is exempt from yearning to seem as he sees all others are, to rejoice sometimes like his fellows?"* Sin Often, perhaps, a wholesome sway? "I like the system of scandal," says one of Lord Lytton's dames spirituelles and unspiritual; "the policy of fear keeps many of us virtuous. might not be odious, if we did not tremble at the consequences even of appearances." The shame of being disesteemed by those with whom one hath lived, and to whom one would recommend oneself, says John Locke, is the great source and discretion of most of the actions of men.‡ Arguing that Character is a more felicitous reputation than Glory, Lord Lytton, in an early volume of essays that prefigured his Caxtoniana, pronounces it a principle of the wise man not to despise the opinion of the world, and to "respect the Legislation of Decorum;" at the same time allowing, that that Character is built on a false and hollow basis, which is formed not from the dictates of our own breast, but solely from the fear of censure. Sir Charles Grandison protests to the Hon. Miss Byron, "Indeed I would not be thought to despise the world's opinion: the world, when it will have patience to stay till it is master of facts, is not always wrong; it can judge of others better than it can act itself."|| Does not even anti-conventional Owen Meredith make it the chief fault of his Lucile, that she has too utter a disregard of appearances-is too deficient in respect for what we have just seen an elder Lytton style the Legislation of Decorum? And, indeed her chief fault was this unconscious scorn Of the world, to whose usages woman is born. Not the WORLD, where that word implies all human nature, The Creator's great gift to the need of the creature: That large heart, with its sorrow to solace, its care To assuage, and its grand aspirations to share: But the world, with encroachments that chafe and perplex, With its men against man, and its sex against sex. "Ah, what will the world say?" with her was a query Rejection in thought of the answer before It was heard hence the thing which she sought to ignore And escape from in thought, she encountered in act By the blindness with which she opposed it. ¶ There is a golden mean between this indiscreet defiance, and the * Violet; or, the Danseuse, ch. xiii. † Ernest Maltravers, book ii. ch. iii. Locke's Journal, 1679. The Student: On the Departure of Youth. History of Sir Charles Grandison, vol. vi. let. xxviii. 66 poor-creaturely dependence of one like Mrs. Gore's Cadogan of Everleigh, who had so magnified, to his own esteem, the opinion of the world, that he had learned to dote on it as on a favourite mistress; to load it with the incense of his adoration; to sacrifice his fortune and convenience to its caprices; and to choose his friends, his habitation, his habits, according to its whims.* "Sterne avait trop raison," writes Henri Beyle: nous ne sommes que des pièces de monnaie effacées; mais ce n'est pas le temps qui nous a usés, c'est la terreur de ridicule." Mr. Helps thinks it worth while to analyse that influence of the world which is what he calls the right arm of conformity. Some persons bend to the world in all things, from an innocent belief that what so many people think must be right. Others, he goes on to say, have a vague fear of the world as of some wild beast which may spring out upon them at any time. "Tell them they are safe in their houses from this myriad-eyed creature: they still are sure that they shall meet with it some day, and would propitiate its favour at any sacrifice." Then again many men contract their idea of the world, he adds, to their own circle, and what they imagine to be said in that circle of friends and acquaintances is their idea of public opinion-"as if," to use a saying of Southey's, "a number of worldlings made a world." While, once more, with some unfortunate people, the much-dreaded "world" shrinks into one person of more mental power than their own, or, perhaps, merely of coarser nature: and the fancy as to what this person will say about anything they do, sits upon them like a nightmare.‡ It is well remarked by a reviewer of "Adam Bede," that when Hetty's misery and shame come upon her, we comprehend what they must be to a mind which had no desires out of the world's estimation, and whose whole world was centred in one little spot; for the narrower our range of acquaintance and knowledge, thought and imagination, the greater power shame has upon us. "Geographically, the world is a large place; to most of us it is circumscribed enough; and to some all the world is the village, the street, the court in which they live. No other eyes, opinions, or judgments are thought of than are comprised within their narrow bounds."