[The reader is to understand that the interlocutors in the

following conversation, though they may speak with all the air of a prudent statesman or of a brilliant divine, are in truth only two shapeless, idiot faced puppets. These puppets, which have been long in my family, possess the strange and awful quality of assuming the characters and appearance of any deceased person- age at the mere will of their master. There is no necessity, nor would it be expedient, to enumerate the means or the rites by which animation is produced. It is enough to say that the puppets are—as far as I hare been able to ascertain—clothed in. the very flesh and habit of the dead, that they stand some nine inches high, and that once they are set upon the table and have exchanged their inanimate stare for the semblance of life they cease entirely to be under the control of him who first rendered them quick. They cease to live as suddenly as they become animate, and the spirit of the dead with which they appear to be infused seldom works in them for longer than the space of half an hour.

Upon the occasion with which we are at present concerned they were translated into the appearance of two well-known person- ages, Dr. South and Lord Halifax the Trimmer.—J. H. 11.] DR. SOUTH (bowing and smiling):

It is most obliging of your lordship to visit a. poor church- man over his wine. I'm most delighted to see you, my Lord. LORD HALIFAX :

I am come to offer my congratulations, Doctor (pointing to the book of Dr. South's sermons which he holds in his hand). The most imposing and artificial rhetoric, and the majority magnificently moderate in opinion. I have—as indeed has all the world—heard a great part of them first from their author's

lips. 'Twas a very uncommon pleasure to one who has so long been martyred President of the Council. There a man must furnish all the sense or wit he would hear, as a poor traveller in a ship must bring his own meat with him.

DR. SOUTH:

How do you affect the sermon on Plainness of Speech, my Lord ? I think you have always writ very plain ; it should therefore perhaps please you. (With a laugh.) It's not many

of our authors, no nor divines, that it will flatter, eh ?

[Here the puppets sit upon the little chairs I always provide for them, Dr. South careful of his gown, Lord Halifax crossing his knees and pushing back a curl of his great periwig which incommoded him.]

LORD HALIFAX:

It is, indeed, written in particularly happy phrase, Doctor and yet with some of it I am not altogether in accordance.

That—as you know—I am a Trimmer, and so bound to find an objection whenever I see a case so well stated as to be in danger of converting anyone. Good principles are highly dangerous when immoderately indulged in.

DR. SOUTH (smiling blandly):

I confess I see no very great perils in an unaffected plain- ness of speech, my Lord, however dangerous a naked virtue may be.

LORD HALIFAX : Yet look where your own allegations may conduct you. To so strict a plainness that— You forgive me if I read you a passage from your work ? But indeed 'tis so melodiously happy I shall not after all crave your pardon very sincerely.

DR. SOUTH (waving his hand in assent):

Never ask forgiveness for reading an author his own words ; they've a peculiar sweet flavour on another's tongue. I shall no doubt be in an ecstasy before your lordship's read

a sentence—wafted far above confutation. LORD HALIFAX (turning to the place):

Here we are-

" I speak the words of soberness," said St. Paul, " and I preach the Gospel not with the enticing words of man's wisdom. This was the way of the apostles' discoursing of things sacred.

Nothing here of the fringes of the north star; nothing of nature's becoming unnatural ; nothing of the down of angels'

wings, or the beautiful look of cherubim; no starched similitudes introduced with a ' Thus have I seen a cloud rolling in its airy mansion,' and the like. No, these were sublimities above the rise of the apostolic spirit. For the apostles, poor mortals, were content to take lower steps, and to tell the world in plain terms, that he who believed should be saved, and that he who believed not should be damned. And this was the dialect which pierced the conscience, and made the hearers cry out, Men and brethren, what shall we do ? It tickled not the ear, but sunk into the heart; and when men came from such sermons they never commended the preacher for his taking voice or gesture, for the fineness of such a simile, or the quaintness of such a sentence; but they spoke like men con- quered with the overpowering force and evidence of the most concerning truths ; much in the words of the two disciples going to Emmaus : Did not our hearts burn within us, while he opened to us the scriptures ?"

DR. SOUTH (delightedly striking his hands together):

Your lordship must allow that that's a very commendable piece of eloquence. I am exceedingly partial to its peculiar fall. 'Tis very well rounded.

LORD HALIFAX (smiling appreciation):

The satire's most judicious and, as you say, 'tis a most original fall of words. But in truth and soberness I contend there lies a flaw in your advocacy, and that the desire of plainness of speech which you commend bath habitually led men into the using of a most cryptic utterance. He that believes shalt be saved, and he that believes not shall be damned. I do not think that was quite the meaning your apostle intended. You'll not, I think, be offended, Doctor ? No nor publish my words abroad either.

DR. SOUTH (crossing his knees and looking quizzically at Lord H.):

No, I'll not denounce you for a heretic, my Lord. But into what ambiguity has mere plainness of speech led the blessed apostle there, do you contend ?

