him of the good things which he had helped to create.

Besides his work, so specifically called, there were his actions-his affection for his parents, or his wife and children, his self-denials, his charities, his purity, his truth, his honesty, or, it might be, ugly catalogues of sins and oaths and drunkenness and brutality. But inquiry into action was reserved for a second investigation before a higher commissioner. The first examination was confined to the literal work done by each man for the general good-how much he had contributed and how much society had done for him in return; and no one, it seemed, could be allowed to go any farther without a certificate of having passed this test satisfactorily. With these workmen, the balance in most instances was found enormously in their favor. The state of the case was so clear that the scrutiny was rapidly got over, and they and their luggage were passed in to the higher court. A few were found whose boxes were empty, who had done nothing useful all their lives, and had subsisted by begging and stealing. These were ordered to stand aside till the rest of us had been disposed of.

The saloon passengers were taken next. Most of them who had nothing at all to show, were called up together, and were asked what they had to say for themselves. A well-dressed gentleman, who spoke for the rest, said that the whole investigation was a mystery to him.

He and his friends had been born to good fortunes, and had found themselves, on entering upon life, amply provided for. They had never been told that work was required of them, either work with their hands or work with their heads-in fact, work of any kind. It was right, of course, for the poor to work, because they could not honestly live otherwise. For them selves, they had spent their time in amusements, generally innocent. They had paid for every thing which they had consumed. They had stolen nothing, taken nothing from any man by violence or fraud. They had kept the commandments, all ten of them, from the time when they were old enough to understand them. The speaker at least declared that he had no breach of them on his own conscience, and he believed he might say as much of his companions. They were

superior people, who had been always looked up to and well spoken of, and to call upon them to show what they had done was against all reason and equity. "Gentlemen," said the chief official, we have heard this many times; yet as often as it is repeated we feel fresh astonishment. You have been in a world where work is the condition of life. Not a meal can be had by any man that some one has not worked to produce. Those who work deserve to eat; those who do not work deserve to starve. There are but three ways of living-by working, by stealing, or by begging. Those who have not lived by the first have lived by one of the other two. And no matter how superior you think yourselves, you will not pass here till you have something of your own to produce. You have had your wages beforehand―ample wages, as you acknowledge yourselves. What have you to show ?"

Wages!" the speaker said. "We are not hired servants; we received no wages. What we spent was our own. All the orders we received were that we were not to do wrong. We have done no wrong. I appeal to the higher court."

The duch

But the appeal could not be received. To all who presented themselves with empty boxes, no matter who they were or how excellent their characters appeared to one another, there was the irrevocable answer, "No admittance till you come better furnished." All who were in this condition, the duke and duchess among them, were ordered to stand aside with the thieves. ess declared that she had given the finest parties in the season, and as it was universally agreed that they had been the most tedious, and that no one had found any pleasure there, a momentary doubt rose whether they might not have answered some useful purpose; but no evidence of this was forthcoming; people had attended them because they had nothing else to do. And she and her guests had been alike unprofitable. Thus the large majority of the saloon passengers was disposed of. gers was disposed of. The minister, the archbishop, the lawyer, the banker, and others, who, although they had no material work credited to them, had yet been active and laborious in their different callings, were passed to the superior judges.

Our turn came next—ours of the second-class and a motley gathering we were. Busy we must all have been, from the multitude of articles which we found assigned to us. Manufacturers with their wares, solicitors with their lawsuits, doctors and clergymen with the bodies and souls which they had saved or lost, authors with their books, painters and sculptors with their pictures and statues. But the hard test was applied to all that we had produced-the wages which we had received on our side, and the value of our exertions to mankind on the other -and imposing as our performances looked when laid out to be examined, we had been paid, most of us, out of all proportion to what we were found to have deserved. I was reminded of a large compartment in the Paris Exhibition where an active gentleman, wishing to show the state of English literature, had collected copies of every book, review, pamphlet, or newspaper which had been published in a single year. The bulk was overwhelming, but the figures were only decimal points, and the worth of the whole was a fraction above zero. A few of us were turned back summarily among the thieves and the fine gentlemen and ladies-speculators who had done nothing but handle money which had clung to their fingers in passing through them, divines who had preached a morality which they did not practise, and fluent orators who had made speeches which they knew to be nonsense, philosophers who had spun out of moonshine systems of the universe, distinguished pleaders who had defeated justice while they established points of law, writers of books upon subjects of which they knew enough to mislead their readers, purveyors of luxuries which had added nothing to human health or strength, physicians and apothecaries who had pretended to knowledge which they knew that they did not possess these all, as the contents of their boxes bore witness against them, were thrust back into the rejected herd. There were some whose account stood better as having at least produced something of real merit, but they were cast on the point of wages; modest excellence had come badly off; the plausible and unscrupulous had thriven and grown rich. It was tragical, and evidently a surprise to most of us, to see how men

