From The Saturday Review. circumstances we cannot alter, that are not of our own making, that have nothing in them which we ought, in strict reason, to be ashamed-have visited most of us. They belong to civilization as opposed to the more primitive forms of society-to a state of existence where different interests clash, where social and domestic ties may, and do, interfere with one another. Young people, on their first admission to this outer world, are especially afflicted by false shame; so that it may be regarded as one of the moral diseases of the mind's infancy. It is at the bottom of a great deal of their shyness. They cannot feel at ease, because they mistrust something about themselves or their belongings, and have that feeling of barrenness and exposure in the presence of unfamiliar eyes which attaches to sensitiveness under untried circumstances. Every thing then assumes a magnified, exaggerated character-the place they occupy on the one hand, and the importance of the occasion on the other. The present company is the world, the universe, a convention of men and gods, all forming a deliberate and irreversible judgment upon them, and deciding to their disadvantage on account of some oddness, or awkwardness, or passing slip in themselves or in the accessories about them. But, in most persons, time and experience bring so much humility as teaches them their insignificance. It is not, we soon learn, very likely that at any given time a MR. DICKENS' story of Great Expectations illustrates a certain temper of mind which is perhaps a characteristic of our age. Pip, from the time of his introduction to Estella, is the victim of false shame. Her contempt for the manners of the common boy forced on her companionship curdled the milk of human kindness in him. Naturally affectionate, from that moment a shadow comes between him and his friend and protector to whom he owed every thing, but who had taught him to call the knave "Jack." What Estella is likely to think interferes with what he ought to think; and gratitude slowly, but inevitably, yields before the new influence. The picture is, on the whole, a true one. So far as we can realize Pip's situation at all, we can understand his temptations, and acknowledge that his was the very character, or no-character, to fall under them. But, indeed, false shame has not always so much to say for itself as in this instance. Pip is taken from the forge and made a gentleman, a member of what is technically called society-so at least Mr. Dickens intends us to understand it. Now, undoubtedly people do owe something to the class for which they have been trained and to which they belong; and if Pip is a gentleman, the honestest, truesthearted blacksmith in the world, especially if addicted to Joe Gargery's system of ex-mixed assemblage is thinking very much pression, must be an awkward appendage. It is more easy to be shocked at Pip's ingratitude than to know precisely what he ought to have done with his brother-in-law. However, we see he is intended to represent one of the vices of society, and we recognize his fitness for the part in a general want of force and stamina, and a predominance of the imagination over the judgment. Though we call it hard names, it would still be almost a discourtesy to assume our readers to be ignorant of the sensation of false shame by which we mean shame the fruit of vanity and imagination; for never to have known it is, in our imperfect state, to be without the kindred quality of which it is the abuse-sensitiveness-a want which would argue bluntness of feeling and dulness of perception. Occasional fits of false shame of being unreasonably perturbed at about us; and then the horror of a conspicuous position loses its main sting. This on the one hand-on the other, we are not as dependent on the award of society as we were. Even a roomful comprises, to our enlarged imagination, by no means the whole creation. There is something worth caring for outside those walls. And also we have come to form a sort of estimate of ourselves. There is now a third party in the question, in the shape of self-respect. We realize that we are to ourselves of immeasurably more consequence than any one else can be to us. Thus, either by reason or by the natural hardening and strengthening process of the outer air, most people overcome any conspicuous display of the weakness. By the time youth is over, they have either accepted their position or set about in a business-like way to mend it. But there are some people who never get over this disorder of the faculties-who are always its victims, who live in an habitual state of subservience, who defer perpetually to some opinion or supposed opinion which they respect more than their own, and under which they crouch, whether it be that of an individual, a clique, or the world. The sanction of their own judgment is no guarantee; it is powerless unsupported by society's good word. If a man after twenty, or at latest twenty-five, will harp in all companies on his red hair, or be perpetually reminding people that he is little, or embarrass them by allusions to his plebeian birth, or be making absurd apologies for his relations, or depreciate the dinner he has set before his guests, we