identification of him by a certain maid as certainly a disciple of Christ was boldly met by the affirmation, or negation, 66 Woman, I know Him not." The lie was uttered; the winged word of falsehood was on its way. And there an end, he perhaps hoped. But after a little while, another bystander recognised him, and asserted the damaging recognition, “Thou art also of them." Another denial was the consequence: "Man, I am not.” An hour passed away, and Peter, in sullen misery and bewilderment, self-consciously an abject coward and confirmed liar, had to deny for the third time Him he had denied once and again. "Of a truth," affirmed another of the mixed company, "this fellow also was with Him; for he is a Galilean." And Peter said, "Man, I know not what thou sayest." And then the cock crew. And then the Lord turned and looked upon Peter. And at that look-so upbraidingly expressive, so pathetically recalling recent protestations of unfaltering allegiance, and the concurrent prediction of lapse and abandonment-what could Peter do, but with shame and confusion of face, and with a heart full to bursting, go out, and weep bitterly.

When he thought thereon, he wept: thought of the Master's look, that recalled to him the vehement assurance of loyalty met by the foretelling of his fall. Thought, too, of the graduation of his denials; a first involving a second, and the second exacting yet a third. The third was the cost of the first. had not counted the cost then. He had to pay it now.

He

It was part of the prophet's burden of woes against the doomed city, that she had "wearied herself with lies." Easily uttered, they may multiply at a rate to trouble the teller of them, and weary him, if only with the necessity of inventing new ones to back the old. He must ever be devising fresh vouchers for his impaired and imperilled credit. He must continually be endorsing his forged notes, and forging fresh ones that will stand inspection. Fallacia alia aliam trudit. And this is weary work.

"En quel gouffre de soins et de perplexité
Nous jette une action faite sans equité."

And as with actions, so with words. The same speaker of the foregoing couplet utters elsewhere the lament,—

"Ma fourbe est découverte. Oh ! que la vérité

Se peut cacher longtemps avec difficulté !"

So we read in Molière. And Corneille has a play (not original) entirely devoted to the illustration of this subject, showing qu'il faut bonne mémoire après qu'on a menti; the Menteur Kar' ¿¿oxy, being one who entasse fourbe sur fourbe, and is constrained by the law of his nature, at least of habit, which is second nature, to be ever adding to the heap of lies to which he has committed himself. A Spanish proverb-and Le Menteur is from the Spanish-declares that "for an honest man half his wits is enough, while the whole are too little for a knave;" the ways, that is, as Archbishop Trench expounds the adage, of truth and uprightness are so simple and plain, that a little wit is abundantly sufficient for those who walk in them; whereas the ways of falsehood and fraud are so perplexed and tangled, that sooner or later all the wit of the cleverest rogue will not preserve him from being entangled therein a truth often and wonderfully confirmed in the lives of evil men.

Among the aphorisms of Dean Swift we read: "He who tells a lie is not sensible how great a task he undertakes; for he must be forced to invent twenty more to maintain that one.”

It has been called the severe, but appropriate, punishment of historians who desert the paths of truth for those of paradox, to be compelled to defend the falsehood to which they have committed themselves against the ever-accumulating evidences of the truth. Mr. Robertson, of Brighton, feelingly sketches the case of one who, being unprepared and accosted suddenly, says hastily that which is irreconcileable with strict truth; then to substantiate and make it look probable, misrepresents or invents something else; and so has woven round himself a mesh which will entangle his conscience through many a weary day and many a sleepless night.* One burden laid on fault,

*

The case of St. Peter was expressly within the preacher's view. "It is shocking, doubtless, to allow ourselves even to admit that this is

he goes on to show, is that chain of entanglement which seems to drag down to fresh sins. "One step necessitates many others. One fault leads to another, and crime to crime. The soul gravitates downward beneath its burden. It was profound knowledge which prophetically refused to limit Peter's sin to once. 'Verily I say unto thee thou shalt deny me thrice.'"

