r youth the possibility of resort to such practices: the
less also can we wonder when we know that they met only similar denials
in the higher Rossian society, and when we consider that such denials
came from a source one is naturally inclined to respect, when the man
denying seems respectable. How can we fancy a lie told by a gentleman in
golden uniform, or a lady in a lace dress? But if the defenders of the
civilization of Rossia and of the noble manners of its aristocracy knew
all the cruel judgments of Rossian masters, the lewdness, recklessness,
indecency, and shallowness often concealed beneath their artificial good
breeding and apparent courtesy, they would learn that laces may cover
coarse tissues, and gold hide corroded brass. The gaudy dress and
uniform serve but to permit more daring deeds; the more they glitter,
the more impunity they confer. Under every Government, and more
especially under a despotism, subaltern officers may be sure of impunity
to abuse, provided it is done under the guise of zeal and devotion.

During the past year we have heard and read in lectures, newspapers,
correspondences, etc., many flattering statements of the beauty of the
Rossian Government, and the czar's liberality--and as many accusations
and imputations detrimental to the Polish cause. Why the same views were
not held and advocated during the Crimean war we will not ask, but
merely hint at. These statements come from organs whose purpose is
readily divined. If we turn to the paper that has opened its columns to
the Paris letter, we find close at hand the advertisement and
recommendation of a programme for our own great country, and the
pointing out of a new Garibaldi for the American Union. Now, neither
said platform nor Garibaldi would be consistent with the condemnation,
irony, and ridicule flung upon the champions for one thousand years of
the growing progress, prosperity, and Christianity of Western Europe.

We of this generation are grown fixedly into our ancient habits of
thought, and now can make no change; but our successors, perchance, may
possibly be reduced to undersign the manifesto of Rossian Liberalism,
published about a year ago in Moscow, and, in return for false promises
and deceptions, consent to make common cause against Germany and the
whole of Western Europe. What _American_ liberties would gain by such an
eventuality, is not for us, nor for to-day, to say.

APHORISMS.--NO. XI.

'A man who has