have not much hope of him. He fails in the quality which defies and puts to flight false shame. He may be wise, he may be witty, he may have the clearest head, the most fluent tongue, the readiest pen; but he wants manliness. The fears, flusters, and perturbations of false shame are a sign of some inherent discrepancy between his intellect and his moral nature which will always keep him immature. Undue compliance with either the social or domestic instinct produces the same effect. Whether a man sacrifices himself by a superstitious worship of public opinion or of private affection, the result is the same. He may stultify himself as effectually by an excessive devotion to his mother and sisters as by a like devotion to Mrs. Grundy; but our concern is with the latter devotee, who lives in fear of being singular, who suspects all closely allied to him of some misfit or incongruity. He is pretty certain to accomplish his own forebodings; for such men are sure to do odd things, as people must who think constantly whether every thing they do is according to rule, not what is convenient to do. All our natural actions are done without thought, and we can make breathing difficulty by thinking about it. no limit to such a dependence; it bows before every standard, irrespective of all capacity or right to judge. Whoever can use the weapon of contempt is formidable. Such a man is a prey to the insolence of footmen; he trembles before the tribunal of the servants' hall, and dreads the criticism of his butler, whose definition of a gentleman—of what is expected of a gentleman, of what a gentleman ought and ought not to do-he practically accepts in preference to his own. All this is essentially demoralizing. In fact, no benefits can secure a man of this sort, no ties can bind him under a particular form of trial; and this not at all from baseness of nature, but because he wants a man's generous self-reliance-that quality which the weak and the dependent learn to trust, and which gives to manliness a value for which no intellectual excellence whatever is an equivalent. All people are, of course, in a considerable measure, guided in their ways of thinking by general consent-as, being members of a community, they must be; but there is, beyond this, a slavery in which its victim stands as it were unrepresented in the world's parliament. Few errors bring less reward with them. Nobody likes a coward; and a careless indifference, or even defiance, of popular usage is often taken for a sign of superiority. Human nature is not so hard and cynical as the theory of false shame assumes it to be. And the world is much more good-natured temper give it credit for. It can discriminate, and sympathize, and tolerate exceptions from its ordinary standard. As no phantoms are so monstrous as the fears of a mind which abandons itself to the apprehensions of false shame, so no predicament or dilemma of actual existence has the pangs and stings which a busy fancy conjures up in anticipation—just as most disagreeable things are not, when the time comes, as disagreeable as we expected. than men of this There is a hardened class of self-seekers A person under this thraldom, whatever who override all considerations to attain his disposition, will never be of the use he their end, to gratify a low ambition, and get might be to his friends, while he presents an on in the world-people whom Mr. Dickens easy mark to his enemies. No one is safe again portrays in his Mr. Bounderby-with from being thrown over by a friend who whom the genuine victim of false shame makes the world his bugbear; for, whatever must not be confounded. His conscience the justice of his own perceptions, the opin- does not sleep, but his fancy predominates. ion which he dreads, and which influences He owes his uneasiness to his susceptible him, is an inferior one. There is actually nature-to the rapidity of his flights, quick to conjure up scenes, and prolific of imagi- | of fiction contemporary with and succeeding nary contingencies. We may despise the weakness, but must pity its victim as the main sufferer. Indeed, in some cases it would be easy to trace a whole career changed by it. Advantages of education are lost, friendships checked, opportunities shunned, and habits of moody self-contemplation induced at the age when action, the spirit of adventure, and the excitement of new impressions are at their highest in the more healthy and strong temperament; and this not by any means wholly from the sufferer's own fault, but because adverse circumstances, which vigorous and less contemplative minds shake off or bend to their will, tell with such blighting force on more sensitive characters. Writers of modern fiction often show such suspicious familiarity with the workings of false shame that it is easy to suppose the ranks of authors may receive some valuable additions through its paralyzing influence-unfitting men as it does to take that stand in the world of action which their intellect might claim for them. The fashionable novel, a development of modern society, has heretofore done much to create or to foster the feeling. People no longer young bear witness to the singular impression which those pictures made upon a crude, uninformed