neck of mutton, three and fourpence, and
just so much remains." And Lawyer B. got the best of it, and made him
pay too. Now this it was to probe another's conscience, without knowing
the nature of the beast you stir up; not considering that when
conscience thus comes down, as it were, with "a power of attorney," it
is powerful indeed--"recalcitrat undique tutus." There are many such big
swelling consciences, that grow up and cover the whole man--like the
gourd of Jonah, up in a night and down in a night--a fine shelter for a
time from the too-searching sun; but there is a _worm_ in it, Eusebius,
and it won't last.

It is a very odd thing that people commonly think they can have their
consciences at command, and can set them as they do their watches, and
it is generally behind time: yet will they go irregularly, and sometimes
all of a run; and when they come to set them again, they will bear no
sort of regulation. Some set them as they would an alarum, to awaken
them at a given time; and when this answers at all, they are awakened in
such an amazement that they know not what they are about. Such was the
case with the notorious Parisian pawnbroker, who all in a hurry sent for
the priest; but when the crucifix was presented to him, stammered out
that he could lend but a very small matter upon it. So consciences go by
latitudes and longitudes--slow here and fast there. They have, too,
their antipodes--it is night here and sunshine there. And so of ages and
eras: and thus the same things make men laugh and tremble by turns. What
unextinguishable laughter would arise should Dr Howley, Archbishop of
Canterbury, go in procession with his clergy to Windsor, each armed with
scissors, to clip the moustaches of the prince and his court! Yet a like
absurdity has in other days pricked the consciences of king and
courtiers to a sudden and bitter remorse. I read the other day in that
very amusing volume, the _Literary Conglomerate_, in an "Essay on Hair,"
how Anselm, archbishop of Canterbury, went so far as to pronounce an
anathema of excommunication on all who wore long hair, for which pious
zeal he was much commended; and how "Serlo, a Norman bishop, acquired
great honour by a sermon which he preached before Henry I. in 1104,
against long curled hair, with which the king and his courtiers were so
much affected, that they consented to resign their flowing ringlets of
which they had been so vain. The prudent prelate gave them no time t