SECRECY. "Vetabo qui Cereris sacrum Sit trabibus, fragilemque mecum "Comme aussi c'est la coustume des femmes, de céler ce que ne sçavent pas." SATIRE MENIPEL. GREAT merit has been attached by moralists to the act of secrecy; the betrayal of a confidence is commonly considered as an act of consummate knavery, while a blab is universally set down as no better than an idiot. Is this a well-founded decision? or is the dogma another instance, in which the world's wisdom is no better than folly? What, in fact, is a secret in the abstract? Is it not a conspiracy of two persons (more, they say, than two depositories do not constitute a secret) against all the world? If human happiness be promoted by the dissemination of knowledge, and if civilization be but the progressing of the species towards the attainment of that happiness, it follows that secretiveness (as Gall would have called it) must be a vice, rather than a virtue in the human complex. The desire of secrecy, in itself, is nothing less than a prima facie evidence of having something to conceal -that is to say, something which the world has an interest in knowing, and which we have an interest in keeping to ourselves. But to prefer one's own interest to those of our species, is egotism in its worst form, and the prolific parent of all sorts of crimes. If knowledge be power, the possession of a secret must be a monopoly of power; and it was by an extensive application of this consequence, that, in the infancy of the world, a few priests contrived to keep the goods of life in their exclusive possession. All the leading truths necessary for the conduct of the individual and of society, were, then, wrapped up in mysteries, and doled out to a favoured few; till the word itself, from signifying all that is respectable in religion, became ultimately applied as an indication of something disreputable and dangerous, as a gentle expression for what, in coarser language, is unceremoniously christened a humbug. If, indeed, the keeping of a secret were (what it'professes to be) a meritorious action, we essay writers, who are continually letting the cat out of the bag, must be the greatest criminals in nature-a thing not to be uttered in any Christian community. But infinitely more dangerous must be that greater conspiracy, the society for the diffusion of useful knowledge, whose members are determined that, to the extent of their means, nothing that can be turned to a bookselling profit, shall continue a secret to any man, who can afford to pay sixpence for the discovery. What, indeed, is the entire encyclopædia [of sciences, but so many organized attempts to lay bare the secrets of nature, and to communicate them to endless generations? Not, however, to enter into so wide and inexhaustible a field, there is sufficiently satisfactory evidence of the dangers and discomforts of secrecy, in the universal demand for newspaper intelligence, and the immense combinations brought into activity for its supply. Nor does public curiosity extend itself alone to the major interests of the world, to the warlike manoeuvres of the Commis sioner Lins, or the dusts kicked up by the Dost Mohammeds; there is no question so minimissime, that it affords not matter for a paragraph. If Miss Sidesaddle's horse shies with her in the park, or if Sir Spooney Raw runs down an omnibus with his tilbury, the event "goes flying all abroad upon the wings," not "of mighty winds," but upon those of the no less volatile sheets of the London papers. Then, Lord Stingy's chimney cannot smoke, without a paragraph worthy of the fire of London; and Sir John Squandergrove's dinner at the Clarendon is as pompously commemorated, as an European congress. If we only consider the agreeable occupation afforded to the inhabitants of country towns (to say nothing of the actors themselves assembled in the metropolis) by the perusal of these matters, and also the numbers of artisans literary and mechanic, who live by their publication, with all the virtuous wives, and dear little innocents, dependant on their labour, must it not appear a heinous sin in any man to attempt hiding his light under a bushel, and stopping as far as in him lies, the circulation of the so-much-desired intelligence? Great, on the contrary, must be the merit of those amiable and excellent sprigs of upstart plutocracy, who, not contented with exercising a boundless hospitality to, dining-out lords and unprovided Lady Bettys, cramming them with turtle and pine-apples, and giving them balls and entertainments that might coax, not merely the pauper aristocracy, but the very birds off the trees, actually go out of their way, to furnish the public papers with a full, true, and particular account of each last outdoing, and a detailed enumeration of all the dignified possessors of handles to their names, who have honoured the happy hosts with their distinguished society. Upon this subject of what is commonly called "Morning Post intelligence," we can by no means agree in the Pishes and Pshaws, with which certain would-be politicians cast it aside, to bury themselves to the ears in a political leader. Not that we would in the least underrate that portion of the daily press -be the same conservative, whig, radical, nondescript, or unintelligible. The daily leader of a political journal, is as necessary to set the opinions of its party, as the clock at the Horse-guards is to set the watches of the city of Westminster. Of that clock, it may truly be said, that all whose customary avocations call them to pass from the Admiralty to Parliament-street, are in the habit of going by it. In the same manner, the small fry of cockney politicians would never be awakened to "the time of day," without the assistance of their favourite diurnals: and the simile holds further good in this, that whereas the number of parochial clock is multitudinous, so too is that of newspapers; and, while every man disregards the striking intelligence of the said parochials, and pins his faith exclusively on the military martinet keeping sentry from its tower, over the park, so each one hearkens not to the wisdom of the general journals, but gives implicit credence exclusively to the dicta of his one special favourite. Against the utility, therefore, of this portion of the daily press, we have nothing to say; the law allows it, and the court awards it; but we may be permitted to remark, in relation to the subject specifically before us, that if secrecy be, as we suspect, a vice, and the emptying our budgets of truths a meritorious service, the quantum meruit of the inditers of good matter employed in that portion of the press, is capable of considerable extension. Oct.