since we had separated, excepting as regards my baggage, which he had heard was safe at another village, whither the muleteers had proceeded immediately on the coming on of the snow storm. I informed the poor Armenian girl of what I had heard; she seemed very much agitated concerning the safety of her father and brother, and it was with much difficulty I could at all assuage her fears. I told her that if the worst should occur, and her relations be lost, she should return with me to Tabreez, and remain there until I could find out whether she had any friends or relations at Ispahan. After having remained four days at this place, the snow having melted a good deal, news arrived of several bodies having been discovered in different directions, in consequence of which I rode out to view them. One of them proved to be the corpse of one of my Persian servants, another that of a young Armenian man, which latter I felt no doubt was that of the girl's brother; the other bodies were unknown to me, and were evidently those of Mahometans. They had all been frozen to death. I directed the bodies of my servant and the Armenian to be carried to the village at which I was staying, in order that the latter might be identified by his sister. On entering the village I found the father of the girl had just arrived. He had, fortunately for himself, found shelter in a cave similar to the one which had been tenanted by his daughter and myself, and on the snow melting had descended into the valley, and had gone from village to village in search of his children. He immediately identified the body of his son, and I never beheld before such grief manifested by any one. He tore his beard and rent his clothes, and for some time refused to receive any consolation. I at length managed to make him listen to me, and informed him of the safety of his daughter, to whom I conducted him. The meeting between the two was most touching, and were I to be aught availed by a thousandth part of the blessings the old man heaped upon my head on learning how I had preserved the life of his daughter, I should certainly become one of the most fortunate men in the world. He prayed to Heaven that I might overflow with wealth, that my head might be exalted, that my happiness should be perfect, and that I might live on to a green old age,-such was his expression. Having restored the girl to her father I bade them adieu, and not having sufficient time remaining to proceed to Ooroomia, I changed my intention of going thither, and returned forthwith to Tabreez. EPIGRAM. THE SUPERIORITY OF MACHINERY. A MECHANIC his labour will often discard T. H. Speech was given to man to conceal his thoughts. (Yeudo?) TALLEYRAND. Le mensonge est l'ingrédient le plus nécessaire au maintien des relations sociales.— FR. SOULIE. We had taken some pains to avoid this word "Physiology," which the French have latterly so much vulgarized, and which the small fry of English literature are beginning to adopt at second hand. It has indeed two good properties which recommend it to the adoption of the like; it looks well upon paper, and it is not overloaded with meaning; but we hold ourselves infinitely superior to such motives, and are firmly addicted to the Irishman's philosophy, who loved plain speaking, and made it a point to say “paize (peas) like a man." After all, however, we must not argue from the abuse to the use; and physiology, in fit time and place, is at least as good a word as "accommodate," though it does not "come of accommodo." If, therefore, lying really has its physiology, and is as closely connected with the laws of animal life as eating, drinking, or any other ceremony proper to human nature, we do not see how the word is to be avoided. There is none other equally handy in the English language; and we are not yet permitted to exercise the German's privilege of coining a new synonyme out of our own homespun materials, and talking of the natur-schaft of the matter in hand. Being thus thrown back upon the well-worn polysyliable, we have only to submit to necessity, and to protest against the charge of a voluntary and indolent imitation of our "natural enemies." Proceeding, then, without more ink-shed, to the subject itself of our paper, we are encountered, in limine, by another imputation equally offensive to our fine feelings, namely the supposed coarseness of the homely Saxon-English vocable "a lie." The quick and susceptible ears of many of our readers (and more especially such of them as are in her majesty's service) will be apt enough to tingle at the sound; and it must needs be confessed that there are good and sufficient reasons why, in the ordinary intercourse of society, the word "lie" should make way for some more mitigated innuendo of the suggestio falsi. But any reasons tending to banish a word from polite conversation, must operate as a necessary consequence, to confer on it a character of vulgarity, which otherwise would not belong to it. A circumstance thus accidental, however, has nothing to do with the intrinsic nature of the word; and it is well known that the highest-bred gentlemen, in avoiding its utterance, are by no means expected not to "understand" it (as the grammarians say); that is, not to abstain from mentally applying it, on fit and proper occasions; a sufficient proof that, at the worst, it is not malum in se. It is a great misfortune inherent in language, that