and the most famous in the whole jewel-case, sorry am I to confess, was nearly stolen from the Bishop, not by any Greek, but by an English writer, viz., Goldsmith, who must have been dying about the time that his Excellency, the diplomatist, had the goodness to be born. That famous _mot_ about language, as a gift made to man for the purpose of _concealing_ his thoughts, is lurking in Goldsmith's Essays. Think of _that!_ Already, in his innocent childhood, whilst the Bishop was in petticoats, and almost before he had begun to curse and to swear plainly in French, an Irish vagabond had attempted to swindle him out of that famous witticism which has since been as good as a life-annuity to the venerable knave's literary fame.] sometimes, for instance in Hierocles, sometimes in Diogenes Lærtius, in Plutarch, or in Athenæus. Now the thing you know claimed by so many people, could not belong to all of them: _all_ of them could not be the inventors. Logic and common sense unite in showing us that it must have belonged to the moderns, who had clearly been hustled and robbed by the ancients, so much more likely to commit a robbery than Christians, they being all Gentiles--Pagans--Heathen dogs. What do I infer from this? Why, that upon _any_ solution of the case, hardly one worthy saying can be mentioned, hardly one jest, pun, or sarcasm, which has not been the occasion and subject of many falsehoods--as having been _au-(and men)-daciously_ transferred from generation to generation, sworn to in every age as this man's property, or that man's, by people that must have known they were lying, until you retire from the investigation with a conviction, that under any system of chronology, the science of lying is the only one that has never drooped. Date from _Anno Domini_, or from the Julian era, patronize Olympiads, or patronize (as _I_ do, from misanthropy, because nobody else _will_) the era of Nabonassar,--no matter, upon every road, thicker than mile-stones, you see records of human mendacity, or (which is much worse, in my opinion,) of human sympathy with other people's mendacity.