The Devil was always notoriously an abandoned pessimist, and his dismal view of the outcome of the great modern passion for literacy is probably due to disappointed ambition and malevolence; for, granting all the suffocating triviality and vulgarity of the Sabbatical literature dished up in the seventh day’s newspapers, it must always in strict justice be remembered that long and beautiful abstracts of sermons of soporific platitude, and charmingly convincing illogic, appear regularly in the Monday morning issues. And so optimists may feel that the morals of civilization are safe. But, on the other hand, evil tongues cannot be silenced. If the accumulation of facts were not such a patently depraved, atrabilious and libellous business, there would be fewer cynics, and cheerful, good natured optimism would expire for want of that venomous opposition which contracts hopeless stupidity into stony and barren virtue. Epigrams would become dissipated in the most undivided passion for truth, in order to diffuse it again into commonness among eager and hungry ears; but the fact is, these ears are now enamored of such noises as cost them no sort of intellectual effort. It may as well be stated here that the Devil has somehow lost a great deal of his popularity in the congregations of the elect, through the continual assaults of Philistines and the unfortunate discovery of natural facts, that have taken catastrophe out of the Devil’s hands and transferred it to the domain of inflexible and insensible law. But the moral cowardice revealed in this abandonment of the Devil is certainly pathetic. Yet we must remember that it is ever so—for the people who turn on us first are the ones we have most benefited. And this seems to be one of Nature’s devices for diverting our energies into new channels of well doing. WALTER BLACKBURN HARTE. SIDE TALKS WITH THE PHILISTINES: BEING SUNDRY BITS OF WISDOM WHICH HAVE BEEN HERETOFORE SECRETED, AND ARE NOW SET FORTH IN PRINT. _Bot._ Let me play the lion, too. I will roar, that I will do any man’s heart good to hear me; I will roar that I will make the duke say, “Let him roar again. Let him roar again.” _Quin._ An you should do it too terribly, you would fright the duchess and the ladies, that they would shriek; and that were enough to hang us all. _All._ That would hang us, every mother’s son. _Bot._ I grant you, friends, if that you should fright the ladies out of their wits, they would have no more discretion but to hang us; but I will aggravate my voice so that I will roar you as gently as any sucking dove; I will roar you an ’twere any nightingale. * * * * * To everything there is a season, and a time for every purpose under the heaven.