§ In a latter-day story called "The Genteel Pigeons," Mr. and Mrs. Pigeon are designed to represent that numerous and unhappy class of people who believe that "the world"-in reality comprising some fifteen acquaintances has no other aim, no other thought, than that of watching the important movements of their The Hamiltons, chap. xxiv. † De Stendhal, Racine et Shakspeare, ch. viii. Bentley's Quarterly Review, ii. 445. important selves;-the said world being all the time inhumanly indifferent to their very existence. "The world" is thought by these poor folks to be a very despotic, watchful, tyrannous, unforgiving creature; whereas this author strives to reassure them into the assurance that, as far as regards them and their doings, the world is a very easy, careless kind of person. "There never was such a goblin-such a mere bugbear as that we make out of the unconscious, the indifferent world: it is the scooped turnip fixed on a sheeted mopstick, and lighted with a candle; a hideous apparition, scaring the stoutest traveller in his highways and byways of life. Happy the man who with a clear breast goes whistling on, easy that he knows the harmless things the spectre is made of!"* For what else than spectral, in this sense, is The world, that never sets esteem On what things are, but what they seem.† You can no more exercise your reason, says Sydney Smith, if you live in the constant dread of laughter, than you can enjoy your life, if you are in the constant terror of death. One of the pests which dog Civilisation, says Julius Hare, the more so the farther it advances, is the fear of ridicule, and seldom has the contagion been so noxious as in England at this day. Is there anybody living, he asks, among the upper classes at least, who has not often been laughed out of what he ought to have done, and laughed into what he ought not to have done? "And then, after having been laughed down ourselves, we, too, join the pack who go about laughing down others."§ In proportion to a man's want of confidence in his own solitary judgment, does he usually repose, with implicit trust, as Mr. J. Stuart Mill says, on the infallibility of "the world" in general. And the world, to each individual, means the petty part of it with which he comes in contact. Even in what people do for pleasure, conformity is the first thing thought of; they like in crowds; they exercise choice only among things commonly done: peculiarity of taste, eccentricity of conduct, are shunned equally with crimes: until, by dint of not following their own nature, they have no nature to follow. Hence, "in this age the mere example of nonconformity, the mere refusal to bend the knee to custom, is itself a service. Precisely because the tyranny of opinion is such as to make eccentricity a reproach, it is desirable, in order to break through that tyranny, that people should be eccentric." Lord Lytton makes his Lord L'Estrange exhibit whimsical peculiarities of character which obtain for him the repute *Cakes and Ale: The Genteel Pigeons. Butler, the Elephant in the Moon. Moral Philosophy, lect. x. § Guesses at Truth, First Series. Essay on Liberty, by J. S. Mill, p. 120, cf. pp. 35 sq. 110. of heartlessness in the world. "Perhaps the reader may think the world was not in the right. But if ever the world does judge rightly of the character of a man who does not live for the world, talk for the world, or feel for the world, it will be centuries after the soul of Harley L'Estrange has done with this planet."* Qui est donc tout ce monde-là, s'il vous plait? asks M. Jourdain, when Madame says that he will have tout le monde laughing at him. And she answers: Tout ce monde-là est un monde qui a raison, et qui est plus sage que vous.† Madame Jourdain happened to be right-but Monsieur's query is so sound-sensical per se, and abstracted from his burgher gentility, that one can't help wishing he were not in the wrong. "Elle ne voulait pas," says of one of his daughters Balzac's Lear of private life (and that life Parisian exceedingly), "elle avait peur qu'on ne dît des bêtises; comme si le monde valait le bonheur !" The world is his who can see through its pretensions, says Emerson, in one place.§ And in another, "For nonconformity the world whips you with its displeasure. And therefore a man must know how to estimate a sour face." is easy in the world to live after the world's opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after our own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude. To apply a verse of Keble's, let the world take him as it may, he will not change his road. Or as a stanza of Mrs. Browning's has it: I would not champ the hard cold bit, As those of what the world thinks fit- *My Novel, book v. ch. iv. † Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme, Acte iii. sc. 3. Le Père Goriot. Self Reliance. Man Thinking. It 26 ST. SERF AND THE ROBIN. BY WILLIAM JONES. It is a simple, time-old story— Nor pillar'd saint, nor anchorite, The birds, the trees, the fruit, the flow'rs, But it behoves me to relate How Serf, as monkish writers state, And seem'd to follow, page by page, The bow was thus, at times, unbent; But though the shafts were wing'd with wit, |