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be, and in all probability usually are, uttered without the slightest hankering after profanity, yet in truth they mean, if anything, precisely the same as the bolder and more "mouth-filling" varieties. The dilution is a mere blind. For what, after all, is "deuce" but Deus, or "mischief" but Diabolus? We may "damn with faint praise" in any company, but in no other way, if we wish to be polite. Be our spirit never so sorely moved, we must still restrict ourselves to the use of such inferior phrases as "hang," "dash," or "blow!" Even these comparatively mild imperatives, however, must have some subject, expressed or understood. Who stops to consider what that subject is?

Schoolboys are especially fond of invoking the name of Jupiter, and usually under his more familiar title of Jove. The same adjuration crops up, but only once or twice, in Shakespeare, who also makes some of his classical characters in "Troilus and Cressida" swear" by Venus's hand," and "Venus's glove." Nobody now invokes Venus, or indeed (at least in this country) any other pagan divinity than the son of Saturn, who, however, still remains a great favorite. Per Bacco, on the other hand, is common enough in Italy, where one never hears Per Giove. What reasons can have induced us thus to appropriate the chief of the Roman theogony? Jove, at any rate, is become an essentially British deity, and many of us would find it very difficult to do without him. A schoolboy, ten years of age, is, thanks to the Ruler of Olympus, able to relieve his feelings in a decided and at the same time perfectly legitimate manner. Give him Mercury, Vulcan, even Phoebus Apollo himself, and he will derive no satisfaction whatever; but the strongest emotions of his little heart discover themselves in, and are assuaged by, the appeal to the majesty of Jove. Anxiety, astonishment, admiration, wrath, envy, and a host of other emotions, are one and all expressed and appeased by the prompt use of this invaluable monosyllable. It clings to us through life. Long

after we have said farewell to the microcosmic school-world, we still, from time to time, deliver ourselves almost unconsciously of the expletive of our salad-days, and often with some semblance of relief. In many cases it remains the one poor shred of classical lore that we can call our

own.

All else wanderings of Ulysses, sieges of Troy, Persian invasions, Peloponnesian wars, the march of Hannibal, may long since have fled the tablets of our memory-the be-all and the end-all of our ten years, more or less, of classical education, is briefly summed up in the solitary remnant " By Jove!"

Another schoolboy adjuration, "By Jingo," or, more emphatically, "By the living Jingo," was dying a peaceful and natural death, when a sudden outburst of patriotism, so called, galvanized it a few years ago into renewed popularity. Probably few, if any, of the would be patriots could have suggested a clew to the origin. of the oath, which indeed has puzzled many hard heads. It is referred by some to the Basque word for God, while others connect it with a certain St. Gingoulph. Who this saint may have been, and why this greatness should have been thrust upon him, are questions which still await a conclusive answer: an explanation, amusing if nothing more, is given in the Lay of St. Gengulphus by Thomas Ingoldsby, Esquire. The word, however, is evidently a corruption of some kind, and seems to point to the half-familiar, half-fearful, avoidance (already noticed) of a plain title.

Readers of Smollett, Fielding, and Marryat cannot fail to mark the strict fidelity of those writers in the matter of strong language. They never shirk a difficulty by having recourse to the apologetic "dash" of modern novelists. A spade is never vaguely described in their pages as an agricultural implement. Their successors are, for the most part, more scrupulous, or less honest, according to the reader's point of view. They shrink from boldly printing words which are considered unparliamentary; but it is a fair question whether their half-hearted" dashes" are not even more offensive than the real thing. Dickens splits the difference in his usual felicitous manner. We all remember how Mr. Pell, relating an apocryphal anecdote of his friend the Chancellor, is promptly called to order by the elder Weller, who is only pacified on learning that the exalted functionary had “damned hisself in confidence." And by the alteration of a single letter Mr. Mantalini is made irresistibly funny, as when he votes his wife "the demdest little fascinator in all the world," or when, hearing the total amount of his indebtedness to Mr. Scaley,

he ejaculates magnanimously, "The halfpenny be demned." Thus, by a humorous reading of the objectionable term in the first instance, and by the mere substitution of one vowel for another in the second, the clever author not only satisfies our consciences and his own, but gratifies our sense of the ridiculous and all the while preserves an adequate odor of imprecation. Other writers who venture on this dangerous ground are not so successful. They dare not swear outright, and their genius suggests no convenient and telling paraphrase-hence the witless and futile dash."

