Hen. IV., Pt. I., Act V., Sc. 1, "Honor is a mere scutcheon." 

       Well! these are all most admirable institutions for keeping fools in awe, and holding the mob underfoot, that the cunning may live the more at their ease. Rare institutions, doubtless. They are something like the fences my boors plant so closely to keep out the hares—yes I' faith, not a hare can trespass on the enclosure, but my lord claps spurs to his hunter, and away he gallops over the teeming harvest!     

       Poor hare! thou playest but a sorry part in this world's drama, but your       worshipful lords must needs have hares!     

    *[This may help to illustrate a passage in Shakespeare which puzzles the commentators—"Cupid is a good hare-finder."—Much ADO, Act I., Sc. 1. The hare, in Germany, is considered an emblem of abject submission and cowardice. The word may also be rendered "Simpleton,"    "Sawney," or any other of the numerous epithets which imply a soft condition.] 

       Then courage, and onward, Francis. The man who fears nothing is as powerful as he who is feared by everybody. It is now the mode to wear buckles on your smallclothes, that you may loosen or tighten them at pleasure. I will be measured for a conscience after the newest fashion, one that will stretch handsomely as occasion may require. Am I to blame? It is the tailor's affair? I have heard a great deal of twaddle about the so-called ties of blood—enough to make a sober man beside himself. He is your brother, they say; which interpreted, means that he was manufactured in the same mould, and for that reason he must needs be sacred in your eyes! To what absurd conclusions must this notion of a sympathy of souls, derived from the propinquity of bodies, inevitably tend? A common source of being is to produce community of sentiment; identity of matter, identity of impulse! Then again,—he is thy father! He gave thee life, thou art his flesh and blood—and therefore he must be sacred to thee! Again a most inconsequential deduction! I should like to know why he begot me;** certainly not out of love for me—for I must first have existed!     

    **[The reader of Sterne will remember a very similar passage in the first chapter of Tristram Shandy.] 

       Could he know me before I had being, or did he think of me during my begetting? or did he wish for me at the moment? 

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