spread through entire systems, and assumed as _precognita_ that are familiar to the learned student. Writing to scholastic persons, I should be ashamed to explain, but hoping that I write to many also of the non-scholastic, and even of the unlearned, I rejoice to explain the proper sense of the word _implicit_. As the word _condign_, so capable of an extended sense, is yet constantly restricted to one miserable association, viz., that with the word _punishment_ (for we never say, as we might say, 'condign rewards'), so also the word _implicit_ is in English always associated with the word _faith_. People say that Papists have an _implicit_ faith in their priests. What they mean is this: If a piece of arras, or a carpet, is folded up, then it is _implicit_ according to the original Latin word; if it is unfolded and displayed, then it is _explicit_. Therefore, when a poor illiterate man (suppose a bog-trotter of Mayo or Galway) says to his priest (as in effect always he _does_ say), 'Sir, I cannot comprehend all this doctrine; bless you, I have not the thousandth part of the learning for it, so it is impossible that I should directly believe it. But your reverence believes it, the thing is _wrapt up_ (implicit) in you, and I believe it on that account.' Here the priest believes explicitly: _he_ believes implicitly. _Modern._--Is it not shameful that to this hour even literary men of credit and repute cannot for the life of them interpret this line from 'As You Like It'-- 'Full of wise saws and modern instances'? A man as well read as Mr. Theodore Hook, and many a hundred beside, have seriously understood it to mean 'Full of old proverbs, the traditionary wisdom of nations, and of illustrative examples drawn from modern experience.' Nonsense! The meaning is, 'Full of old maxims and proverbs, and of trivial attempts at argument.' That is, tediously redundant in rules derived from the treasury of popular proverbs,' and in feeble attempts at connecting these general rules with the special case before him. The superannuated old magistrate sets out with a proverb, as for instance this, that _the mother of mischief is no bigger than a midge's wing_. That proverb forms his major proposition. In his minor proposition he goes on to argue that the trespass charged upon the particular prisoner before him was very little bigger than a midge's wing. And then in his conclusion triumphantly he infers, Ergo, the prisoner at the bar is the mother of mischief. But says the constable, 'Please, your worship, the prisoner is a man, a hulking clodhopper, some six or seven feet high, with a strong black beard.' 'Well, that makes no odds,' rejoins his worship; 'then he's the father of mischief. Clerk, make out his mittimus.'