dacious we had been : how we had sanded our sugar, watered our milk, scamped our carpentering and mason's work, literally and metaphorically; how in all things we had been thinking less of producing good work than of the profit which we could make out of it; how we had sold ourselves to tell lies and act them, because the public found lies pleasant and truth expensive and troublesome. Some of us were manifest rogues who had bought cheap and sold dear, had used false measures and weights, had made cotton pass for wool, and hemp for silk, and tin for silver. The American pedler happened to be in the party who had put a rind upon a grindstone and had sold it as a cheese. These were promptly sifted out and placed with their fellows; only persons whose services were on the whole greater than the pay which they had received were allowed their certificates. When my own box was opened, I perceived that though the wages had been small the work done seemed smaller still, and I was surprised to find myself among those who had passed.

The whistle of a train was heard at this moment coming in upon the main line. It was to go on in half an hour, and those who had been turned back were told that they were to proceed by it to the place where they had been originally going. They looked infinitely relieved at the news; but, before they started, a few questions had to be put to them, and a few alterations made which were to affect their future. They were asked to explain how they had come to be such worthless creatures. They gave many answers, which came mainly to the same thing. Circumstances had been against them. It was all owing to circumstances. They had been badly brought up. They had been placed in situations where it had been impossible for them to do better. The rich people repeated that they had never been informed that any work was expected of them. Their wants had all been provided for, and it was unfair to expect that they should have exerted themselves of their own accord when they had no motive for working. If they had only been born poor all would have gone well with them: The cheating tradesman declared that the first duty of a shopkeeper, according to all received principles, was to make money and better his

condition. It was the buyer's business to see to the quality of the articles which he purchased; the shopkeeper was entitled to sell his wares at the highest price which he could get for them. So, at least, it was believed and taught by the recognized authorities on the subject. The orators, preachers, newspaper writers, novel writers, etc., etc., of whom there were a great many, appealed to the crowds who came to listen to them or bought and read their productions. Tout le monde, it was said, was wiser than the wisest single sage. They had given the world what the world wished for and approved; they had worked at supplying it with all their might, and it was extremely hard to blame them for guiding themselves by the world's judgment. The thieves and vagabonds argued that they had been brought into existence without their consent being asked: they had not wished for it. Although they had not been without their pleasures, they regarded existence on the whole as a nuisance which they would gladly have been spared. Being alive, however, they had to keep alive; and, for all that they could see, they had as full a right to the good things which the world contained as anybody else, provided they could get them. They were called thieves. Law and language were made by the property owners, who were their natural enemies. If society had given them the means of living honestly they would have found it easy to be honest. Society had done nothing for them-why should they do any thing for society.

So, in their various ways, those who had been plucked" defended themselves. They were all delighted to hear that they were to have another chance; and I was amused to observe that though some of them had pretended that they had not wished to be born, and had rather not have been born, not one of them protested against being sent back. All they asked was that they should be put in a new position, and that the adverse influences should be taken off. I expected that among these adverse influences they would have mentioned the faults of their own dispositions. My own opinion had been that half the misdoings of men came from congenital defects of character which they had brought with them into the world, and that constitutional cour

