T H _N;
PETERITE. VoL . I .
OCTOBER, 1879 .
No . 7.
CONFESSIONS. HAT an insight into the deep-lying truth or superficial falsity of various natures and characters may be gathered by glancing into those well bound bijou substitutes for the poetical albums of our grandmothers ! I mean, of course, those books which contain the earnestly solicited so called " Confessions ." This term is applied to the written answers to a mass of questions printed on the margin of each page . Questions of a very homogeneous character ; and, to my thinking, not altogether relevant—not exactly fitted as soul-cleaners that are to produce the eye-opening and astounding results confessions should have. By far the greater number of " confessions " in the volume I am permitted to peruse are from female pens . Pens scarcely freed from the slavery of doing copies ; pens which have never run away, as it were, with the bits in their mouths ; pens which have only ambled as yet through exercises, or trotted, with an occasional stumble, through a dictation ; pens which perhaps once or twice have raced through a passage or two in a letter home, or a missive to an expectant amorous schoolboy of the adjoining Seminary, spurred by some girlish impulse— perhaps mischief. Let us take the first three questions . You are requested to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth with respect 1st, to your favourite virtue ; 2ndly, your favourite quality in man ; and 3rdly, the same in woman. All the answers are written as if the writers had hit on a subject they were happy in knowing something about . They are as it were glibly written, betokening a haphazard, happy-golucky, indiscriminate choice, with but little mark of previous rigorous self-examination . Well, virtues are as plentiful as blackberries : and certainly any virtue, be it what it may, admits
W