He thought the partition of Poland a just act of self-preservation on the part of the surrounding powers, and he seems to have made freedom ignominious, merely with a hatred to the soutane. Hume and Gibbon were the gossips and followers of this man and his school; and a more ridiculous, contradictory, tesselated set of principles than theirs, was never stuck together by hazard and imitation-cold and curious in those spiritual and imaginative questions where they should have been generous and confiding, yet unseasonably soft-hearted in those plain passages of life where severe and rational justice was the duty of the moralist and the historian!

The above-mentioned arguer of the necessary connexion between Toryism and infidelity, might have found in Gibbon's Memoirs a most curious proof of his doctrine; as in one passage the historian confesses that his hatred and opposition to Christianity was founded on that most Tory of all Tory principles,―an hatred to innovation.

"Burke's book," writes he to Lord. Sheffield, " is a most admirable medicine against the French disease, which has made too much progress even in this happy country. I admire his eloquence, I approve his politics, I adore his chivalry, and I can forgive even his superstition. The primitive Church, which I have treated with some freedom, was itself at that time an innovation, and I was attached at the time to the old Pagan establishment."

Let but two words be altered in this notable exposition of creed, and it will serve precisely any Tory of the present day to oppose Reform withal. So far did this eleutherophobia carry Gibbon, that we find this hater of Christianity as an innovation, upholding one of its most detestable consequences the Inquisition: "I recollect," says Lord Sheffield, in a circle where French affairs were the topic, and some Portuguese present, he seemingly, with seriousness, argued in favour of the Inquisition at Lisbon, and said, he would not, at the present moment, give up even that old establishment."

MYSTIFICATION-THE WHITE PATIENT.

"There's a knot, a gang, a pack, a conspiracy against me."

"Well, if I be served such another trick, I'll have my brains taken out and buttered, and give them to a dog for a new-year's gift."-Merry Wives of Windsor THOUGH the word "mystification" is somewhat of the newest in our language, and not very old in the French, from which we have borrowed it, yet the thing it represents is by no means an affair of yesterday. Mystification is as old as idleness, and idleness as old as civilization, and civilization as old as Triptolemus and his plough. From the remotest tradition, before History began to write, we hear of mystifications and mystifiers. Was not Saturn finely mystified when he swallowed, what the Irish would call, a lump of a stone, for a young sucking god? Mystification is indeed of all ages, being an integral portion of human nature. Ulysses, the great mystifier of antiquity, was seldom without some practical joke at his fingers' ends; and was never so happy as when he was "selling a bargain." He was so far, however, lucky, that he lived in an age when folks were not "up to

snuff," and he had rarely to deal with "the knowing ones." Thus the old Cyclops had brains as hard as his own anvil, or he never would have been "done" by the "rigmarol" tale of Nobody. Achilles also, or we are much mistaken, proved himself as dull as any modern "great captain" of them all, not to "understand trap," when Ulysses shewed him the armour in the court of the King of Scyros,-and the young rascal in love too, which never fails to sharpen a man's wits, provided he have any to sharpen. The manner in which the wily Greek "diddled" the Syrens, was more knowing; and the way in which he "bamboozled" his wife's suitors, "flogged the world," and was "as rum a touch" as need be. Yet even Ulysses was mystified by Palamedes, in his young days; and some think that Penelope with her cock-and-bull story of a web, was, in his older and riper experience, "one too many for him."

The ascent of Romulus to heaven, under the nick-name of Quirinus, was a flat mystification of the Romans, who, it must be confessed, were ready-made dupes to the hands of their church and state operators, and swallowed Quintus Curtius's leap, and Menenius Agrippa's sophistical fable with equal facility. Brutus's shamming mad was a "go" of the first order, though rather too jacobinical for our pure times; and Cæsar's conduct to Cato, in the senate, when he gave him his sister's love-letter to read, was a "dead take-in." In the dark ages, mystification was universal. The donations to the Papal See were not bad specimens of the art of humming, and the false decretals are allowed to have been an admirable joke. In our own history, Oliver Cromwell shines the prince of mystifiers. His "seeking the Lord" in the shape of a corkscrew was quite prime." Monk, and Anthony Ashley Cooper were both "good in their way;" and Churchill, the great Duke of Marlborough, ran his rigs" on the Stuarts in a superior style. The glorious revo......; but it's as well to stop where we are, lest we break the invisible line, which divides the demesne of history, from that of the attorney-general.

