pose. Instead of acting as the executive kind. They have neither a passion which of a nation whose mind was glowing with has identified itself with their inmost nature the clear, steady intensity of white heat to gratify, nor a faith which touches their would be likely to act—in grim silence, with their eyes rivetted on their work, knowing that success or failure in that work involves everything to them that is worth a thought, self-respect, honor, love; or shame, scorn, and popular hatred,-they are still devoting half their strength to brag and pantomime, to smoke and noise; evidently under the impression that a theatrical show of energy will do not a little to supply the place of the reality; and, apparently at least, they are not mistaken.

The money flows and the blood flows freely, but the boasts flow more freely still, and appear to pay for all.

conscience to propagate and proclaim. The idolatry for "the Union" and the Constitution is the nearest approach they have to either; and that is neither a dearly cherished personal passion like the lust of slavery, nor a faith like the Puritan faith that God had condemned their unrighteous government. It is rather a fixed idea which has taken firm root in the national vanity, and which needs even now constant lashing and pricking to keep up to the mark. They go fuming about "like a short-tailed bull in fly time," as Mr. Bigelow says, in order to bring themselves up to the goring and tossing point. They are always wanting a deeper rooting and grounding in the goodness and splendor of their own cause. They die for it, but yet they only half identify themselves with it and are thankful to any one who temporarily deceives them into the notion that it is a consuming passion with them. Big words are welcome, because they give a false bottom of confidence for the moment in a cause for which they find it difficult to entertain savage passion, and

It seems to us clear, in spite of the evidence of earnestness which the North gives in pouring out its blood and gold thus freely for the war,-that there is still a spurious element of froth and wind in the character of the Northern movement. True revolutionary energy, such as the South evinces now, such as France evinced in 1792, such as a great party in England evinced in 1642, must be founded either on an absorbing passion or a profound faith, still more difficult to cherish religious enthusuch a passion or such a faith as will fuse siasm. All the biggest thoughts they have party differences and personal jealousies into ever had are associated with the Union. one molten mass of popular purpose; whether They cannot, and will not give it up, for it selfish or noble, whether bloodthirsty or is of the essence of their political vanity. simply stern, considered in this light, Still it does not touch them to the quick as scarcely matters. The South found and imputations on slavery touch the South, or finds this passion in the savage resolve to as the exaction of assent to a detested creed mould and extend their beloved slavery ac- touches a really ardent faith. cording to their own will, without any check There is but one party to whom this or interference from their Northern neigh-charge of half-heartedness does not apply,— bors. France found it, at the time of the the anti-slavery party. They do, in fact, Great Revolution, first in a paroxysm of feel much of the indignant faith and pasdemocratic rage against her own corrupt sion of righteous zealots. But aristocracy, then in her still madder rage they are, even now, comparatively few. against the foreigner who interfered between And as for the welding influence of national her and her prey. The English Puritans fury, it scarcely yet exists amongst the civilfound it in the fresh spell which the trans-ians of the North, and we trust, in spite of lated Bible, and especially the Old Testament, cast upon their consciences at the very moment when they had to resist a formal, tyrannical, and hollow-hearted Church and king government. But on the North there is no single overpowering spell of this

their wrongs, may long be delayed. The crusade against slavery is probably the only contagious revolutionary force which can ever work the North up to the grim earnestness of the South.

From The Saturday Review.

SHYNESS.

ety, which acts without any distinct consciousness on our parts, like insensible per