age, right-mindedness, and practical ability were as much gifts of nature or circumstance as the accidents of fortune. A change in this respect was of more consequence than in any other. But with themselves they were all apparently satisfied, and they required only an improvement in their surroundings. The alterations were rapidly made. The duchess was sent to begin her life again in a laborer's cottage. She was to attend the village school, and rise thence into a housemaid. The fine gentleman was made a ploughboy. The authors and preachers were to become mechanics, and bound apprentices to carpenters and blacksmiths. A philosopher who, having had a good fortune and unbroken health, had insisted that the world was as good as it could be made, was to be born blind and paralytic, and to find his way through life under the new conditions. The thieves and cheats, who pretended that their misdemeanors were due to poverty, were to find themselves, when they arrived in the world again, in palaces surrounded with luxury. The cup of Lethe was sent round. past became a blank. They were hurried into the train; the engine screamed and flew away with them.

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The

"They will be all here again in a few years," the station-master said, and it will be the same story over again. I have had these very people in my hands a dozen times. They have been tried in all positions, and there is still nothing to show, and nothing but complaints of circumstances. For my part I would put them out altogether." "How long is it to last?" I asked. "Well," he said, "it does not depend on me. No one passes here who cannot prove that he has lived to some purpose. Some of the worst I have known made at last into pigs and geese, to be fatted up and eaten, and made of use in that way. Others have been asses and mules. All animated creatures tend to take the shape at last which suits their character."

The train was scarcely out of sight when again the bell rang. The scene changed as at a theatre. The screen was rolled back, and we who were left found ourselves in the presence of four gravelooking persons like the board of examiners whom we remembered at college. We were called up one by one.

The

work which had passed the first ordeal was again looked into, and the quality of it compared with the talent or faculty of the producer, to see how far he had done his best; whether anywhere he had done worse than he might have done and knew how to have done; while besides, in a separate collection were the vices, the sins, the selfishnesses and ill-humors, with, in the other scale, the acts of personal duty, of love and kindness and charity, which had increased the happiness or lightened the sorrows of those connected with him. These last, I observed, had generally been forgotten by the owner, who saw them appear with surprise, and even repudiated them with protest. In the work, of course, both material and moral, there was every gradation both of kind and merit. But while nothing was absolutely worthless, every thing, even the highest achievements of the greatest artist or the greatest saint, fell short of absolute perfection. Each of us saw our own performances, from our first ignorant beginnings to what we regarded as our greatest triumph; and it was easy to trace how much of our faults were due to natural deficiencies and the necessary failures of inexperience, and how much to self-will or vanity or idle

ness.

Some taint of mean motives, too, some desire of reward, desire of praise or honor or wealth, some foolish selfsatisfaction, when satisfaction ought not to have been felt, was to be seen infecting every thing, even the very best which was presented for scrutiny.

So plain was this that one of us, an earnest, impressive-looking person, whose own work bore inspection better than that of most of us, exclaimed passionately that, so far as he was concerned, the examiners might spare their labor. From his earliest years he had known what he ought to do, and in no instance had he ever completely done it. He had struggled; he had conquered his grosser faults; but the farther he had gone, and the better he had been able to do, his knowledge had still grown faster than his power of acting upon it; and every additional day that he had lived, his shortcomings had become more miserably plain to him. Even if he could have reached perfection at last, he could not undo the past, and the faults of his youth would bear witness against him

and call for his condemnation. Therefore, he said, he abhorred himself. He had no merit which could entitle him to look for favor. He had labored on to the end, but he had labored with a full knowledge that the best which he could offer would be unworthy of acceptance. He had been told, and he believed, that a high spirit, not subject to infirmity, had done his work for him, and done it perfectly, and that if he abandoned all claim on his own account, he might be accepted for the sake of what another lad done. This, he trusted, was true, and it was his sole dependence. In the socalled good actions with which he seemed to be credited, there was nothing that was really good; there was not one which was altogether what it ought to have been.

He was evidently sincere, and what he said was undoubtedly true-true of him and true of every one. Even in the vehemence of his self-abandonment a trace lingered of the taint which he was confessing, for he was a polemical divine; he had spent his life and gained a reputation in maintaining this particular doctrine. He believed it, but he had not forgotten that he had been himself its champion.