LORD HALIFAX :

But for his luxurious and unnatural desire of plainness I think he would have said, " He who believes shall be saved of a truth ; as for him who has had opportunity to believe, having heard the word preached, and has hardened his heart, and has said I will not believe,' that man is condemned already if he continue so to blaspheme. As for those who have never had the word preached unto them and—"

DR. SOUTH (interrupting):

Pooh, then, my Lord. Your argument is only to blame the apostle because for the sake of simplicity he did not bring forward the question of the damnation of the generations who lived before the incarnation of the Godhead, and who hence had no opportunity of " believing." I hold it was far better to use the plain phrase which" sunk into men's hearts," and which the meanest understood, than for the preacher to lie helplessly exact, caught in the web of his own preciseness. He knows all the truth, and tells as much of it as be can, for his hearers to heed him. It is as if a man, instead of calling for help, "The house is on fire," should stop to count how many rooms were blazing before he cried.

LORD HALIFAX :

I think in reality you yourself, Doctor, prove what I contend. If a man be too much confirmed in a love of plainness and downrightness of speech he will sacrifice as great a portion of the truth for simplicity as another would for the advantage of a quip or a rolling passage.

(d little pause.) DR. SOUTH (rallying his broken line):

And yet, my Lord, you might soon have a speech so full of exceptions and so modified by a " but" here and an " if there as to be incomprehensible to the major part of mankind, and how will truth then be advanced ? May I read you . . (He reaches out his hand for the book, which is given him by Lord H.) • . . Here I have it. (He emphasizes every point by rapping his finger upon the book.) . . "Nothing in nature can be imagined more absurd, irrational, and contrary to the very design and end of speaking than an obscure discourse; for in that case the preacher may as well leave his tongue and his auditors their ears behind them, as neither he communicate nor they understand any more of his mind and meaning after he has spoken to them than they did before." Might not your

minute, elaborate, and truthful orator be placed so P (The puppet chuckles.)

LORD HALIFAX:

Even then, better an incomprehensible truth than a too comprehensible lie. Though it is well argued.—You admit, Doctor, I presume, the complexity of human life P

DR. SOUTH (looking slily up) :

You were perhaps going on to say, my Lord—were you not?— "Then how fit what is plain to such complexity F " But, in fact I think you are mistaken ; the Ruling Passions of life and the Principal Truths of religion are, I believe, mainly very simple.

LORD HALIFAX:

My dear Doctor, to a man running lost and bewildered in a maze which turns this way and that, 'tis of little use to hear a great thundering voice say, " Go north" or " Go south "; he had far rather be quietly told to take the fourth alley to his right hand.

But, in truth, I think that the danger of downrightness lies in its ordinarily being either too Narrow or too General. We are usually in two minds about everything, and it is bard if we must express ourselves in but one word. I think the mind herself is hardened by too great a use of a strait rigidity of speech, and there is not a belief that has not been at one time or another perverted by some phrase, cold and narrow, the very coffin of the Truth. The other peril seems to me to come from a misty inexactitude rising from the very plain- ness itself, as we often see that it is the figure or trope in a discourse that strikes and clenches the matter upon our understandings. And yet, Doctor, one peculiar virtue plain- ness of speech has—a candid sincerity, and I confess myself the more attached to this quality of hers because it is in its prime essence English. Plainness of speech hath, I am convinced, as many faults and imperfections as Lath an ill- chosen wordiness; but I believe that she is, at any rate within these islands, more often a vehicle for true sincerity than her sister. She is native to the soil of our country, and the man who, being born of our earth and a native Englishman, bath altogether cast away his rugged plainness, will ordinarily be found to be most insincere.

DR. Sou'ru :

You think that to reach such a smoothness of discourse he must with labour have schooled out his original terseness P

LORD HALIFAX :

More, I think that he would not have been at this pains but for the having of some quality in himself or in the bent of his argument which he would willingly hide.

DR. SOUTH (slily): You have so convinced me—converted me to my own con- tention—by the gravity and skill of your last argument, my Lord, that I confess I am beginning to reflect upon our present talk. I think, indeed, that I should but do my duty in immediately denouncing you as a man greatly lacking in, sincerity, and so most dangerous.

LORD HALIFAX (sadly): And indeed, Sir, I think that you would after all be in the right. I have seldom been sincere but to my country, and even in her cause I have employed every subtle art and double of policy of which I was capable. I have been true to one cause only—that of England—and upon that altar I have been long since obliged to sacrifice every pleasing virtue I may have had. The art of politics is a very coarse one, and in the pursuit of it I sometimes feel I have forgot to be an Englishman, the sort of man I admire above all others. Dn. SOUTH (gently):

Did you never hear of salvation by works alone, my Lord P As I am a true divine, a very possible state.

LORD HALIFAX :

Then I may be an Englishman by virtue only of my most laborious works without in one particular resembling such a man in mind P Indeed, I trust always that it is so. (He rises as if to go.) But I hope, Doctor, that I have led you to the sharing my view upon Plainness of Speech. She is not, I am convinced, as you would have her seem, without blemish ; she has ten thousand imperfections, but I would have you always reasonably love, honour, and use her, but not blindly worship at her rude shrine. Employ her aid, but do not be insensate in adoration.

[At this point the semblance of Lord Halifax would, I think, have made its adieux, but I perceived that the life had suddenly ebbed from both puppets, and in another moment they had returned to that blank inanimate state which is natural to them when uninfused by the spirit of the dead.]