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Do atheists swear? If they do not, here at least, assuming the habit to be reprehensible, is one point clearly in their favor, and one, too, which cannot be honestly claimed by a great many Theists, Deists, and Anglicans. If they do, how can they be atheists at all? For the adjuration of a Superior Being is the essence of the oath. It is only shyness or deference to common usage that leads us to omit the subject of our denunciatory imperatives; and the subject must be superior to ourselves, or we should not so confidently invoke divine aid toward consummating the ruin, here and hereafter, of our refractory friends and foes. But a commination which involves a belief in no power capable of carrying it into effect, is a contradiction in terms. Some soi-disant atheist must have been caught thus napping in David's time to account for his pointed remark that the fool (and no one else, be it noted) "hath said in his heart, There is no God." He had evidently been overheard to swear by the very Deity whose existence he professed to deny. Out of his own mouth he had proved the manifest absurdity of his atheism.

It is curious that we are quite unable to realize the enormity of some of the commonest Continental oaths. We can, of course, to a certain extent, appraise such terms as Sacré, Sapristi, and Morbleu (euphemistic for Mort Dieu), but, on the other hand, we wholly fail to appreciate the swearing value of Mille Tonnerres and Tausend Donnerwetter. Even though these latter be regarded as an invocation of Thor, the god of thunder and summer heat, we cannot see anything very dreadful or juratory in them. Anglicized they become perfectly harmless, and would indeed be welcomed in the room of some of But whatever may be the custom of inown more approbrious idioms. fidels in this respect, there can be no "Thunder!" or "Thunder and doubt as to the practice of many even who proLightning!" we consider a very temper- fess and call themselves Christians. Many ate exclamation; so, too, thought the excellent (or otherwise excellent) citizens, author of the tragic story of the Bagman's merciful men, whose hearts are in the Dog, which may be consulted with ad- right place, whose integrity is undoubted, vantage on this head. Applying the and whose rate-paying capacity is far Johnsonian maxim of "claret for boys, above suspicion, indulge, nevertheless, port for men, and brandy for heroes," we with greater or less regularity in the luxushould certainly be inclined to class either ry of imprecation. It cannot be a mere or both of them with the claret, nay even habit, for they are able to restrain their with the yet milder variety of Gladstonian tongues in certain company. It cannot be claret, a vintage happily unknown to the from any real desire to have their denunlearned doctor. To our insular minds ciations carried into effect, for divers of they convey absolutely no idea of impro- them are infinitely too kind hearted to priety. We might go about Donnerwetter- wish any real ill to their kindred, or even ing for a month together, and not feel to their casual acquaintance or the stranger one atom the better for it, or the worse; within or without their gates. Some of while our character for propriety and de- them again are men of strong intellect, cent speech would not be one whit dam- who would be the first to see and to acaged, whatever might be thought of our knowledge the utter futility of their fulsanity. The German soul, however, is minations. They do not for a moment conscious of a distinct sense of relief after suppose that their prayers for the annihia judicious indulgence in the same pas- lation of any particular person or thing time. Hence we are confronted by the will ever be heeded. They are not like strange paradox that what is a round oath Popes, to believe that their excommunicain one country is not even a smart ejacu- tion will sooner or later land the offendlation in the next. ing party in everlasting Gehenna. They

know very well that it is vox et præterea nihil, winged words, which break no bones and assuredly cannot in any way control the destination of the soul of man or woman. It is a disease curable only by the patient himself, and too often allowed to run its course without let or hindrance. In some cases indeed it might even, like alcoholism, be found incurable. For the self-denial and strength of will, which alone in the moral pharmacopoeia can be reckoned as efficacious drugs for such an emergency, are not always forthcoming. Occasionally it is inherited; like some other forms of insanity it will sometimes skip a generation and break forth with renewed vitality and virulence in a great nephew or a grandchild. More often it is contracted by the patient's own folly in the days of his youth. The boy thinks that it gives him a manly air, and the delusion accompanies him into manhood itself, where it is apt to become chronic.