66

The examiner looked kindly at him; but answered, We do not expect impossibilities; and we do not blame you when you have not accomplished what is beyond your strength. Only those who are themselves perfect can do any thing perfectly. Human beings are born ignorant and helpless. They bring into the world with them a disposition to seek what is pleasant to themselves, and what is pleasant is not always right. They learn to live as they learn every thing else. At first they cannot do rightly at all. They improve under teaching and practice. The best only arrive at excellence. We do not find fault with the painter on account of his first bad copies if they were as good as could be looked for at his age. Every craftsman acquires his art by degrees. He begins badly; he cannot help it. It is the same with life. You learn to walk by falling down. You learn to live by going wrong and experiencing the consequences of it. We do not record against a man the sins of his youth' if he has been honestly trying to improve himself. We do

not require the same self-control in a child as in a man. We do not require the same attainments from all. Some are well-taught, some are ill-taught, some are not taught at all. Some have naturally good dispositions, some have naturally bad dispositions. Not one has had power to fulfil the law,' as you call it, completely. Therefore, it is no crime in him if he fails. We reckon as faults those only which arise from idleness, wilfulness, selfishness, and deliberate preference of evil to good. Each is judged according to what he has received. To To do otherwise would be unjust."

I was amused to observe how pleased the archbishop looked while the examiner was speaking. He had himself been engaged in controversy with this gentleman on the share of "good works" in justifying a man, and if the examiner had not taken his side in the discussion he had at least demolished his adversary. The archbishop had been the more disinterested in the line which he had taken, as his own "works," though in several large folios, weighed extremely little; and, indeed, had it not been for passages in his early life he had starved himself at college that he might not be a burden upon his widowed mother-I do not know but that he might have been sent back into the world to serve as a parish clerk.

For myself, there were questions which I was longing to ask, and I was trying to collect my courage to speak. I wanted chiefly to know what the examiner meant by "natural disposition." Was it that a man might be born with a natural capacity for becoming a saint, as another man with a capacity to become a great artist or musician, and that each of us could only grow to the limits of his natural powers? and, again, were idleness, wilfulness, selfishness, etc., etc., natural dispositions?-for in that case

But at the moment the bell rang again, and my own name was called. There was no occasion to ask who I was. In every instance the identity of the person, his history, small or large, and all that he had said or done, was placed before the court so clearly that there was no need for extorting a confession. There stood the catalogue inexorably impartial, the bad actions in a schedule painfully large, the few good actions veined with perNEW SERIES.-VOL. XXXI., No. 1.

sonal motives which spoilt the best of them. In the way of work there was nothing to be shown but certain books and other writings, and these were spread out to be tested. A fluid was poured on the pages, the effect of which was to obliterate entirely every untrue proposition, and to make every partially true propo'sition grow faint in proportion to the false element which entered into it. Alas! chapter after chapter vanished away, leaving the paper clean as if no compositor had ever labored in setting type for it. Pale and illegible became the fine-sounding paragraphs on which I had secretly prided myself. A few passages, however, survived here and there at long intervals. They were those on which I had labored least and had almost forgotten, or those, as I observed in one or two instances, which had been selected for special reprobation in the weekly journals. Something stood to my credit, and the worst charge of wilfully and intentionally setting down what I did not believe to be true was not alleged against me. Ignorance, prejudice, carelessness; sins of infirmity-culpable indeed, but not culpable in the last degree; the water in the ink, the commonplaces, the ineffectual sentiments; these, to my unspeakable comfort, I perceived were my heaviest crimes. Had I been accused of absolute worthlessness, I should have pleaded guilty in the state of humiliation to which I was reduced; but things were better than they might have been. I was flattering myself that when it came to the wages question, the balance would be in my favor: so many years of labor-such and such checks received from my publisher. Here at least I held myself safe, and I was in good hope that I might scrape through. The examiner was goodnatured in his manner. A reviewer who had been listening for my condemnation was beginning to look disgusted, when suddenly one of the walls of the court became transparent, and there appeared an interminable vista of creatures-creatures of all kinds from land and water, reaching away into the extreme distance. They were those which in the course of my life I had devoured, either in part or whole, to sustain my unconscionable car

cass.

There they stood in lines with solemn and reproachful faces—oxen and