subject for self-congratulation at five o'clock in the morning; or, indeed, so long as it lives in the memory at all. On the whole, it is better as it is. We are gainers in freedom by living in a world where it is possible to commit ourself to go beyond intentions-to be impulsive, incautious. If everybody were as selfpossessed, as much on his guard as we wish we had been in these periods of harassed meditation, society would not be a very refreshing or invigorating sphere.

This is a surer source of consolation, as far as our observation goes, than any argument from analogy that our fears delude us. If we look round on those of our friends whose prudence we can scarcely hope to equal, far less to surpass-whom we trust for manner, discretion, and judgment-there is scarcely one who does not now and then disappoint or surprise us by some departure from his usual right way of thinking and acting, by committing some moral or social solecism, just one of the things to haunt the first waking hour. We are not meaning merely clever people, for cleverness has a prescriptive right to do foolish things, but wise and sensible people who have a rule of action, and habitually go by it—habitually, but not always ;—and a foolish thing done or said by a wise man certainly stands out with a startling prominence and distinctness, pointing out the weak place there is in the best of us. When our wise friend, under some malignant influence, says or does something exceptionally silly, the thing assumes a sort of life from contrast. It is quoted against him, and perhaps in some quarters a permanently lower esti

mate of mind and character is the consequence. Do the same things that in this case strike us strike the perpetrator? Can a wise man say a foolish thing and remain for ever unconscious of it? One thing we must believe it cannot be only a latent self-conceit in the midst of our humiliations and self-reproaches that leads us to assume them not universal. There are people so uniformly foolish, so constantly impertinent, rash, talkative, unsecret, or blundering, that, if revisited by their errors, solitude would be one long penance which could not fail to tell upon their outer aspect. The fool par excellence is not, we gladly believe, haunted by his folly. It is when we have departed from our real character, when our instincts have failed us, when we have gone against ourselves, that we writhe under these tormenting memories.

The subject is worth dwelling upon for one reason. If, with the exception of conspicuous fools, we could realise that this class of regrets are not due to our particular idiosyncrasy, but are a common scourge of weak, vain, irritable, boasting humanity, it ought to conduce to charity in our judgments. If we could believe that the people we dislike suffer these penances, and could give them credit for waking with a twinge an hour earlier than usual, under the remembrance of impertinence, vanity, unkindness, persuaded that certain definite offences against our taste and feeling would haunt their solitary walk and make the trial of their day, we could not but learn patience and toleration. But we are apt to regard our annoyance as the penalty of an exception

ally sensitive social conscience. We and the people we care for cannot do foolishly without feeling sorry for it-without going through the expiation of a pang; but the people we dislike are insensible, coarse, obtuse, dull, and brutish. Theirs has not been a mistake, which implies a departure from their nature, but an acting up to it and according to it. They are therefore showing themselves as they are when they show themselves most unpleasant and repulsive.

Another mode of reconciling ourselves to this prompt Nemesis of minor follies is that it may possibly preserve us from greater ones. It may both imply caution, and keep our caution in practice and repair. We have already made an exception in favour of fools; but are people subject to rash impulses-impulses swaying their whole destiny and the fate of others—who find a pleasure in staking the future on some unconsidered chance, ever visited by regrets for having merely exposed themselves in no more weighty matter than some foolish breach of confidence or lapse of propriety? Are people habitually unguarded ever visited by lesser remorse? Is not this rather a conflict where habitual caution is every now and then betrayed by counter influences? Does a man who is always boasting ever remember any particular boast with a pang? Does one who is always betraying secrets, and revealing his own and other people's privacy-always talking of himself, always maudlin, always ill-natured or sarcasticever writhe under the recollection of his follies? hard to be lenient towards some people, however much it is our duty to think the best.

It is

But whatever tenderness may be shown towards foolish things, acted or spoken, whatever beneficent purpose may be assigned to them in the social economy, our leniency ends here. Little can be said ethically, and nothing prudentially, for foolish things written— for outbreaks of our follies and tempers on paper; and yet what a fruitful source of these regrets has the pen been with some of us! And never has the sting been sharper than when we realise that our imprudence is in black and white, beyond our reach, irrevocable. The pen gives us a power of having our say out which speech seldom does. We are free from the unaccountable, almost solemn, control that man in bodily presence has over man. Fresh from some injury, we have the plea, the retort, the reproof, the flippancy, the good things in our hands without danger of interruption. We will write it while the subject is fresh and vivid, and the arguments so clear that our correspondent cannot fail of being struck, persuaded, crushed by them. In the heat of composition we foresee those cooler, cautious hours in the distance, and defy them. We have a dim notion that we are doing a foolish thing, but we will act while conviction is supreme, and we send off our letter to repent sometimes how bitterly!

It has been cleverly said that the whole folly of this proceeding lies not in the writing, which is an excellent valve to the feelings, but in the sending; and certainly very few letters, written under immediate provocation, would be sent if the writers slept a night upon them. But the pen can do foolish things-things below the writer's standard of speech and action-without provo

cation. There are many people whose intellect and judgment would stand much higher in the world's estimation if they had never been taught to write. Men write letters and women write notes in total neglect of the rules which guide their conversation, and which win them sometimes an extraordinary reputation for good sense. A whole swarm of absurd impulses cluster round the pen, which leave them alone at other times. A propensity for interference and giving advice is one of these, a passion for explanations, a memory for old grievances, and a faith in the efficacy of formal, prolix, minute statements of wrong, along with querulous hints, unpalatable suggestions, and insinuations generally; all of which are foolish, because they cannot, in the nature of things, have a good issue, and flow from the ready pen in oblivion of obvious consequences, which elsewhere hold the writer in salutary check. Indeed, the pen often wakes a set of feelings which are not known to exist without it. If we must be foolish sometimes, let us then give our folly as short a term as possible. If it must leave traces behind, our memory is a better and safer archive than our enemy's or even our friend's writing-table. Therefore, if any warning of the fit is granted, if a man have any reason for misgivings, let him, before all things, beware of pen and ink. Things are seldom quite hopeless till they are committed to paper—a scrape is never at its worst till it has given birth to a correspondence.