sion of nature by which men are furnished with two sides, a right and a left, precisely like the sides of the House of Lords or Commons. The corresponding mental arrangement is the very attribute of duplicity, or the possession of two minds and two sets of opinions and suits of principles; having, in fact, as Lord Shaftesbury so happily expresses it, "the dual number practically formed in us."

It is a common remark that two heads are better than one, and it is no less manifest a truth that two minds are better than one; but there would be no use in having two minds, if they were always to think the same thing, or come to the same conclusion. Nature does nothing in vain; and besides, if truth be the result of the collision of intellect with intellect, it is evident that a man of two minds, instead of meriting censure and reproach, ought to command universal admiration as a very

Palace for the crown'd truth to dwell in.

A double tongue may be a figure of speech, but a double mind is not: there is no more familiar metaphysical phenomenon; and it is well worthy of observation, as a most beautiful analogy between our physical and moral structure, that the cavity of the human thorax contains two lungs, or organs of breathing, for which no other use can be assigned but the enabling a man to blow hot and cold with the same breath.

The principle of duplicity explains how a man can be said to be beside himself, as a double man (what the world calls an apostate, or a hypocrite), very often is. It also accounts for the process of leaping out of one's skin, as people are said to do, when news is brought them of some joyous but unexpected event, the birth of an heir, the success of a novel, or an appointment to an office with large salary and no duty.

Self-love, too, admits of an easy and charitable explanation upon the same hypothesis. Egotism is nothing but the passion of one moiety of a man for the other, the most legitimate love imaginable, and happily exempt from the interruption of the "green-eyed monster," for the "amans sui" is in general "sine rivali." Some have held that the two parts of a man are always of different sexes; that one of his selves is male and the other female. In this view there is nothing more natural than the love of self; no amour can be more propre.

It is common to hear a person say that he hates himself, but this resolves itself into the still more common case of matrimonial discord. Happy would it be for many a lord and commoner if he could divorce as well as hate himself. There are men who would become sound statesmen and good patriots in a twinkling, could they but dissolve the union that binds them to narrow souls and factious spirits. Such persons are, in point of fact, models of every public virtue, but being, unhappily, connected with discreditable parties, or wedded to false priuciples, they must abide all the contempt and odium incurred by their mistresses or their wives. Men, in a predicament like this, are to be pitied, not condemned. A Socrates may divorce his XanMay.-VOL. LXXI. NO. CCLXXXI.

F

tippe, but how is he to divorce his demon, supposing her to be diabolically instead of angelically disposed? There is no mode of exorcising the she-fiend in our breasts, who is doubtless the prompter of all the malignant and unmanly actions we commit. She sticks to us for ever-like "the old man of the sea" on the sailor's back; she plunges one man into extravagance and debt; she fills another with revenge and fury; she never suffers the worthy part of a man to be seen, but presents herself for him in all companies; which is the true reason that we so often find a shallow coxcomb where we expected a man of talent -a creature as changeable as the moon, where we looked for the steadfastness of an old Roman; or a common scold of Billingsgate, due to the ducking-stool, where we had dreamed of a rival of Cicero, or at least a Brougham.

This notion of a female soul is to be found in Shakspeare, who introduces Richard II. thus soliloquizing in the dungeon of Pomfret Castle :

I have been studying how I may compare
This prison where I live unto the world;
And, for because the world is populous,
And here is not a creature but myself,
I cannot do it ;-yet I'll hammer it out.
My brain I'll prove the female to my soul,
My soul the father, and these two beget
A generation of still breeding thoughts,
And these same thoughts people this little world,
In humours like the people of this world,
For no thought is contented.

Now take an imaginary instance; conceive a Lord Punch and Judy; Lord Punch being the masculine soul, and of one party, Lord Judy, the female soul, and of the other. Judy being the weaker vessel, is fickle, spiteful, frivolous, vain, a coquette, a flirt, a termagant. Lord Punch is no match for her. She out-voices and overbears him. By virtue of her sex, she is for ever talking, and generally talking scandal, bringing her lord and master into infinite disgrace and trouble. People look for "the old man," and they find only the old woman. If Lord Punch could only discard his Judy, he would be quite another lord. The best thing he could do under the circumstances, would be to announce, by advertisement in the newspapers, that he will no longer hold himself responsible for her sayings, doings, or goings on,-as men are sometimes obliged to warn the public that they mean to repudiate their wives' pecuniary engagements.

THE BIT OF PREFERMENT.

66

BY THE AUTHOR OF PETER PRIGGINS."

"WELL, it is really very kind of my friend," said the Rev. Beatus Devonport, as he laid down a letter which he had been perusing, "only I wish it had been a little more valuable."

Friend, what friend? Valuable-what ain't enough valuable?" said his housekeeper, looking up from her work and at her master, and the epistle on which he was commenting.

"Pish! Mistress Phidele, you-you-are indeed

"Are what? Finish, if you please, sir."

"You are somewhat given to an excessive propensity to interrogation. I never make a remark to myself"

"You spoke out loud, sir."

"I never make a remark to myself, I say, and I say so advisedlybut you on the instant fancy I am addressing you, and-and-" "And what, sir?"

"There again! had you waited but an instant-foreborne for a mere second from that inquisitorial habit of putting in your queries-" "My what? My queer eyes? Mr. Devonport, I have lived long in the world, and never before-but it is of no consequence-I know I am old, and, as the song says,

All that's bright must fade,

and of course my eyes ain't agoing to escape the universal sen

tence."

You

"Pish! Mistress Phidele-your eyes are bright enough now. have just threaded that very large darning needle the very first shot," said her master, kindly.

"The first what?" inquired Mrs. Deedy, for such was her real name, although her master chose to call her by the name which Horace bestowed on his female domestic.