-VOL. LX. NO. CCXXXVIII. The court and fashionable intelligence, on the contrary is 'replete with information; and there is nothing to be regretted in it, except that it does not so fully enter into minutiæ, as public curiosity may deem necessary. Of little avail is it, when Lady Fitztwaddle entertains a select party of fashionables, to know that "every delicacy in season" was provided for their corporeal sustenance. How vague and vapoury an idea does such a generality convey! To half the town, it implies, if we are in the month of May, nothing more than green peas and mackerel; or if the time be Christmas-turkeys and chines, with an accompaniment of sausages, and an après of mince-pies. Even with those who have been roused to a just suspicion, that every delicacy in season, implies every thing that is not in season, it would be more edifying to be informed precisely, and on good authority, what are the individual elements embraced in that very collective phrase. So, too, although it is matter of great public easement, to learn that the honourable, the member for Ratborough, had an audience with the Chancellor of the Exchequer, it would be more gratifying to learn a little of the subject of their conversation, and to be made acquainted how the matter in debate has been settled between them; or in conveying to the public the startling intelligence that his Serene Highness Prince Von Snoring-Guttelburg has left his castle of Thundertontrenk to take the waters of Foolsbad, it would add materially to the obligation, to tell us where he got the money for the journey, and how his subjects contrive to exist in his absence. Upon such deficiencies, however, we have little right to complain; being perfectly satisfied that they do not arise from any perverse disposition to secrecy in the informants, we ought rather to be thankful for what is told us; the more especially as we have our imaginations to draw upon, and conjecture is one of the main pleasures of political lucubration. An evil less easily justified, is the habit which the_purveyors of intelligence have acquired of affecting the mysterious. That very uncertain personage the "certain nobleman not a hundred miles from the vicinity of Belgrave-square," is the occasion of endless embarrassment to the readers" down east ;" while, "the dashing widow of a deceased alderman," utterly passeth the understanding of every dealer in conundrums, west of Temple Bar. Asterisks and dashes, too, are a manifest abuse of the press, and little better than a catachresis: for, these imply a secret; while the purpose of the paragraph in which they appear, can be none other than to communicate. It is with great pleasure, therefore, that we can bear testimony to the decline of the usage; and that we can congratulate those whom it may concern, on the increase of names and titles en toutes lettres. Not so much can be said for certain advertising individuals, who are most mischievously addicted to another species of cryptology, which is the more offensive to the general public, as it is so obviously designed to keep them in the dark. Thus, we often find it set down, " W. X. received. If he will make good his word, Z. will do the needful." "Q. Y. is miserable at not receiving a letter. If William has a remnant of affection left, he will not keep her in the dark." "Indicator has seen the party: 1. p. 9, 276, a. c." Those who remember the sensation excited in London by the handwriting on the wall, the mysterious B. C.Y., may well conceive how such announcements as these must disturb the tranquillity of the guessing portion of readers, and how great must be the pang of disappointed curiosity, when every attempt to raise the veil proves to be vain. Such advertisers should be bound to follow the example of the propounders of magazine charades, who were wont to promise an announcement of the mot d'énigme "in our next." It is no inconsiderable addition to the comparative value of personal and fashionable intelligence, that it interests the greatest number of readers. Few of the male perusers of journals really care a fig about what the Muscovite or the Turk is doing; and, as for the ladies, dear souls, not one in a hundred ever looks at the leader: but every one is interested in the fashionable intelligence. It is remarkable that the more remote an individual is from a chance even of coming in contact with the persons there commemorated, the greater is the avidity with which he or she peruses this part of the paper: insomuch that when one of the protagonists on the stage of fashionable life, finds himself (as he sometimes will) in that other stage, her majesty's mail-coach, he will be astonished at finding his companions better acquainted with all the "nobility and gentry" whose seats lie along the road, than he, their habitual associate, is himself. After all, perhaps, we are wrong in deeming the fact remarkable; for it is precisely because we are ignorant, that we