630 Aphorisms on Man. [DEC. 



and a somewhat diminished military expenditure. And we think that 

 Lord Grey will not " advise " the king to dread the sight of a Guildhall 

 dinner, for fear of being poisoned there, or murdered on his way home ; 

 we think that Temple Bar will be restored to its old peaceful name, and 

 that the alHermen may go to their beds without a pitched battle. We 

 will go further, and say that, in whatever way the present administra- 

 tion may conduct itself, it cannot be more unpopular than the preced- 

 ing one, that it cannot distinguish itself by a more thorough disap- 

 pointment of the national wishes, nor go out more thickly covered 

 with the national ridicule. 



APHORISMS ON MAN, BY THE LATE WILLIAM HA7LITT. 

 [Continued from last Month.} 



XXXVII. 



" To be direct and honest is not safe," says lago. Shakspeare has 

 here defined the nature of honesty, which seems to consist in the absence 

 of any indirect or sinister bias. The honest man looks at and decides 

 upon an object as it is in itself, without a view to consequences, and as if 

 he himself were entirely out of the question ; the prudent man considers 

 only what others will think of it; the knave, how he can turn it to his 

 own advantage or another's detriment, which he likes better. His 

 straight-forward simplicity of character is the reverse of what is under- 

 stood by the phrase, a man of the world : an honest man is independent 

 of and abstracted from material ties. This character is owing chiefly to 

 strong natural feeling and a love of right, partly to pride and obstinacy, 

 and a want of discursiveness of imagination. It is not well to be too 

 witty or too wise. In many circles (not including the night-cellar or a 

 mess-table) a clever fellow means a rogue. According to the French 

 proverb, " Tout homme rejlcchi est mechant." Your honest man often is, 

 and is always set down as no better than an ass. 



XXXVIII. 



A person who does not tell lies will not believe that others tell them. 

 From old habit, he cannot break the connection between words and 

 things. This is to labour under a great disadvantage in his transactions 

 with men of the world : it is playing against sharpers with loaded dice. 

 The secret of plausibility and success is point-blanc lying. The advan- 

 tage which men of business have over the dreamers and sleep-walkers 

 is not in knowing the exact state of a case, but in telling you with a 

 grave face what it is not, to suit their own purposes. This is one 

 obvious reason why students and book-worms are so often reduced to 

 their last legs. Education (which is a study and discipline of abstract 

 truth) is a diversion to the instinct of lying and a bar to fortune. 



XXXIX. 



Those who get their money as wits, spend it like fools. 



XL. 



It is not true that authors, artists, c., are uniformly ill-paid ; they are 

 often improvident, and look upon an income as an estate. A literary 



