to be forever haranguing on the opposite virtue,--choosing for his
perpetual text, in preference to all other pulpit-topics, the remarkable
resistance recorded in the 89th of Exodus [Genesis?],--dwelling,
moreover, and dilating upon it,--then Parson W---- might be reasonably
suspected of hypocrisy. But Parson W---- rarely diverteth into such line
of argument, or toucheth it briefly. His ordinary topics are fetched
from 'obedience to the powers that are,'--'submission to the civil
magistrate in all commands that are not absolutely unlawful'; on which
he can delight to expatiate with equal fervor and sincerity.

"Again. To _despise_ a person is properly to _look down_ upon him with
none or the least possible emotion. But when Clementina, who has lately
lost her lover, with bosom heaving, eyes flashing, and her whole frame
in agitation, pronounces with a peculiar emphasis that she '_despises_
the fellow,' depend upon it that he is not quite so despicable in her
eyes as she would have us imagine.

"One more instance. If we must naturalize that portentous phrase, _a
truism_, it were well that we limited the use of it. Every commonplace
or trite observation is not a truism. For example: A good name helps
a man on in the world. This is nothing but a simple truth, however
hackneyed. It has a distinct subject and predicate. But when the thing
predicated is involved in the term of the subject, and so necessarily
involved that by no possible conception they can be separated, then
it becomes a truism; as to say, A good name is a proof of a man's
estimation in the world. We seem to be saying something, when we say
nothing. I was describing to F---- some knavish tricks of a mutual
friend of ours. 'If he did so and so,' was the reply, 'he cannot be an
honest man.' Here was a genuine truism, truth upon truth, inference and
proposition identical,--or rather, a dictionary definition usurping the