desire information on any point; and the omne ignotum pro magnifico is a prevailing habit in every department of life. Nothing can be less reasonable than the blame which is attached to an indulgence in paragraph reading, nor less conclusive than the standing question concerning the interest people can possibly take in the goings on of those with whom they have no acquaintance. We are commanded by our moral instructors, to form a higher standard of action, than that of mere personal interest; and curiosity was given to man, as an antagonist principle to pure selfishness. Surely there can be no reason on earth, why the nihil humani a me alienum puto should not be as available, to the reader, as to the actor in civilized life. Why, too, may not a person, without incurring the imputation of idle curiosity, find as much to amuse him in the sayings and doings of live duchesses and real cabinet ministers, as in the fictitious sorrows of the Minerva press? And why may they not be as much pre-occupied with the Speaker's dinners, or the routes of a bonâ fide lady of quality, as they are in the imaginary spreads, and in the unreal mockeries of fancy balls, attributed to those miserable caricatures of fashion, the heroes and heroines of the silver-fork novels? But we are not less wrong, perhaps, in confining our remarks to the high aristocratic and important personages, whose whereabouts come recommended to the public, by their places in the red-book. The public at large is no less anxious to be accurately informed of the infinite nothings which befall the nobodies, the little domestic quarrels which are settled at the police offices, the changes of climate recommended by twelve good men and true, the box-lobby challenges of fire-eating clerks and hot - headed haberdashers, the Gretna-green excursions of boarding-school young ladies with gentlemen at large from the sister kingdom, &c. &c. Neither is it matter of small moment to report the important meetings of parochial politicians, with the eloquent and impressive speeches of the gentlemen "in the dirty shirt and greasy breeches," to adopt Curran's well-known designation, and the dignified deportments of churchwardens in the chair. Nor is it allowable to pass sub silentio, the political philosophy of chartism, the phi Q 2 losophical politics of the socialists, the sober progress of the teetotalists, or the no-progresses of the not-able-ities who hang on by the British association. There would, however, be no end to this enumeration; for there is no form or category of mediocrity or insignificance which will not on occasion claim, and obtain too, the attention of the public. Still, we must not neglect to specify those nobodies who achieve popularity and notice through their relations with my lords the judges. If in the kingdom of heaven there is joy over one sinner that repenteth, in the kingdom of Great Britain (ay, and in France too) the abounding joy is over him whose crimes are of the most atrocious description, whose heart is the most hardened, or who, if he has any repentance upon hand, reserves it for the eve of his execution,-the better to glorify the muckle-wraths his spiritual guides, or to ornament a pathetic paragraph, and raise an "intense sensation." What a ceaseless subject of discussion and of interest was that combination of folly and atrocity, Courvoisier! Members of parliament attended his levee to see the irons knocked from his felon limbs, and lords sat up all night to be present at his death. And then, what ecstasy at length, when one of these cutthroats "truly repents," and thanks Providence for having made murder a necessary stepping-stone to everlasting happiness! How consoling is such a justification of the ways of God to man! It makes one's very fingers itch to be handling the knife, or trying the trigger, to witness the confidence with which such a penitent encounters a rope, and claims the attention of the world, to see how a felon can die. The wretch who kicks off his shoes, and justifies the old judges boast of the game qualities of English robbers, is not a worse matter of spiritual edification! 66 Such being the curiosity excited by the nobodies, and such the anxiety with which the public look out for the adventures and misadventures of "all manner and condition of persons," it strikes us as very strange, that the subject has not been taken up by the booksellers, We would press upon their attention, as a promising, and it might be added a certain, speculation, the getting up a mediocratical history of England, or complete narrative of the successive nothings and nobodies that have occupied national attention,-the illustrious lions of the coteries, who have published works that nobody reads; the actors who have blazed as stars of the first magnitude for their nine nights, and then are heard no more;" the " green men," and the Romeo Coates's, the Dupotets and O-key-s, with the long succession of singlespeech orators, patriots of a sessions, writers of last clever articles, quacks, system-mongers, playwrights, swindlers, &c. &c., who have each in their turn amused the leisure, and excited the enthusiasm of the country, to the temporary oblivion of the Wellingtons and Nelsons, the Pitts and the Foxes, who preoccupy the pages of ordinary historians. Such a history, in many senses, might be deemed a national history par excellence. For who is the nation? -not the half-a-dozen great men (as they are called), who, in any department, have carried forward the march of events during a generation; not the ministers, the military leaders, the heads of parties, the poets, dramatists, scientific inventors, astronomers, and preachers; but the masses, the millions, the spinners of cotton, polishers of steel, the growers of corn and cabbages, the shipwrights, butchers and bakers, |