DANIEL DE FOE. E FOE, the son of a London butcher, was born in the year 1661, in the parish of St. Giles. He was educated at a celebrated dissenting academy, that of Mr. Morton, at Stoke-Newington. In A. D. 1692 he failed in business, his liabilities being eighty-five thousand dollars. He compromised with his creditors, but afterward most honor ably paid this large indebtedness in full. The troubles of De Foe were not confined to his business ventures. He engaged in the religious controversies of the age, and was condemned to the pillory for one of his productions, entitled The Shortest Way with the Dissenters. Both the religious parties were. offended by this publication, but the sympathies of the people were with him. On the occasion of his condemnation he wrote his “Hymn to the Pillory," which is considered to be among the best of his poems. The following extract from that poem shows how philosophically he underwent the punishment assigned him: "Hail, hieroglyphic state machine, Men that are men in thee can feel no pain, Contempt-that false new word for shame- But never frights the wise or well-fixed mind: Virtue despises human scorn, What prospect do I see of sovereign fate! The peculiarity of De Foe's style consists in giving to fiction the appearance of fact, clothing fancy with the garb of reality. His works are very voluminous, the most popular of them being Robinson Crusoe. He died A. D. 1731. A GUILTY CONSCIENCE. THIS thing called conscience is a strange, bold disturber. It works upon the imagination with an invincible force; it makes a man view things that are not as if they were, feel things that are not to be felt, see things that are not to be seen and hear things that are not be heard; it commands the senses; nay, even the tongue itself, which is so little. under command, submits to this sovereign mandate; and though I do not see that conscience always overrules it to silence, yet it often makes it speak, even whether it would or no, and that to its own ruin and destruction, making the guilty man accuse himself and confess what his policy had before so effectually concealed that no eye had seen it, no evidence could prove it. The murderer sees the murdered innocent as plainly before his eyes as if he was actually sent back from his place to charge him; nay, he sees him without eyes: he is present with him sleeping and waking; he sees him when he is not to be seen, and testifies to his own guilt with no need of other witness. high fever and believing he should die, conscience began to stare at him and to talk to him. He resisted a long time, but, death approaching, he grew very pensive, though, as he said, still more afraid of dying than penitent for his crime. After he recovered he grew easy and began to forget things again; came over to Europe again, and, being at Rouen, in Normandy, he dreamed he saw the murdered man again, and that he looked frightful and terrible and with a threatening aspect, and this threw him into A gentleman, and a man in good circum- a kind of melancholy, which increased exceedstances too, committed a murder in or nearingly, the spectre, as he called it, coming to St. Pancras, Soaper lane, London, many him every night. years ago. The murder was attended with cruel and barbarous circumstances such as he could not expect to be pardoned for; so he fled, and, making his escape into France, got out of the reach of justice. some very His personal safety was for a while so much satisfaction to him that he did not make any reflections at all upon the fact; but after a while he took shipping from France and went over to Martinico, where he lived several years. And even for two or three years he carried it off well enough; but the first shock given to his soul was in a fit of sickness, when, being in danger of death, he saw, as he was between sleeping and waking, the spectre, as he thought, of the murdered person, just as in the posture when he killed him, his wound bleeding and his countenance ghastly; the sight of which exceedingly terrified him, and at length awakened him. But, being awake and finding it was but a dream, and that the murdered person did not really appear to him, and, as he called it, haunt him, he was easy as to that part; but, being in a But this was not all, for now, as he dreamed of it all night, so he thought of it all day. It was, as we say, before his eyes continually; his imagination formed figures to him, now of this kind, then of that, always relating to the murdered man, so that, in short, he could think of nothing else; and though he was satisfied there was no real ghost, as he called it, or apparition, yet his own terrified conscience made the thought be to him one continued apparition, and the murdered man was never out of sight. He was so reduced by the constant agitation of his soul that he was in a very weak