fancy-to the discontent they engendered in the childish mind for the dull or homely circumstances of actual life. Nothing could be more frivolous and merely external than the tests of superiority and refinement set up by those arbiters of manners and social standing; but for these very reasons they were more within the compass of a young raw apprehension. The best corrective (not to speak here of the moralist's grave antidotes) was the romantic class to the Almacks school, which took the opposite line altogether. In tales of this order, characters over whom the domestic affections do not tyrannize are represented as mere monsters, and are treated without mercy. Our readers will remember that in Undine, which so bewitched our youth, Bertha's pride is held up to scorn and obloquy because she, who had been trained a princess, could not reconcile herself at once to be a peasant's child; and all romance takes for granted that the primitive instincts in every noble nature predominate absolutely and without a struggle over every mere social consideration. Miss Austen, who was never led away by what is not true, ventures, in opposition to this notion, to make one of her purest and most conscientious characters, Fanny Price, acutely ashamed of her father and of her home, because, under the circumstances, it was not possible for her to be otherwise. But in Sir Walter Scott, romance predominates; and in the only example of false feeling that occurs to us in his writings-Sir Piercy Shafton-a not unnatural sensitiveness is rendered extremely ridiculous. Modern writers enter into the sensation analytically, as they do into other complex workings of our social being. As we said at the outset, false shame and mere sensitiveness are closely allied. People make their way in the world a good deal better without either; and the one slips into the other so easily upon trying occasions, that it is wise not to test our friends too hardly, nor to expose them to the minor miseries and real dangers of this mood by any thing in ourselves that may be rightly avoided. A REMARKABLE circumstance has tended to interfere considerably with the brilliancy and steadiness of the magneto-electric light, with which some of the squares of Paris are now illuminated. The attraction which any bright light at night exercises upon insects is notorious, and every evening-especially after a very warm day-clouds of insects collect around the intensely brilliant points of light, each being irresistibly drawn towards the bright poles of ignited carbon, where they are of course instantly broiled to death. The numbers that crowd to it are so enormous that the light appears at times to be almost extinguished by burning insects; and every morning the bodies of these unfortunates suicides are found heaped up by tens of thousands at the bottom of the lantern. For this reason it has been found necessary to encase the lamp in glass, instead of having the carbon poles exposed to the air. This is, however, attended with considerable loss of light, as even the most transparent glass has been found to obstruct upwards of ten per cent of the incident rays.London Review. LYON. SING, bird, on green Missouri's plain, Uprose serene the August sun Upon that day of glory; Now broken and now blended, And rank with rank contended. The strength of their despairing. Fair Freedom's cause was sword and shield, Their leader's troubled soul looked forth That battery's awful singing." And on his forehead glowing. Upon its mother's pillow. So Lyon died! and well may flowers For never had this land of ours Living, his country was his bride, -Saturday Post, Philadelphia. I stole one hand across the seat, And touched her dainty, shining arm, Leant to her neck, and whispered through The tress that hid her small car's charm. Secession is our watchword, our rights we all The hot wind stirred the pleached grapes, demand, And to defend our firesides we pledge our heart" and hand; Jeff Davis is our President, with Stephens by his side, Brave Beauregard, our general, will join us in the ride. They wouldn't stay in a Government where cotton wasn't King, Alabama, too, and Florida have long ago applied, Mississippi's in the wagon, anxious for the ride. CHORUS-Wait for the wagon, etc. Missouri, North Carolina, and Arkansas are slow, They must hurry or we'll leave them, and then where would they go; There's old Kentucky and Maryland, each wont make up their mind, So I reckon after all we'll have to take them up behind. CHORUS-Wait for the wagon, etc. And sifted half the fountain's froth; One moment trifling with her fan, "Love," she replied, "and peace and rest "Wouldst see the picture I adore ?" Through pensive lips she answered "Yes:" Then, slowly breathing, turned to me Her sweet face white with pain's excess. I drew the mirror from my breast, And placed it in her passive hand; "Look, cousin, look at her I love, The brightest blossom in the land." A faint blush bloomed aslant her brows, Her low voice trembled through and through, She drooped her head, "Ah, cousin mine, God help her, for she loves you too." Then rising up, close-linked we paced The great stars wheeled across the north- The mellow-throated nightingale. I fancy myriad voices sighed : |