There are those, however, and perhaps they form the most numerous class of anathematists, who only swear on special occasions, as, for example, when they miss a train, break a shoe-lace, or have the gout. It is the expletive or complementary phase of imprecation which we then hear in perfection. In itself it is wholly unintelligible. A Roman, in similar plight, would probably have vented a Pol or a Mehercle; Homeric heroes would have cried & TÓTOL. We should be altogether in error did we argue from it that the speaker really seeks to denounce his fellow-creatures, whether individually or in mass. He may not at the moment feel especially amiable toward his kind, but, if he were put to it, he could not formulate his resentment. His bearing at such times, it is true, is that of one who has been cruelly used, against whom not only all mankind, but all the powers of light and darkness have entered into a fell conspiracy. But meet the victim half an hour later, and observe the contrast in his demeanor. Where is that thunderous brow, where that rushing torrent, that Pelion on Ossa of execration? Can this bland and smiling gentleman be he, who, thirty short minutes agone, consigned his nearest and dearest to Tartarus and the pale kingdoms of Dis? Yes, it is verily he and none other. The storm is over and glorious Apollo shines forth once

more. And what is the net result of the explosion? On the one hand we have loss of dignity, infringement of laws written and unwritten, disgust, perhaps terror, of spectators, general degradation; against this we are bound to reckon, for in certain constitutions they indubitably follow, a definite sense of satisfaction, an ease of mind, and a clearing of the moral atmosphere, which, it seems, could not otherwise have been compassed. At such moments all considerations of temperance, decorum, and self-respect are thrown wholesale to the winds. The grave householder and father of a family, whose office and privilege it is to set a good example to all around him, will fall into the snare as readily, and imprecate as roundly, as the gay and irresponsible stripling. While the fit is on him he is as one bereft of reason. He has not even the excuse of patients under the influence of an anæsthetic, who, as is well known, will sometimes indulge in unexpected profanity, being, in their natural state, before they are finally lulled into their Lethæan slumber, paragons of virtue and piety. His, indeed, is rather a case of hyper-æsthesia; so sensitive at all points does he become, that nothing, apparently, but the explosive treatment, can give him relief. Knowing of old its subtle properties, he adopts it again and again, with extreme celerity and a confidence which, from his own point of view, is never misplaced. He swears freely, and breathes again; gradually his temperature becomes normal, his temporal arteries less and less turgid, his complexion and general aspect no longer sanguinary. The fit is over; a child may handle him now; he has been cured by the oath.

It seems, then, incontrovertible that some natures, in certain crises which are constantly recurring in the lives of all of us, derive an appreciable consolation, and even safeguard, from the habit of swearing. We find an analogy in one of the privileges of Eve's daughters; oaths in the man often correspond to tears in the woman. By both alike is the vexation of the moment relieved. Sometimes, indeed, oaths and tears react upon each other with painful punctuality; the voice of the imprecator will produce weeping, and the sniffs of the weeper on the other hand, will in some households infallibly elicit a cursory" comment. Solomon

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had no sympathy with either. He denounces the scorner, " and, speaking with an experience altogether unique, gauges with much acumen the aggravation produced by a "continual dropping.' Nevertheless, absolutely and in themselves, tears are to be preferred to oaths. They may try our patience and stir our spleen, but at least they do not infringe any canon of morality or necessarily shock the pious consciences of those who may chance to witness them. As one of our own poets has said or sung: "Women must weep; but he does not add that men must, or even may, swear.

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In these days, which see so many crusades of one kind and another, it is a little strange that no dead set has been made against what is briefly but forcibly stigmatized as "foul language. Our beer is drunk in the face of a legion of hostile spectators; our tobacco is confronted by an adverse League; but we are still permitted to swear with impunity. No special " Army" has been levied to violate the sanctity of our oaths. And yet no one can pretend that they rest upon any more respectable basis than that of mere custom. For a nation which professes to take its moral stand on a code containing the plain precept "Swear not at all," it must be admitted that we are a little lax in our practice. A habit which we acknowledge to be in defiance equally of jus, fas, and perhaps lex also, we have nevertheless, within the memory of man, made no serious attempt to stamp out or even

to reform. Far from being killed, the snake has not been appreciably scotched, save in the drawing-room. If oaths in daily life cannot be abolished (that of "the Christian man, when the magistrate requireth," being of course excepted) we might at least have a revised version of the present alternative phrases. We would not, indeed, revert to the days of "ods bobs and bodikins" for the reason already mentioned. Nor do the trivialities of modern social intercourse seem to demand anything like the grand and massive adjurations of the prophets of the Old Testament. But surely the ingenuity of some master of language could devise for us a table of imprecations which, on the one hand, should be abundantly "mouthfilling" and satisfy the keenest critic of point and pungency, while, on the other, they should not offend against decency or religious scruples. Almost anything would be better than the current profanities and ineptitudes which constitute "the vain and rash swearing" of the average "Christian man.' If we must swear, let the operation be conducted, like so many others nowadays, elegantly yet effectively, on true South Kensington lines. Let our execrations be in accordance with the canons of High Art. So might we remain still "full," to our heart's content, "of strange oaths"-possibly stranger, and certainly less noisome and unholy than any that have graced the lips of man since first he habitually swore.— Macmillan's Magazine.