so many of its terms, however innocent in their primitive signification, insensibly and inevitably grow to include in their meaning a judgment of some sort, and to imply a praise or a censure, which is taken for granted, upon the mere utterance of the sound;-to the great injury of the common sense of the lieges, and not unfrequently to the great damage of their fortunes. Thus it happens that to give a dog an ill name is as malicious an attack upon his comfort, as to provide him with a halter. But whatever there is, or is imagined to be, of offence in the word "lie" (quod scio quam sit immane), depends wholly on one of these judgments, which has in progressive use been clandestinely included in it, a judgment by no means to its credit. Before however we shall have done with our readers, we hope to convince them that this judgment is altogether a prejudice, a fallacy, a sophism, which a wise man ought to be ashamed of entertaining; and if so, we cannot but satisfy them that the word is as good and lawful a word, as any in the language; or, that if there be any offence in it, that offence is all of their own making. In society, we own ourselves contented" to howl with the wolves," and to prefer such pretty sillinesses as tarrididle, fib, or some still more parliamentary periphrasis for expressing the idea; yet, in discussing the matter philosophically, we feel bound to call a spade, a spade;-all improprieties notwithstanding, which sciolists may attach to that honest implement of agricultural industry. That lying should lie under the imputation of being a vice, and should be saddled with a character for meanness, baseness, cowardice, &c. &c. &c., is but a part and parcel of the universal disposition of mankind to indulge in the practice; being the evident result of a desire to impose on the world, and to make the bystanders believe that the speaker never himself indulges in a licence he so loudly reprobates; whereas it is pretty well known that ninety-nine out of every hundred reserve the truth for special occasions; and in their common intercourse with society, consult the convenience of their affirmations, much more than they respect the nature of things. The repudiation of lying is, then, nothing more than a means for rendering mendacity more effectual,—that is, for giving a wider currency to the base metal it avails, therefore, nothing as against the moral fitness of the practice. Those moralists who have been in such a hurry to decry the tampering with truth, have apparently overlooked the fact that to fib is an inherent portion of our nature, and that the first use which children make of their speech, is for the purposes of deceit. It is singular enough that amidst all that has been written and said on the analysis of the human mind, not a single author has noticed how :emarkably one of its faculties is expressly devoted to the purposes of fiction. If memory, which revives our sensations in the natural order of their original occurrence, be given to man, the better to enable him to speak" the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth," it is no less clear that the imagination, which revives sensations in an order of its own, variable ad infinitum, can have no other end but to emancipate us from the suggestions of memory,-to substitute the false for the true. If memory brings us in contact with nature, imagination is the parent of art; and is not a person addicted to falsehood, in common parlance termed an artful man? No one, surely, can be deceived in this matter by the proverbial dictum that liars should have a good memory, so as to infer that the faculty is especially necessary to the telling a lie: for the essence of falsehood does not rest so much in a clear perception of the truth that is denied, as in the frame of mind which determines us to speak whatever suits the purpose in hand, without reference to the facts of the case. Nothing, we admit, has tended more constantly to bring falsehood into the ill repute in which it is held, or affected to be held, than the inexpertness of those who tell unnecessary lies, or, worse still, lies that miss their mark. A lie to the purpose is more than half justified. Memory, therefore, is so far necessary, as is requisite to assist the imagination in taking in all the circumstances, and of preserving with certainty all the consequences of any particular observation. The necessity for memory of which the proverb speaks, applies not to the individual lie, but to the necessary connexion which must subsist in any given series of lies, that they may combine to a proper end. With respect, indeed, to this aphorism concerning memory, it must be borne in mind that imagination itself is but a sort of memory, or rather that both faculties derive from the common law of association, of which each is alike a manifestation. It is clear that for the purposes of either faculty, the ideas must be there, ready to come forth according to the purpose with which they are associated. In a certain sense, therefore, every imagination may be said to be remembered, and every recollection to be imagined; and thence, probably, the loose-worded proverb. The relation, however, of each faculty to truth or falsehood is made plain in this; that whereas we cannot help remembering the truth, when the memory is properly active, we are clearly obliged to a strong and decided volition for the imagination