condition and in a deep consumption. But in the midst of these tumults of his soul he had a strong impression upon his mind that he could never die in peace, nor ever go to heaven, if he did not go over to England and either get the Parliament's pardon (for it was in those days when there was no king in Israel), or that if he could not obtain a pardon, that then he should surrender into the hands of justice and satisfy the law with his life, which was the debt he owed to the blood of 66 the man he killed, and could no other way be expiated. He withstood this as a wild, distracted thing and the fruit of his disturbed mind. What," said he to himself, "should I go to England for? To go there is to go and die;" and these words, "go and die," run daily upon his mind. But though they came first into his thoughts as an answer to his other distractions, yet they turned upon him soon after, and he dreamed that the dead murdered man said to him, "Go and die;" and, repeating it, said, "Go to England and die;" and this followed him by night and by day, asleep and awake, that he had it always in his ears, "Go to England and die." In short, and to pass over some circumstances, though worth telling, which happened to him in the mean time, he was so continually terrified by the reproaches of his conscience and the voice which he thought followed him that he answered it once in his sleep thus: they were obliged to get into one of the lighters and let the boat sink. This occasioned him, contrary to his design, to go on shore a little to the eastward of Queenhithe ; from thence he walked up on foot toward Cheapside, intending to take a coach for Westminster. As he passed a street which crosses out of Bread street into Bow lane, being almost night and he not well knowing the streets, having been absent eighteen years, he heard somebody cry, "Stop him! stop him!" It seems a thief had broke into a house in some place as he passed by, and was discovered and run for it, and the people after him, crying, "Stop him! stop him!" It presently occurred to him that, being so near the place where the murder was committed, and where he had lived, somebody that knew him had seen him, and that it was him they cried after; upon which he began to run with all his might. Had the people cried "Stop thief!" he "Well, if it must be so, let me alone: I had had no need to be alarmed, knowing, will go and die." It was some time, however, before he did; but at last, unable to support the torture of his mind, he resolved to come over to England, and did so. He landed at Gravesend, and there took passage in the tilt-boat for London. When he arrived at London, intending to land at Westminster, he took a wherry at Billingsgate, to carry him through bridge. It happened that two lighters loaden with coals run foul of the boat he was in, and one of another, over-against Queenhithe, or there abouts; and the watermen were so very hard put to it that they had much ado to avoid being crushed between the lighters, so that as he said, that he had stolen nothing; but the crowd crying only "Stop him! stop him!” it was as likely to be him as not; and, his own guilt concurring, he run, as above. As he run with all his might, it was a good while before the people overtook him ; but just at the corner of Soaper lane, near about where now stands the Rummer tavern, his foot slipped, and, his breath failing him too, he fell down. The people, not knowing who he was, had lost their thief and pursued him; but when they came up to him, they found he was not the right person and began to leave him. But his own guilty conscience, which at first set him a-running, and which alone was his real pursuer, continuing to follow him close, and which at last had thrown him down too, so increased his fright that, believing they all knew him, he cried out, "It is very true: I am the man. It was I did it." It seems, when he first fell, some people, who, upon hearing the noise in the street, came running to their doors, as is usual in such cases,—I say, some people, at the door of a house just against where he fell, said one to another, "There he is! That's he! They have catched him;" and it was upon that saying that he answered, "It is very true: I am the man, and I did it;" for still he imagined they knew him to be the murderer that killed the man so long ago, whereas there was nobody there that had any knowledge of the matter, and the very memory of the thing was almost forgotten in the place, as it might well be, having been done eighteen years before. However, when they heard him cry, "I am the man, and I did it," one of the people that came about him said, 66 Why, you are mad," says one of the people; and then added another, "The man's a distracted, disordered man. They pursued a little shoplifting thief, and here they have frighted a poor gentleman that they own is not the person, but is an unhappy disordered man, and fancied they pursued after him.” 