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Crossing therefore the water, we proceed at once to remark that the French are the "mystificateurs par excellence ;” at least that part of the nation which "lives at home at ease" in Paris, and upon whose hands time and talent are often observed to hang rather heavily. But here we beg to be understood as not alluding in the slightest degree to the government of that country; or, more especially, as insinuating aught against the king's pacific speech, on the eve of the Spanish war. The Bourbons, to do them justice, are all "fair and above board;" and they speak their intentions with a plainness which none but an ideot can mistake. No, we confine our remarks exclusively to those happy wights, who have no earthly occupation but “faire le bel esprit,” and to shew the contempt they feel for that wretched canaille by whose labour and industry they are supported, comforted, and amused.

In this class flourished "n'aguères," a certain Duc de Caudale, who divided his superabundant talent for mystification between two pursuits--the cheating his tradesmen, and the seduction of that order of females known in Paris by the name of "grisettes." The former he contrived to effect by holding out the bait of extraordinary and usurious gains; the latter he was wont to accomplish by an artifice, now suffieiently common-place, a promise of marriage. With this worthy gentleman a promise of marriage was a mere bagatelle; and he gave

it with the same indifferent facility that a dashing speculator in London" flies his kites," when on the verge of bankruptcy. By the persevering use of these arts, the Duke acquired for himself a reputation, which, if it was not splendid, was at least wide-spreading; but repu tations are not made for nothing; and his Grace, accordingly found himself one day under the necessity of leaving Paris, and of returning, for the benefit of his—character, to his estates in a remote province.

On the eve of departure, this important event got wind; and the Duke's hotel was besieged by a whole army of creditors. A day later with them, and it would have been the "day after the fair;" but as it was, Caudale was caught on his form, and no doubling could enable him to put off the interview. The horses therefore being at the door, and every thing in readiness for flight, the duns, "horrible monsters," were admitted. The Duke's reception of them was polite; he heard their story with patience, lamented their loss of time, leaned heavily on his "homme d'affaires," whose irregularities, he said, were the cause of their disappointments, and finally, calling for pen, ink, and paper, he asked for their accounts. Running his eye over the numerous bills, with the air of an hasty examination, he noted and signed each separate document, and then, turning to his intendant, delivered him a bundle of papers, and desiring him to give every creditor his order for payment; which, he observed, was the more easily done, as each paper was endorsed with its owner's name So saying, he took his leave, mounted his horse and set off. The creditors, eager for their long-looked-for money, scarcely suffered him to leave the room, when they crowded round the man of figures to receive the expected order; but their astonishment may be readily conceived, when, instead of "Please to pay the bearer, each man read in his own billet "I Duc de Caudale, &c. &c. hereby promise to marry Mr. So and So." The intendant, who was perhaps aware of the cheat, endeavoured to excuse his master to the best of his power, saying "It was an unlucky mistake." "It arose entirely from absence of mind and the inveterate habit of writing such promises." "He had no doubt that as soon as his master was aware of the error he would hasten to rectify it ;" and in this way he dismissed the enraged dupes, about as well satisfied with their mornings' work, as the Jew creditors of the elder Baron de Felsheim with Brandt's mode of "equitable adjustment" in Pigault Le Brun's whimsical novel.

A mystifier in a lower rank in society was Turpin, celebrated by his countrymen and neighbours for a wicked wit. Turpin seems to have been born for the express purpose of humbugging all the world, and to have been what we call a first-rate wag. Happening to sit one day at church next to a jolly fat-faced lady, whose nose was the least prominent feature in her platter-formed visage, he began to fidget and grunt, and make such horrible contortions as induced his good-natured neighbour to ask what ailed him. "Alas! my good lady," cried Turpin, with the utmost gravity of voice and demeanour, "I am a poor paralytic, who cannot use my hands; and here I have been sitting this full quarter of an hour without any one to blow my nose, of which I am in urgent necessity." The answer, as may be anticipated-for women are ever compassionate-was a proposition to assist the sick man in his need. Turpin readily expressed his assent, and the fat lady, seeking

his handkerchief in his pocket, lent herself to the operation, which he performed with all the simplicity imaginable, returning to the charge three several times, and making the church ring again with the crowing of his nostrils. Then, turning to the woman, and preserving the hypocritical tranquillity of his countenance and voice undisturbed, he asked her, "n'est il pas vrai ma bonne dame, qu'il y a bien plus de plaisir à moucher un bon gros nez comme le mien, qu'un villain chien de nez camard comme le votre ?"—" and now tell me, my good charitable lady, is it not a much greater pleasure to blow such a handsome nose as mine, than to be fumbling at a miserable snub like your own?"