66

Mr. Froude shows us Queen Elizabeth stooping to a deliberate lie." At times, he says, writing of her embarrassed policy in 1565, she "seemed to struggle with her ignominy, but it was only to flounder deeper into distraction and dishonour." In October of that year she publicly denied that she had encouraged the rebellion in Scotland. In November, we read, "Never had Elizabeth been in greater danger; and the worst features of the peril were the creations of her own untruths." Again, in May, 1566: "Meanwhile Elizabeth was reaping a harvest of inconveniences for her exaggerated demonstrations of friendliness" to the Queen of Scots. Mary taking her at her word, "Vainly Elizabeth struggled to extricate herself from her dilemma; resentment was still pursuing her for her treachery in the past autumn. . . . She could but shuffle and equivocate in a manner which had become too characteristic."* She was but paying the price of lies—the being constrained to go on lying still. It is certain, affirms a popular essayist, that nobody yet ever did anything wrong in this world without having to tell one or more falsehoods to begin with the embryo murderer has to tell a lie about the pistol or dagger, the would-be suicide about the poison he purchases; and in fine, "the ways down which the bad ship

possible; yet no one knowing human nature from men and not from books, will deny that this might befall even a brave and true man. St. Peter was both; yet this was his history. In a crowd, suddenly, the question was put directly, 'This man also was with Jesus of Nazareth?' Then a prevarication—a lie: and yet another."-Sermon on the Restoration of the Erring.

*Froude, "History of Reign of Elizabeth," vol. ii., pp. 126, 215, 226, 277, 278.

U

Wickedness slides to a shoreless ocean must be greased with lies."*

English reviewers not long since were prompt to recognise in Balzac's "La Marâtre," as revived to Parisian popularity, what they rightly accounted wonderful, a moral immaculate and beyond reproach. And what is that moral? "The necessity of a life of lying as a punishment for the one great lie of a mercenary marriage." One great lie is put out to interest, and the interest is compound. One great lie involves a ramification of others, great or small, if there be comparatives of magnitude in such matters; and memory, if not conscience, is for ever on the stretch. The sad expedient of renewed issues is a necessity. As with the involved victim in one of Crabbe's Tales:

"Such is his pain, who, by his debt oppress'd,

Seeks by new bonds a temporary rest."

To another section, and with another starting-point from Holy Writ, may be referred some remaining illustrations of the subject.

J'

LINKED LIES.

GENESIS XXVii. 19-24.

ACOB in Esau's goodly raiment, and his smooth skin over

laid with goatskins, was duly prepared for a consistent course of deception. But the lie upon lie he had to tell

* Mr. Thackeray incidentally opposes the quasi-apologists for smuggling on the ground that it is a complicated tissue of lying. In his very last and unfinished work, he makes a good old rector allow that to run an anker of brandy may seem no monstrous crime; but when men engage in these lawless ventures, who knows how far the evil will go? "I buy ten kegs of brandy from a French fishing-boat, I land it under a lie on the coast, I send it inland ever so far, and all my consignees lie and swindle. I land it, and lie to the revenue officer. Under a lie (that is, a mutual secrecy), I sell it to the landlord of the Bell at Maidstone, say. My landlord sells it to a customer under a lie. We are all engaged in crime, conspiracy, and falsehood; nay, if the revenue looks too closely after us, we out with our pistols, and to crime and conspiracy add murder. Do you suppose men engaged in lying every day will scruple about a false oath in a witness-box? Crime engenders crime, sir."-Denis Duval, chap. vii.

before his end was gained, must have sorely tried what of conscience he then had. The primary falsehood,-distinctly enounced in answer to his blind sire's "Who art thou?" "I am Esau, thy firstborn," come back from the chase with the venison Isaac had desired of his firstborn,-this initial lie had immediately to be backed by another. How had he found it so quickly? There is something revolting in the style of the unfaltering fabrication at once ready to hand, "Because the Lord thy God brought it to me." Then ensued that solution of the old man's misgivings by a manual examination of the disguised pretender; it was Esau's hirsute skin, sure enough, though the voice was Jacob's. But the blessing was given. And even after that eventful benediction, the patriarch, with a yet lingering apprehension, renewed the pointed question, in its directest form, “ Art thou my very son Esau?" And Jacob said, "I am." Lie linked to lie, in a concatenation accordingly.

Solent mendaces luere pœnas malefici, says Phædrus: liars usually pay the penalty of their guilt. And Mrs. Browning vigorously states one distinctive penalty, where she speaks of those who-

"Pay the price

Of lies, by being constrained to lie on still."

The author of "Romola" powerfully illustrates in that remarkable book the embarrassments involved in one cowardly departure from truth. In the chapter headed "Tito's Dilemma," the occasion arises for Tito to fabricate an ingenious lie; an occasion "which circumstance never fails to beget on tacit falsity." Many chapters farther on we find him experiencing the inexorable law of human souls, that we prepare ourselves for sudden deeds by the reiterated choice of good or evil that gradually determines character; and it becomes a question whether all the resources of lying will save him from being crushed by the consequences of his habitual choice. At another juncture we read: "Tito felt more and more confidence as he went on; the lie was not so difficult when it was once begun ; and as the words fell easily from his lips, they gave him a sense of power such as men feel when they have begun a muscular feat