Hazael stands out in large type, black letter type, or red letter, if you will—the hue of blood—a degraded instance of the degrading power of guilt—a warning of the stealthy yet swift aggression of criminal impulse, or criminal policy, seducing, subduing, and transforming its subjects,— “Till creatures born, For good (whose hearts kind Pity nursed) Will act the direst crimes they cursed But yester-morn.” _THE OPEN RIGHT HAND’S SECRET FROM THE LEFT._ ST. MATTHEW vi. 3. To some of us, to very many, it may seem that the Sermon might well be on a Mount, that set forth such a text as this: “But when thou doest alms, let not thy left hand know what thy right hand doeth.” The atmosphere is of other altitudes than here below. We may not sound a trumpet before us, as the hypocrites did in the synagogue and in the streets, to have glory of men; and verily, every man his own trumpeter, they had their reward. But as to keeping our open-handed doles and donations a secret, as it were, from our other self; as to concealing from the left hand the furtive bounties and stealthy almsgiving of the right, that is a practical transcendentalism mostly undreamt of in our philosophy. Yet are there, and ever will be, those—else had this earth of ours lost the salt of the earth, and wherewith then should it be salted?—who— “Do good by stealth, and blush to find it fame.” The larger number of benefactors, who, as the caustic French wit, Chamfort, puts it, pretend to conceal themselves after effecting a deed of kindness, betake themselves to flight and a hiding-place only as Virgil’s Galatea did, with a decided wish to be seen first: _Et se cupit ante videri._ Another of Chamfort’s cynical _maximes et pensées_ runs thus: “Il y a peu de bienfaiteurs qui ne disent comme Satan, _Si cadens adoraveris me_.” Whom the vulgar succour, they oppress, says Crabbe. They have as little sympathy with, or interest in, the rule of keeping the right hand’s largesse a secret from the left, as with Peter of Aragon’s famous refusal to let Pope Martin IV know what were his designs against the infidel. Peter implored the blessing of the Holy Father on his scheme of action; “but if he thought his right hand knew his secret, he would cut it off, lest it should betray it to his left.” And the vulgar mean the commonalty, the many, the _polloi_. The doer of good, therefore, who does it by stealth, is the exception to a rule; and as an exception he is treated in literature and life as what is called a “character.” Goldsmith makes a highly pronounced character of his man in black, whose hand is open as day to melting charity, while he professes to keep it closed tight as wax and hard as steel. He bullies in words a petitioner for aid, while he is but studying what method he shall take to relieve him unobserved. “He had, however,” writes the Chinese citizen of the world, “no easy part to act, as he was obliged to preserve the appearance of