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Only the actions of the just

Smell sweet and blossom in the dust."

The first verse only of George Herbert's "Virtue" is familiar to men; all four have a music and a meaning of their own :"Sweet day, so cool, so calm, so bright,

The bridal of the earth and sky,
The dew shall weep thy fall to-night;
For thou must die.

"Sweet rose, whose hue angry and brave
Bids the rash gazer wipe his eye,

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AN ULTRA-PROTESTER.

ST. MATTHEW xxvi. 33-35, 69–75.

O have written it ultra-Protestant, would mislead into an expectation of polemical matter, offensive to Orangeism, and entirely alien from the purpose. For who is the hyperprotester, not to write it ultra-Protestant, of whom we speak? None other than St. Peter. Nominally the first Pope. But let that pass. Whether technically an ultra-Protestant or not, -let that pass too. It is with his surplusage of protestations, vehemently asserted, and anon ignominiously ignored, that we are at present concerned. Though all men, all, should be offended because of Christ, should stumble and fall because of Him, yet would he never be offended, never stumble, never lose his footing, firm as a rock, firm as his own name, Peter, Cephas; a rock on which the Church was to be built. The

protest ofthe apostle won no meed of thanks and assurance of conviction from his Lord. He who needed not that any should testify of man, for He knew what was in man--and knew what was wanting in this man,-waved aside, as absolutely worthless, the perfervid protestations of the impulsive son of Jonas. Thrice should Peter deny Him before dawn of another day. Deny Him? Had it come to that? The protester must become ultra in his protests. "Though I should die with Thee, yet will I not deny Thee!" It would be beside the mark here to take into account the other voces et præterea nihil, echoing the same thing-protested notes at the best-for likewise also said all the disciples. Peter is their representative man, and ours.

Gertrude's comment in "Hamlet," on the accumulated asseverations of the stage-queen, "The lady doth protest too much, methinks," has passed into a proverb. "The more vehemently they assert, the less credit they obtain for sincerity," observes Hartley Coleridge, of some examples of impulsive womankind. Racine's Bérénice turns the tables on Titus in this regard, when she tells him,

"Hé quoi! vous me jurez une éternelle ardeur,
Et vous me la jurez avec cette froideur!
Pourquoi même du ciel attester la puissance?
Faut-il par des serments vaincre ma défiance?

Mon cœur ne prétend point, seigneur, vous démentir;
Et je vous en croirai sur un simple soupir."

How fulsome and hollow, exclaims Marcus Antoninus, does that man look who cries, "I'm resolved to deal clearly with you." Hark you, friend, the philosophic emperor addresses him, "what need of all this flourish? let your actions speak." Mr. Disraeli, in his earliest book, has an eloquent paragraph on "that eagerness of protestation which," in the man charged with criminality, "is a sure sign of crime." There is as much of overacting one's part on the great stage of life, as on the mimic boards; and that with graver issues and a drearier fate.

When the subtle and ambitious John of Gischala, pursuing

his own dark course, as it is traced in the "History of the Jews," joined outwardly the party of Ananus, and was active beyond others in council and camp, he yet kept up a secret correspondence with the Zealots, to whom he betrayed all the movements of the assailants. "To conceal this secret he redoubled his assiduities, and became so extravagant in his protestations of fidelity to Ananus and his party, that he completely overacted his part, and incurred suspicion." His intended dupes began gradually, and none too soon, to look with a jealous eye on their too obsequious, most obedient, and most devoted

servant.

Describing the ten dreary years during which (A.D. 11981208), with but short intervals of truce, Germany was abandoned to all the horrors of civil war, Dean Milman observes that "the repeated protestations" of Pope Innocent III., that he was not the cause of these fatal discords, betray the fact that he was accused of the guilt, and that he had to wrestle with his own conscience to acquit himself of the charge. Sir Thomas Overbury suggestively avers that

"He that says oft that he is not in love,

By repetition doth himself disprove."

Hawthorne remarks that Italian asseverations of any questionable fact, though uttered with rare earnestness of manner, never vouch for themselves as coming from any depth, like roots drawn out of the substance of the soul, with some of the soil clinging to them. Their energy expends itself in exclamation. The vaulting ambition of their hyperboles overleaps itself, and falls on the other side. Swift refers to oaths in the mouth of a gamester, as ever most used as their truth is most questioned.