of a convenient falsehood. Having thus established a physiological connexion between a specific mental faculty and the power of uttering falsehoods, it follows irresistibly that to lie enters into the scheme of nature, which gives nothing in vain and so decidedly does experience quadrate with the hypothesis, that we find the disposition to lie (as in the case of children) to be a spontaneous result of the play of organization; while it requires a deliberate and sustained action of society upon the individual, in order to induce upon him an acquired (and in so far unnatural) habit of speaking the truth. Not only are children natural and heaven-born liars, but savages continue so to the extreme of old age; and kings and ministers, who are removed from the control and responsibilities to civilized society which meaner things" obey, do not enjoy in general a very high reputation for the veracity of their discourses. It would, we admit, be a good and convenient dispensation, if we could indulge our curiosity by always obtaining the truth we desire to know from others, without a reciprocal obligation to tell truth ourselves; but so it would be with all other duties. We should wish, in the matter of all obligations, moral or pecuniary, to have the reciprocity somewhat on one side, if it were not absolutely impossible; but however disagreeable it may be to do unto others as we would they should do unto us, there is no carrying on the affairs of the world without some appearance of adopting that rule. However, then, we may arrange things in practice, there can be no medium in theory between an absolute damus petimusque vicissim, and an assumption of great rigour as to the obligation to speak truth. But an universal licence of lying would take away the whole utility of deceit; for a man might as well speak truth as falsehood, if no one believed a word he said. Thus, it has been affirmed in diplomacy, that there are no means of circumventing the adverse party so effectual, as to lay bare your real motives--an act of self-denial which must appear utterly incredible. Let us, however, not be misunderstood: admitting this theoretical obligation to veracity, it is a rule surrounded by so many exceptions, as to render it almost invalid. The desire to hear truth is far from universal. It is only in certain cases that the curiosity we inherit from our general mother is disappointed by a lie: for there are a vast number of facts which no man, or woman either, desires to know; and there is no way under heaven more likely to make one's neighbour thoroughly unhappy, than by maliciously putting before him those truths which he had much rather never hear. A conspiracy to tell disagreeable truths, would endanger all the ties of society, worse than putting a population on half-diet for discord, in her whole basket of apples, has not one more likely to set the world by the ears, than that which bears upon it the words "plain speaking." Such truths are obviously excluded from the theory of universal truth-telling; and the number of them is so great, that it is difficult to say whether, as a mere matter of politeness, lying is not more necessary to the wellbeing of society than truth. Upon this hook hangs the whole vis of the legal paradox-" the greater the truth the greater the libel;"-a libel is a truth which the parties prosecuting would rather not hear spoken. But if it be wrong to disturb the peace of society by telling truths which no one desires to hear, it must equally be improper to tell truths which, however much people desire to know them, they cannot learn without such a discomposure of temper, as is likely to lead to unpleasant consequences. There are people in the world who are not sufficiently aware of the heinousness of this species of veracity; who having done some notable bit of mischief to a friend behind his back, are never easy till they have made a clear breast of it, by telling all that they have done. Such a man will say, "That's an abominable libel, that pamphlet which appeared the other day against you :—well, it was I that wrote it." A woman of this disposition (and it is astonishing how common they are in this country), will not be contented with injuring a husband in the tenderest point, but she must let down her hair, rub off her rouge, flop down on both knees before him, to make him supremely miserable, by a plenary confession. These are an execrable race; and so far from being better for their confounded candour, they deserve that their misplaced vanity should be visited much more severely than their original wrong. "They manage these things better in France." We have probably said enough to show that lying is a necessary ingredient in the affairs of this world, and that like whatever else exists, it must be in harmony with the nature of things. We will not, indeed, go the length of asserting, that lying is exclusively an attribute of humanity; because the weeping of hyenas, and the hypocritical efforts of some birds to draw off invasion from their nests, by a variety of deceptive lazzi, are as genuine lies, as if they had been spoken instead of acted. Till we can show that animals are wholly divested of imagination, we cannot absolutely deny them the capability of lying: but still the higher development of that faculty in man, and above all, the superior means of lying he possesses in the use of his tongue, place |