'But are you sure he is not the man?" "Sure!" says another; "why, they tell you so themselves. Besides, the man is distracted." "Distracted'!" says a third; "how do you know that?" "Nay," says the other; "he must be distracted or in drink. Don't you hear how he talks? 'I did it,' 'I killed him,' and I don't know what. Why, here's nobody killed, is there? I tell you the poor man is crazed." Thus they talked a while, and some run forward toward Cheapside, to look for the real thief, and so they were about to let him go. But one grave citizen, and wiser than the rest, cried, "Nay, hold! Let's inquire a little further. Though he's not the thief they look for, there may be something in it. Let us go before my lord mayor with him ;" and so they did. I think the lord mayor then in being was Sir William Turner. When he came before the lord mayor, he voluntarily confessed the fact, and was afterward executed for it; and I had the substance of this relation from an ear-witness of the thing, so that I can freely say that I give entire credit to it. It was remarkable, also, that the place where this man fell down when he run, believing he was pursued and known, though at first he really was not, was just against the very door of the house where the person lived that he had murdered. Many inferences might be drawn from this story, but that which is particularly to my purpose is to show how men's guilt crowds their imagination with sudden and surprising ideas of things, brings spectres and apparitions into their eyes when there are really no such things, forms ghosts and phantasms in their very view when their eyes are shut. They see sleeping, and dream walking; the night is all vision, and the day all apparition, till, either by penitence or punishment, they make satisfaction for the wrong they have done, and either justice or the injured person are appeased. But to bring all this back to our business: here's no other apparition in all this than what is formed in the imagination. The ghosts, the souls of the most injured person, whether injuriously murdered or injuriously robbed and plundered, sleeps in peace, knows nothing of the murderer or thief, except only that it gives that part all up to the eternal Judge. The murderer has the horror of the fact always upon him; conscience draws the picture of the crime in apparition just before him, and the reflection, not the injured soul, is the spectre that haunts him. Nor can he need a worse tormentor in this life; whether there is a worse hereafter or no I do not pretend to determine. This is certainly a worm that never dies; it is always gnawing the vitals, not of the body, but of the very soul. But I say here was no apparition all this while any kind, no spectre, no ghost-no, not to detect a murderer. of DANIEL DE FOE. thing. My friend, if thou hadst all the artillery of Woolwich trundling at thy back in support of an unjust thing, and infinite bonfires visibly waiting ahead of thee, to blaze centuries long for thy victory on behalf of it, I would advise thee to call halt, to fling down thy baton and say, "In God's name, no!" Thy success"! Poor devil, what will thy success amount to? If the thing is unjust, thou hast not succeeded-no, not though bonfires blazed from north to south, and bells rang, and editors wrote leadingarticles, and the just thing lay trampled out of sight, to all mortal eyes an abolished and annihilated thing. Success? In few years thou wilt be dead and dark--all cold, eyeless, deaf, no blaze of bonfires, ding-dong of bells or leading-articles visible or audible to thee again at all for ever. What kind of success is that? THOMAS CARLYLE. READING AND THINKING. THO HOSE who read everything are thought to understand everything too, but it is not always so. Reading only furnishes the mind with the materials of knowledge: it is THERE IS NOTHING ELSE BUT JUS-thinking that makes what we read ours. We TICE. IN this God's world, with its wild-whirling eddies and mad foam-oceans, where men and nations perish as if without law, and as if without law, and judgment for an unjust thing is sternly delayed, dost thou think that there is therefore no justice? It is what the fool hath said in his heart. It is what the wise in all times were wise because they denied and knew for ever not to be. I tell thee again there is nothing else but justice. One strong thing I find here below-the just thing, the true are of the ruminating kind, and it is not enough that we cram ourselves with a great load of collections. Unless we chew them over again, they will not give us strength and nourishment. INFLUENCE. JOHN LOCKE. VIRTUE will catch as well as vice by contact, and the public stock of honest, manly principle will daily accumulate. THOMAS BURKE. |