RECENT CONVERSATIONS IN A STUDIO.

BY W. W. STORY.

Belton. How pleasant it is to get into a studio. There is always something attractive to me in its atmosphere. It seems to be a little ideal world in itself, outside the turmoil and confusion of common life, and having different interests and influences. An artist ought to be very happy in his life. His occupation leads him into harmony with nature and man, lifts him into ideal regions and sympathies, and gives to the outward world a peculiar charm and beauty.

Mallett. It is a happy life; all other occupations after art seem flat and taste less. The world has for the artist a dif

ferent aspect from what it wears to the common eye. Beauty starts forth to greet him from the vulgarest corners, and nature shows him new delights of color, light, and form at every turn. He is her lover, and "love lends a precious seeing to the eye." If art be pursued in a high spirit and pure love, I know nothing more delightful. It gives a new meaning and value to everything. Life is only too short for the wooing.

Bel. Is an artist ever in love with his work? Do you recognize any truth in the myth of Pygmalion?

Mal. No. I cannot understand how

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an artist can be enamored of what he has done. He, inore than any one, must feel its shortcomings. He knows how inferior it is to his aim and to his conception, and the nearer he comes to the end of it, the less he is contented with it. Even when he succeeds, success is a merely relative term the thing produced must necessarily be below and within the producer. It is not the victory so much as the battle that delights him. It is not the product, but the producing. There is a certain sadness which comes over one at the end of every work-first, from a sense of disappointment that the result is not more satisfactory; and, second, from the loss of a companion and friend of many days, to whom the greater part of his time and thought has been given. Before the work is completed, there comes a certain exhaustion of purpose and power. Already the mind is projecting itself beyond into new conceptions and ideas, which beckon forward with illusory promises of higher beauty and fairer accomplishment. The thing to be done will be better than what is done. The next combat will be crowned with victory. The future is glad and large of promise-the present is sad and unsatisfied.

Bel. This is so with every pursuitwith life itself. The past and the future have a certain consecration which the present has not the mists of memory enchant the one; the glories of hope transfigure the other.

Mal. Still, one enjoys the present through the ministrations of art more than by any other means. Every day has its happiness and its work; and it is the union of the mechanical and the poeticthe real and the ideal-which gives it a special charm. The body and mind are working together. Artists are generally long lived-and particularly sculptors-for the simple reason that the mind and body are both kept constantly in harmonious

action.

Bel. I suppose irritation and worry kill far more than hard work, and this is the reason why business and commerce use men up so rapidly.

Mal. Besides, in art one is always learning, and that begets a kind of cheerfulness, under the influence of which the mind works more easily, and with less wear and tear. The labor we delight in physics pain, and as long as we enjoy our

work there is no danger of overworking. It is only when we get irritated and worried that work begins to tell on us and

wear us out.

Bel. I suppose artists have their black days too? I hope you have. You have no right to have all your lives pleasant. Mal. Black enough days we have undoubtedly, when nothing will come to our hand; when we get confused and tormented, and know we are going wrong, and cannot see the right way. Then our work haunts us and harries us, and pursues us in our dreams, and will not give us peace. But these days pass, and we get over the trouble; the sun shines again, and all goes well.

Bel. Do you ever get any hints in your dreams which help you?

Mal. Never! When I dream of my work, it is always going wrong, and I am vainly attempting to put it right. And this arises from the simple fact, I suppose, that it does not occupy my dreaming thoughts unless I have been worried by it or by something else. But I never get anything of value from dreams.

Bel. With time and study, at last, I suppose you embody your conceptions at once with more ease and with more certainty? But every work must have its own difficulties, however you may have accomplished yourself in the practice of your art.

Mal. The beginnings of art are comparatively easy, and we are often surprised to find so little difficulty in achieving a certain result not utterly bad. The friends of every youth who begins to paint or to model see in him the promise of a future Phidias or Raffaelle. But as we train our powers and continue our studies, the difficulties increase-we see more to do, and we are less satisfied with our work. The horizon grows larger and larger at every advance, and we soon begin to feel not only that perfection is impossible, but excellence exceedingly difficult. We labor to attain what is less tangible and more essential. Of course the mere facility increases enormously, so that at last we do with ease what cost us at first great labor; but we strain ourselves to harder tasks. Nature taunts us, and tempts us, and tries us with her infinite variations and finesses and subtleties. There is never an end. The more we learn the more there remains to learn. The higher we go the

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