at
bowing, grateful dependent; is it that soft-eyed Amaryllis? Ask not,
guess not: you will only know it to be hate when the poison is in your
cup, or the poniard in your breast. In the Gothic age, grim Humour
painted "the Dance of Death;" in our polished century, some sardonic wit
should give us "the Masquerade of Hate."

Certainly, the counter-passion betrays itself with ease to our gaze.
Love is rarely a hypocrite. But Hate--how detect, and how guard against
it? It lurks where you least suspect it; it is created by causes that
you can the least foresee; and Civilization multiplies its varieties,
whilst it favours its disguise: for Civilization increases the number
of contending interests, and Refinement renders more susceptible to the
least irritation the cuticle of Self-Love. But Hate comes covertly
forth from some self-interest we have crossed, or some self-love we
have wounded; and, dullards that we are, how seldom we are aware of our
offence! You may be hated by a man you have never seen in your life: you
may be hated as often by one you have loaded with benefits; you may so
walk as not to tread on a worm; but you must sit fast on your easy-chair
till you are carried out to your bier, if you would be sure not to tread
on some snake of a foe. But, then, what harm does the hate do us? Very
often the harm is as unseen by the world as the hate is unrecognized
by us. It may come on us, unawares, in some solitary byway of our life;
strike us in our unsuspecting privacy; thwart as in some blessed hope
we have never told to another; for the moment the world sees that it is
Hate that strikes us, its worst power of mischief is gone.

We have a great many names for the same passion,--Envy, Jealousy,
Spite, Prejudice, Rivalry; but they are so many synonyms for the one old
heathen demon. When the death-giving shaft of Apollo sent the plague to
some unhappy Achaean, it did not much matter to the victim whether the
god were called Helios or Smintheus.

No man you ever met in the world seemed more raised above the malice
of Hate than Audley Egerton: even in the hot war of politics he had
scarcely a personal foe; and in private life he kept himself so aloof
and apart from others that he was little known, save by the benefits the
waste of his wealth conferred. That the hate of any one could reach the
austere statesman on his high pinnacle of esteem,--you would have smiled
at the idea! But Hate is now, as it ever has been, an act