It is reported of two Anglo-Italian boys, spiration, in maintaining the inward health sent over here to be turned into complete and equilibrium, is, as it were, chilled and Englishmen, and plunged, accordingly, head-driven in upon the system. And the results foremost into the mare magnum of one of which follow are sufficiently analogous to our public schools, that, on being asked the mischief produced by an eruption which what they had been taught by their foreign is improperly checked. This, we think, actutors, they replied, singing, dancing, and counts for the odd veins of shyness which pretty behavior. In that pretty behavior often lie hid in minds where no one would was included, let us hope, self-possession expect to find them. Grattan, for instance, under difficulties, and that positive quality, was, perhaps, the boldest and bitterest whatever it may be called, which is opposite speaker of his time; but, if his health were to bashfulness-otherwise, we do not envy drunk at a public dinner, he was as incapable them the process of their acclimatization. of stringing two reasonable sentences toWe trust, however, that the Italian half of gether by way of thanks, as the veriest Duntheir nature was, for the time being, suffi- dreary candidate who is forced to repose imciently in the ascendant to secure them plicit confidence in his hat. The reason against that odd infirmity, the natural out- was, we think, that in his natural sphere he growth of the English half, which forms the could trust himself. The inner man and the subject of the present essay. So exclusively, outer man worked harmoniously together, indeed, is shyness supposed to be a part of because he had acquired, by long experience the English character, that the substantive or otherwise, the certainty that when he was Englishman seems inextricably appropriated called upon to embody an idea, the native to the adjective shy, as, in the language of growth of his intellect, his powers of executhe railway station, a gentleman belongs to tion would not fail him; but this confidence his dog. We sometimes talk of a raw deserted him whenever he was restricted to Scotchman-never, as far as our experience the arms of courtesy. There he was out of extends, of a shy one-whilst a shy French- his element, and, being a man of sincere and man, a shy Irishman, and a shy American, ardent temper, as soon as he found himself represent, if such a mode of speaking may in a false position, he succumbed to shame be allowed, the positive, the comparative, and confusion of face, and stood up in a and the superlative degrees, of impossibility. state of moral chaos, like Balaam the Such being the case, it may not be uninter-prophet, with every disposition to curse his esting to inquire what shyness is, why it fellow-worshippers heartily, yet compelled takes rank as a peculiarly English character- to bless them altogether. On the other istic, and whether it does not carry with it hand, we have always heard that when mascertain compensations which make it doubt-querades were in fashion, the people who ful whether we should be gainers on the kept them alive-who found wit, and sarwhole if it could be altogether eliminated casm, and noise, and readiness of repartee from our nature. -were not the impudent members of society, but persons who, upon common occasions, were notoriously shy and reserved. Upon the former, apparently, the unusual position in which they were placed operated as a restraint and a clog. To the latter, the mere fact that the usual and conventional state of things which sat upon them, like Sinbad's old man of the sea, was removed for an instant, gave a lightness and elasticity of feeling which urged them on to a thousand follies. Their difficulty always having been to make the inner and the outer man harmonize satisfactorily to themselves, they discovered, to their great delight, that the

Shyness, we should say, might be described as a kind of inverted vanity, or perhaps, less uncharitably, of inverted selfesteem. It is of course modified by the endless variety of circumstances, and shot through by a thousand complicated shades of character; but this always continues, we think, whatever the shift of the pattern, to be the central thread of the woof. The shy man is oppressed by a sense that there is a want of harmony between what he is, and what he appears to be. That reasonable good opinion of one's self, without which it is difficult to be easy and agreeable in soci

from that of other nations, what we should fix upon would be the habit of suppressing emotion. The first thing, we believe, which astonishes an English boy, on being introduced to Homer, is the abundant tears which are shed by the noblest heroes of the story. Achilles weeps-Menelaus weeps-Ulysses weeps on the smallest provocation; nor does this display of feeling appear to have been thought, by their contemporaries then, or by their fellow-countrymen in after ages, as less suitable to their characters and positions, than to those of Andromache or Cassandra. Such being the case, the fifth form boy, who would feel himself dishonored in his own eyes if he gave way at a tragedy or melodrama, marvels at the readiness with which the yvxái ¿ólíμoi пpwwv melt into, what seems to him to be, inexplicable weakness. Nor is this contempt for tears confined to the young. It is apparently taken for granted, as part of the manly character, in society, in business, in literature; and yet those fine lines of Scott's :

"But woe awaits a country, when
She sees the tears of bearded men-"

