TRUTH, PATHOLOGY, AND PUBLIC. 147 
on Man,” much to the disgust, as you recollect, of 
Mr. Burchell, who thought the reputation of men 
was “to be prized, not from their exemption from 
fault, but the size of those virtues they were pos- 
sessed of,” a sentiment in which there is much truth ; 
but the more you think over it the more you will 
find that perfect honesty is a virtue of such size, a 
gem sorare, that it is not to be found anywhere, but 
is to be perpetually and earnestly sought after. 
Professor Wendell Holmes, American anatomist, 
and most pleasant of writers, tells us how comes 
“ Timidity, and after her Good-Nature, and last of 
all Polite Behaviour, all insisting that truth must 
roll, or nobody can do anything with it ; and so the 
first with her coarse rasp, and the second with her 
broad file, and the third with her silken sleeve, do 
so round off and smooth and polish the snow-white 
cubes of truth, that when they have become a little 
dingy by use, it becomes hard to tell them from the 
rolling spheres of falsehood.” 
If we consider the three learned professions we 
shall find that in all of them there are incentives to 
truthfulness, and peculiar provocations to the re- 
verse. The lawyer has often to practise special 
pleading, which may possibly, in some instances, 
weaken the moral antipathy to wrong ; but he has 
to study from the commencement the abstract prin- 