"Tis not the many oaths that make the truth,

But the plain single vow, that is vowed true,"

says Shakspeare's Diana of Florence. And though from Shakspeare to Wolcot is a descent indeed, Peter Pindar is for once quotable when he writes,

"Truth needs not, John, the eloquence of oaths,

Not more so than a decent suit of clothes

Requires of broad gold lace the expensive glare,
That makes the linsey-woolsey million stare;
Besides, a proverb, suited to my wish,

Declares that swearing never catches fish."

That scapegrace guardian of George Canning's boyhood, Mr. Reddish, is said to have been significantly fond, on quite trivial occasions, of making affidavits,—“the refuge of base and vulgar minds," Robert Bell calls them,—as if he, Reddish, felt that his word was not to be believed. Cowper is caustic in his application of St. Paul's statement, that oaths terminate all strife, for "some men have surely then a peaceful life!" he infers, in lines that go on to tell how

"Asseveration blustering in your face

Makes contradiction such a hopeless case;
In every tale they tell, or false or true,
Well-known, or such as no man ever knew,
They fix attention, heedless of your pain,
With oaths like rivets forced into the brain ;
And e'en when sober truth prevails throughout,
They swear it, till affirmance breeds a doubt."

The imprecation of Corneille's Dorante, Que le foudre à vos yeux m'écrase si je mens! only evokes from Clarice the contemptuous rebuff, Un menteur [which, and more than which, emphatically, Dorante is, for he is Le Menteur,] est toujours prodigue de serments. So again Racine's Theseus: Toujours les scélérats ont recours au parjure,-when Hippolytus begins to call heaven, and earth, and universal nature to witness, etc. So, too, Chamont, in Otway's tragedy: "When a man talks of love, with caution trust him; but if he swears, he'll certainly deceive thee." Indeed, as Owen Feltham has it, wherever there is too much profession, there is cause for suspicion. "Reality cares not to be tricked out with too taking an outside; and deceit, when she intends to cozen, studies disguise. Least o all should we be taken with swearing asseverations. Truth needs not the varnish of an oath to make her plainness credited." Fielding's Pettifogger, on a certain occasion, calling to mind that he had not been sworn, as he usually was, before he gave his evidence, "now bound what he had declared with

so many oaths and imprecations, that the landlady's ears were shocked, and she put a stop to his swearing, by assuring him of her belief," inconsiderately enough, as the manner of the man might have proved. Scott's Jorworth, when heaping asseveration on asseveration, is cut short by the honest Fleming he is striving to mislead: "Stop, good Jorworth; thou heapest thine oaths too thickly on each other, for me to value them to the right estimate; that which is so lightly pledged, is sometimes thought not worth redeeming." So again Monkbarns tells the gaberlunzie, after hearing his story of the adept, "I am strongly disposed to believe that you have spoken the truth, the rather, that you have not made any of those obtestations of the superior powers, which I observe you and your comrades always make use of when you mean to deceive folks." The author of "London Labour and the London Poor," recounts the redundance of "Glory be to God! it's the thruth I'm telling of you, sir,” etc., etc. ; which he had to hear from Irish mendicity, or mendacity, or both. "The dignity of truth is lost with much protesting," the Cicero of Jonson's "Catiline" says.

Take up any ordinary history, and you are but too sure to come across examples enough and to spare, of people who did protest too much, and did not keep their word. Glance at Alison's big book, and on one page you read, of Napper Tandy, for instance, "But the conduct of this leader was far from keeping pace with these vehement protestations; for no sooner did he hear of the reverse sustained by the French corps which had landed in Killala Bay, than he re-embarked on board the French brig Anacreon, and got safe across the channel." On another we have Tippoo Saib striving to disarm the suspicions of the British Government by "professions of eternal gratitude and attachment," and considerably overacting his part. On another we have Napoleon bidding Marmont "spare no protestations of assistance to Turkey;" and himself assuring the Turkish ambassador that, "his right hand was not more inseparable from his left, than the Sultan Selim should ever be to him;" in consequence of which protestations, Turkey threw herself into the breach against both Russia and Eng

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