very essence of the masquerade was, that, classes where shyness is commonly found, till it was over, the inner man was entirely to be suppressed and forgotten. Under the influence of this discovery, they were like prisoners suddenly liberated, and were ready to dance, and shout, and sing from the mere instinct of unexpected freedom. Following the same line of thought, we find that, where the reciprocal duties of thought and action are regulated from without-where, either by law or conventional necessity, no alternative is left to a man-shyness usually ceases to molest him. Her aspect is terrible only in a region of mist and uncertainty. We feel, it is true, under the shadow of her presence, a nervous dread of the opinion of others, but only so long as that opinion is unexpressed. As soon as it begins to speak in human tones, like the Bodach Glas of Fergus M'Ivor, it loses at once its power. Whatever real value it may have is retained; but that value can be weighed and estimated, and if on examination it is found to be entirely worthless, it is entirely disregarded. Accordingly, a man may be shy at an evening party, and yet act in private theatricals, where he knows every one expects him to do certain fixed things, and utter certain would apparently have been unintelligible pre-arranged words, without the smallest to the gallant besiegers of Troy. We susembarrassment. He may hesitate and stam-pect, however, that the somewhat scornful mer in asking a young lady to dance, and astonishment which is aroused in the undeyet propose a candidate for the county, if public opinion calls upon him to do so, with the most perfect fluency and self-possession. Nay, further-even in cases where the shyness felt arises from some shortcoming, or blunder, or untowardness of behavior, and is, therefore, natural and justifiable-as soon as the penalty dreaded, whatever it be, has been incurred as soon as the suffering to be undergone has defined and limited itself within certain bounds, the sense of shame is over. We doubt not, for instance, that Miss Edgeworth's bashful young lady, who went, as we are told, to a ball with a black shoe on one foot and a white one on the other though she suffered agonies till the opinion of the room on the subject had been pronounced-danced, nevertheless, as soon as the laugh against her had exhausted itself, with perfect composure, and went home quite unaffected by the incident.

Now, it seems to us, that if we were to take any one point as distinguishing the English character, particularly among those

veloped English mind when it is first called upon to sympathize with the blubbering demigods of Ilium, would have been retaliated upon us tenfold, and possibly in a spirit of sounder wisdom, by those brilliant Achæans, if they could have been introduced to a Shios instead of a dios avip. They could hardly have been made to understand how a full-grown man, unimpeachable in point of bodily stature and mental cultivation, could be prevented from taking his fair share in the business and enjoyments of life, and throttled, as it were, into awkwardness and insignificance, by a timidity in trifles for which he could give no reason, and allege no excuse. This view of weeping may be taken as typical of the English characteras a proof of the value which we set upon the power of suppressing emotion, and of presenting an iron front to sorrows and misfortunes whenever they fall upon us. Moreover, if such an indisputable fact required further confirmations, we could have them in crowds. The fiercest murderer extorts a

And the consequence

reluctant sympathy (on week days, at any commonly, the case. rate), even from the respectable part of the is, that there is a constant struggle going on British public, if he dies game-that is, if between the vehemence of the real temper he crushes down the thoughts and feelings below and the strength of the icy crust which naturally belong to his situation. Be- which has been breathed upon it by custom sides this, there are a thousand popular and convention above. This in susceptible stories, which derive their whole effect from minds, particularly if they are full of symstriking in upon, and harmonizing with, this pathy, and keenly alive to the influence of keynote of our national disposition. If we others, produces a painful sense of discord could suppose that the surgeon of the sink- and confusion, which, according to the best ing ship, who replied to his shrieking inform- of our belief, is the fountain-head of English ant, "Well, that is no business of mine, you shyness. had better go and tell the first-lieutenant," Whether that English shyness be altodid not really care for being drowned-if the gether an evil, is another matter. It cerimperturbable Briton, in the blazing hotel tainly is a morbid form of imaginative symon the Rhine, who simply cursed the terri-pathy. And if we could have the imaginative fied waiter for calling him before the speci- sympathy without the disease, we should fied hour of nine, did not really care for unquestionably find ourselves in a better being burned alive-if the drunken collier, plight. Mr. Gladstone, no doubt, would who was roused by masked demons, glim- tell us that such was the case in the full and mering through the darkness under phos- free development of their heroic nature, phoric light, and then told that he was in among his prehistoric Achæan chiefs; and hell, did not really dread everlasting damna- we dare say he is right. But, among ourtion when he placidly observed, "Indeed, selves, we think that some degree of shyness can you tell me whether one Joe Collins is is not undesirable or ungraceful in early here?" They would represent themselves youth. The lad who is not shy is very apt to our apprehensions, one and all, as insen- to be of a self-occupied and ungenial charsible brutes, and the humor of the situation vanishes at once. The whole joke consists in the steadiness with which the character, together with its habits, natural and acquired, keeps its ply, however odd and unexpected the combination of circumstances which start up around it may be. And looking at them from that point of view, it may be observed that all such stories, and their name is legion, point in the same direction, namely, to the fact that the suppression of outward emotion is one of the main characteristics of the Englishman. We need not add that Frenchmen, Irishmen, etc., are (and ancient Greeks probably were) formed in this respect, whether for good or evil, of a different clay. The channels through which the current of their inner nature communicates with the external world are freer, wider, and less obstructed. The whole charaoter pours itself easily through them, instead of fretting and chafing against the barriers which keep it imprisoned within. to show, deplorably in error. A stripling Now, if the ordinary English nature were also an unimpassioned nature, we might be, as indeed many Englishmen are, cold, stiff, and ungenial, without being shy; but this is by no means universally, or indeed

