one of the
merchants? Is it the business of an educated gentleman to live by the
trade of an eavesdropper and a blab? In the Memoirs of M. Blowitz he
tells you how he began his illustrious career by procuring the
publication of remarks which M. Thiers had made to him. He then "went to
see M. Thiers, not without some apprehension." Is that the kind of
emotion which you wish to be habitual in your experience? Do you think
it agreeable to become shame-faced when you meet people who have
conversed with you frankly? Do you enjoy being a sneak, and feeling like
a sneak? Do you find blushing pleasant? Of course you will soon lose
the power of blushing; but is that an agreeable prospect? Depend on it,
there are discomforts in the progress to the brazen, in the journey to
the shameless. You may, if your tattle is political, become serviceable
to men engaged in great affairs. They may even ask you to their houses,
if that is your ambition. You may urge that they condone your deeds, and
are even art and part in them. But you must also be aware that they call
you, and think you, a reptile. You are not one of those who will do the
devil's work without the devil's wages; but do you seriously think that
the wages are worth the degradation?

Many men think so, and are not in other respects bad men. They may even
be kindly and genial. Gentlemen they cannot be, nor men of delicacy, nor
men of honour. They have sold themselves and their self-respect, some
with ease (they are the least blamable), some with a struggle. They have
seen better things, and perhaps vainly long to return to them. These are
"St. Satan's Penitents," and their remorse is vain:

_Virtutem videant_, _intabescantque relicta_.

If you don't wish to be of this dismal company, there is only one course
open to you. Never write for publication one line of personal tattle.
Let all men's persons and private lives be as sacred to you as your
father's,--though there are tattlers who would sell paragraphs about
their own mothers if there were a market for the ware. There is no half-
way house on this road. Once begin to print private conversation, and
you are lost--lost, that is, to delicacy and gradually, to many other
things excellent and of good report. The whole question for you is, Do
you mind incurring this damnation? If there is nothing in it which
appals and revolts you, if your conscience is satisfied with a few ready
sophisms, or if you don