in it far more of ‘veritas’ than is dreamt of in most people’s philosophy, and that the age of rampant total abstinence is the age of special falseness.  Of course, the evils of drunkenness can scarcely be exaggerated,—­and yet they can be and are so when they are spoken of as equal to the evils of dishonesty:  the former is indeed brutal, but the latter is devilish, and far more effectually destroys the souls of men than the former.  Nevertheless in our poor money-grubbing land, the creeping paralysis of tricks of trade, &c., is thought little of; and the shopman who has just sold a third-rate article for a first-class price goes home with respectable self-complacency and glances with holy horror at the man who reels past him in the street.

“I desire to say this with reverence and caution.  For we all need the restraining influences of the blessed Spirit of God, as well as the atonement and example of His dear Son.  But when we see the present tendency to anathematise open profligacy, and to ignore the hidden Pharisaism (the very opposite to our Lord’s own course), and the subtle lying of the day, it seems as if those who ponder sadly over it ought to speak out.”

Doubtless, there are many more fads and fancies, many other sorts of perils and trials that might be spoken of as an author’s or any other man’s experiences:  but I will pass on.

CHAPTER XI.

“SACRA POESIS” AND “GERALDINE.”

With the exception of “Rough Rhymes,” my first Continental Journal as aforesaid, and a song or two, and a few juvenile poems, my first appearance in print, the creator of a real bound volume (though of the smallest size) was as author of a booklet called “Sacra Poesis;” consisting of seventy-five little poems illustrative of engravings or drawings of sacred subjects, and intended to accompany a sort of pious album which I wished to give to my then future wife.  Most of it was composed in my teens, though it found no technical “compositor” of a printing sort until I was twenty-two (in 1832), when Nisbet published the pretty little 24mo, with a picture by myself of Hope’s Anchor on the title.  The booklet is now very rare, and a hundred years hence may be a treasure to some bibliomaniac.  Of its contents, speaking critically of what I wrote between fifty and sixty years ago, some, of the pieces have not been equalled by me since, and are still to be found among my Miscellaneous Poems:  but, many are feeble and faulty.  Some of the reviews before me received the new poetaster with kindly appreciation; some with sneers and due disparagement,—­much as Byron’s “Hours of Idleness” had been treated not very many years before:  though another cause for hatred and contempt may have operated in my case, namely this:  Ever since youth and now to my old age I have been exposed to the “odium theologicum,” the strife always raging between Protestant and Papist, Low Church and High, Waldo and Dominic, Ulster and Connaught:  hence to this hour the frequent rancour against me and my writings excited by sundry hostile partisans.