acter, careless of the opinion of others only because he is always thinking of himself. His interests, his acquirements, his possessions, his intentions, are ever uppermost in his mind. He is, therefore, not unlikely to build up a wall of self-conceit between himself and his fellow-men, which permanently arrests the growth of his faculties, and tends especially to blunt and dwarf the imagination. This, to practical people who sneer at poetry, may seem no great evil; but we are not speaking of the literary imagination alone. It ought not to escape their notice that the moral use of that great faculty, higher even than the intellectual, is to give its possessor sympathy with, and insight into, all that concerns mankind. Whenever, therefore, we find, as is common enough, parents or guardians imitating the example of Lord Chesterfield, and endeavoring to force ease of manner upon the young, we think them, as the expression itself seems

who begins by being shy, in that his imagination is perpetually at work, and sensitively alive to every shift and shadow of turning in the temper and demeanor of others, is more likely to acquire a knowledge

respect, however, men of average good sense generally get their education finished for them by society, within a reasonable time. They soon learn that, whether they talk or are silent, whether they stand awkwardly making faces in a corner of the room or sit down like Christians in a chair, whether

of men than the self-satisfied young gentle- the victim of a low-fever type of vanity man who, at sixteen, is perfectly "lord of which indicates weakness, somewhere or himself" in any society. There are, unques-other, in the mental constitution. In this tionably, certain easy and gracious natures, endowed with a nameless charm which no education can give or even take away, who from first to last preserve the simplicity of children, and fascinate, without effort or selfconsciousness, just as a rose-tree blossoms, or a bird flies-of them we are not speaking. Let us praise God for them-but nascuntur, they wear a white neckcloth or a black one non fiunt. In ordinary cases we believe that perfect good breeding, which implies tact and a kindly perception of men's motives, and wishes, and even weaknesses, is more likely to ripen out of our natural shyness than out of that premature self-possession which is sometimes coveted for the young by their over-anxious friends. We are speaking emphatically of the young; because elderly shyness, even if it be not entirely extirpated from odd holes and corners in the character, must not be allowed, if we may use the colloquialism, to say that its soul is its own. Any one who, after a certain time of life-passed, of course, under ordinary circumstances-permits it at all to domineer over his soul, to fetter his conver-ously embarrassed and oppressed. sation, or embarrass his conduct, must be

at a dinner party, no perceptible change is produced in the relations of the universe. The sun equally rises and sets-the Derby is decided, and the Parliament dissolvedand, what is more to their purpose, whichever of the alternatives named above they may have chosen, nobody cares. As soon as this last interesting fact is brought home to the consciousness of the sufferer, a favorable crisis supervenes. He slowly takes his natural place, falls gradually into his natural style of conversation, and ends by satisfying himself that, after all, in the ocean of human life, he is as good and as well-rounded a drop as most of the surrounding drops by whose juxtaposition he was of old so griev

ST. EDBURGA, Edward the Elder's daughter, used to steal away the socks of the several nuns at night, and carefully washing and anointing them (?), lay them again upon their beds.

THE Saxons were two hundred years before they could separate the North Britons from those of Wales, by the conquest of Lancashire.

THE church of St. Nicholas du Chardonnet is one of the ancient monuments of Paris, which has been concealed from public view by the wretched houses with which it was surrounded. These buildings have been removed to make way for a new boulevard. The church, which was an appendage to the parish of St. Etienne du Mont, took its name from the manor of Chardonnet, on which it was built. It was originally a chapel, built by Wilkam d'Auvergne in 1280, and the rebuilding of which, commenced in 1656, was not completed until the year 1700.