Turpin, among his other mystifications, for a long time assumed the garb of an hermit. Entering one day into an inn-yard, with another rogue of his own complexion, they found an ass attached to the door. To see it unguarded and to covet it were simultaneous impressions. Stripping off, therefore, the harness from the animal, he crept into it himself, and while his companion drove the beast away, he waited quietly the arrival of the owner. The master of the ass was not a little surprised on his return to find his animal gone and a hermit standing harnessed in his gear. Still more was he astonished when he heard Turpin reverently thanking God for the recovery of his human shape. "At length," cried the mystifier in seeming soliloquy, "my sins are forgiven me, and the time of my penance is expired. I sinned and was changed to an ass; but Heaven is merciful, and its anger does not endure for ever." So saying, Turpin threw down the harness, and went his way. But, as ill-luck would have it, the ass was soon sent to be sold; and who should come into the market but its former proprietor. The anagnorisis was instant. "Out alas!" exclaimed the good man, "has the wretch sinned again already! and has he again been turned to an ass! For the love of God, neighbours, have nothing to say to that animal; he has deceived me once, but I am not to be taken a second time in the same trap: for, lookye, whoever buys that beast will find him some day or other, as I did, turned into a hermit.”

From these specimens we may see how much superior the upper classes of society are to their humbler fellow-subjects in the refinements of mystification. An odd, grotesque humour is the highest flight of a vulgar mind, whereas in the Duc de Caudale's adventure we perceive not only a moral object and end in his humbugging (the getting rid of his creditors), but also a delicate stroke of satire on his own character and conduct, which shews him deep in the philosophy of " nosce teipsum." The mystification of the lower orders rarely looks farther than to the "fun" which it is calculated to afford, and it is still seldomer absolutely ill-natured. But your thorough-paced mystifiers of the bon ton for the most part contrive to put forward their perfect indifference to the feelings of their victim. Their mystifications have more of cold "persiflage," and less of the mere animal impulse to laughter in them. They are more recondite, studied, and malicious; which proves them to depend upon the highest and most intellectual of the human faculties, and evinces in the mystifiers that innate superiority, which in all things distinguishes the genuine China ware, from the Wedgewood and the crockery of God's creation. Every one knows the mystification played off on the unhappy curé, who, smit with the love of sacred poesy, was induced to read his tragedy to the Holbachian knot,—a

mystification which threw Jean Jaques into such an uncompromising passion*. The malice of this "good joke" was its predominant feature, for its wit was not very conspicuous. And what is more, there was not one of the mystifiers who did not in some degree share the poor poet's "mentis gratissimus error" of thinking better of his own verses than they deserved. How infinitely superior then is such a practical jest to the cold conceit of Turpin's nose, and yet how below the piquant mixture of fraud and fun of the Duke's promisory billets. Nothing indeed can more satisfactorily prove the invincible rusticity of Rousseau's bearish character, than his incapacity for relishing this piece of drollery. The leading mystifier of Paris immediately before the Revolution, was La Reyniere, the facetious author of the Almanac des Gourmands. His humour, however, partook largely of the peculiarities of his birth and education, being essentially roturier. His famous supper, which Grimm describes with such effect, though an expensive joke, exhibited rather the ostentation of the financier, than the refined thoughtlessness of expense, which accompanies a determination of paying no debts; as a mystification, it had no elevation or nobleness of character, and was indeed a mere platitude. Still worse was his joke of putting a cork hand on the hot stove of the opera, in order to seduce his neighbours into burning their fingers. These observations apply with great force to the cockney attempts at mystification annually played off on the first of April;-of which, as a correspondent in the New Monthly Magazine has already spoken at large, I shall only remark by the way, that pigeon's milk, one of the favourite engines of April foolery, is as old as Aristophanes.t

To this train of reflection we were led by a mystification related in the letters of Mademoiselle Aïssé, which is the very sublime of the art, and “marqué au bon coin," by costliness to the mystifier, cruelty to the patient, and the total absence of all vulgar jocularity and humour. The story is as follows:

In the reign of Louis XV. Isissé was the fashionable surgeon of Paris. One morning he received a note inviting him to attend in the Rue Pot de fer, near the Luxembourg, at six o'clock in the evening. This professional rendezvous he of course failed not to keep, when he was encountered by a man who brought him to the door of a house, at which the guide knocked. The door, as is usual in Paris, opened by a spring, moved from within the porter's lodge; and Isissé, when it again closed upon him, was surprised to find himself alone, and his conductor gone. After a short interval, however, the porter appeared, and desired him to mount "au premier." Obeying this order, he opened the door of an antechamber, which he found completely lined with white. A very handsomely dressed and well-appointed lacquais, white from head to foot, well powdered and frizzed, with a white bag to his hair, held two napkins, with which he insisted on wiping Isissé's shoes. The surgeon in vain observed, that having just left his carriage, his shoes were not dirty; the lacquais persisted, remarking that the house was too clean to allow of this operation being omitted. From the antechamber Isissé was shewn into a saloon hung like the