"Never mind what. I was about to observe-"

"Didn't you observe that your friend was very kind, but not valuable enough?"

"I said, then, if you will be so tiresome, that my friend, Mr. Blackmore-'

"What the little gentleman as comed down a shooting in a Tartar dress, and had gin and milk with a clove in it for breakfast?" inquired Mrs. Deedy.

"Pish! woman, Tartan you mean. He is of Scottish descent." "And do all the Scottish people wear red and blue criss-crosses, and drink gin and milk with cloves in it to their breakfastes?"

"I never did!" said Beatus Devonport, rising from his chair, closing a large volume of old divinity with a hearty bang, and taking three very rapid turns round his little apartment.

"What you're going the circuit,' as the lawyers say-putting yourself in a miff merely because I asked one question? But I'll say no more so you can sit down and make yourself easy, instead of going round and round and round again like a turnspit on a feast-day." Beatus Devonport sat down again. He opened the volume, found the page, and the very paragraph at which he had left off when the arrival of the letter which had given rise to the preceding colloquy interrupted him in its perusal. He merely made believe to read, however, for he was so indignant with his old servant, that he was ploughing up from the subsoil of his brain some pretext by which he might rid himself of her and her tiresome interrogations. Yet when he thought of the kindness she had shown to his motherless infantswhen he saw, in his mind's eye, their healthy looks and hardened frames, and recollected that she who had borne them to him had fallen a victim to consumption, and believed that their escape from the same fearful disease was attributable to the judicious management of his "tormentor in trifles," he again closed the volume, smiled benevolently upon her, and re-opened the important epistle.

"Pardon me, Mistress Phidele, I was somewhat hasty. My friend Mr. Blackmore writes me thus-"

"Does he write clean and clear? for he was rather not given to soap and water, and bited his nails to their quicks," said Mrs. Deedy.

"Writes me thus," continued her master, resolved not to notice his familiar's failing:

"Dear DEVONPort,

"I have a small living at my disposal. You have been many years a curate and a zealous man in the discharge of the duties of your profession. Pastorn Parva is not a very valuable bit of preferment, as you will see by a reference to the Liber Ecclesiasticus, but it will be better than a curacy, and, from its situation, is not unlikely to suit you, who are fond of a little innocent recreation in fishing and shooting when you know it will not interfere with your duties. If you will accept of it I will send you the presentation by return of post. "Your sincere friend, "ISAAC BLACKMORE."

"Well, and what does Liber Clissasticus say it's worth?" asked Mrs. Deedy, laying aside the stocking which she was darning, crossing her arms, and gazing steadily at her master.

"Under two hundred a year," replied Mr. Devonport.

"And he calls that a living! Why it's a mere starving-the cure's a'most as good," said Mrs. Deedy, showing by her looks and a peculiar twist of her nose that she looked upon Mr. Blackmore as a very contemptible person for having made an offer of such a mere trifle to her worthy and much respected master.

"Never mind, Mistress Phidele; recollect that when I am inducted to it it will be my own. I may be removed from my curacy at any moment, and as to where to lay my head if I am suddenly removed I cannot form a notion. I am resolved to accept of this bit of preferment,' as my friend calls it, and eke out a livelihood, as I have hitherto done, by taking pupils or writing for my daily bread."

"Pupils won't do any longer," said Mrs. Deedy, shaking her head. "Nancy and Mary have finished school, and are coming home grown up young women

But my pen-"

"Cuss the pen, I was going to say. What, bring on nettle-rash, nervousness and indigestion again-what our learned doctor calls gasterontereet-not you indeed if I have a voice in the matter. No more Plummer's pills for supper, and hop tea for breakfast, with an Abernethy sopped in it if I can prevent it," said Mrs. Deedy.

"Pish, Mistress Phidele, I have a reliance-”

"I know you have; but rely on it you'll kill yourself before your time if you do. A reliance is all very well when your paid for it, and don't go snax with a printer."

Beatus Devonport groaned internally. notice his distress but proceeded.

His housekeeper did not

"And whereabouts is this bit of preferment?"

"Close to the sea-side, Mistress Phidele; a delightful spot I have no doubt. Abundance of fish and plenty of snipes, fowls, and plovers.' Why fish is not so bad if it was not for the sauce. Snipes and wild ducks are excellent, for they want no stuffing; and as to plovers, I only know them by their eggs, which are always eaten with mossleast so I have heard."

Her master pished, but did not attempt to set Mrs. Deedy right.
"Is there any land to it?" inquired the old lady.

-at

"A glebe of some twenty acres, Mistress Phidele; but I am afraid the house is hardly habitable without some little repairs." "A little whitewashing or so?-never mind; I can do that. Milk and whiting is capital, and only wants being laid on with the paste-brush to tidy a place up nicely. With twenty acres of land you can keep cows, sheep, and pigs, and that ends all my objections to taking the bit of preferment."

Mr. Beatus Devonport having secured his faithful servant's assentfor he would have resigned a much more valuable living sooner than part with her to whom he believed was owing the rescue of his children from consumption-wrote to his friend, and accepted 'the bit of preferment."

CHAP. II.

"The bit of preferment" which Mr. Beatus Devonport had accepted had been placed at the disposal of his friend, Mr. Isaac Blackmore, by a government official, whom he had obliged by securing the return to parliament of a warm supporter of the administration. A few days after the letter had been received, which in warm terms thanked his friend for his kind remembrance of him, and expressed his willingness to accept of the living, Beatus was told that if he would run up to town, and call at a certain office, he would receive his appointment, and the necessary documents and instructions for induction and reading in.

Beatus Devonport felt a glow about the region of his heart when he thought that a few days would entitle him to affix rector instead of cu