but you will not be angry with me for telling
you what you knew before. To be told what
we know, flatters our self-love, and makes
us think, with some self-gratulation, whal
sharp fellows we are; but to be told what we
don't know generally wounds our vanity or
excites our scepticism, and inclines us to a
suspicion that our informant, though doubtless
a well-informed person, is playing upon
our credulity or making game of our ignorance
You will, perhaps, object that in my theory
of corporeal duality, (I don't hint at the
duality of the mind, for that is a subject above
my reach, and above my ken), I am but giving
another name to the hypocrisy of mankind.
But the duality I mean is not always
hypocritical. The double man is frequently
unconscious of his duality. He is as sincere in
one part as he is in the other, and believes
himself just as firmly to be the person he is
representing, as an accomplished actress, such
as Miss O'Neil, would shed real, scalding tears,
and sob out words that came really from the
heart; or as tipsy Manager Elliston, in the
height and glory, the tinsel and Dutch metal
of a cardboard coronation, thought himself
George the Fourth in reality, and blessed his
people with vinous solemnity and sincerity.
If people would believe a little more in this
duality, this Siamese-twin quality of their
neighbours and of themselves, they would
be more tolerant; they would not accuse
of unblushing disregard of truth the gentleman
who, when they had knocked at his
door, entered his hall, and felt his oilcloth
beneath their very feet, called, himself, over
the bannisters, that he was not at home. Mr.
Smith, they might thus reason, the working,
novel-writing, statistic-hatching, or simply
lazy and dun-hating Mr. Smith, may certainly
be, and is, on the first floor landing; but the
other Mr. Smith, his double, who has time to
spare, and likes morning calls, and can
conveniently settle the little bill they have called
about, is not at home. He is a hundred
miles away. He has just stepped out. It
is uncertain when he will return. Duality,
like charity, would cover a multitude of
sins.

Some men are double willingly, knowingly,
and with premeditation—who can be both
wolves and lambs; and with these, most
frequently the lamb's face is the mask, and
the wolf's the genuine article. Many put on
masquerade knowingly but unwillingly, and
curse the mask and domino while they wear
them. A great many wear double skins
unconsciously, and would be surprised if you
were to tell them that they once were some one
else than what they are now, and have still
another skin beneath the masquerading one.
Such is the ploughboy, over whose uncouth
limbs has been dragged, slowly and painfully,
a tightly fitting garment of discipline
and drill. Such is the schoolmaster who has a
cricket-loving, child-petting, laughter-exciting,
joke-cracking skin for inmost covering,
but is swathed without in parchment
bands of authority and stern words—bands
scribbled over with declensions and perfects
forming in avi, stained with ink, dusty with
the powder ot slate pencils, stockaded with a
chevaux-de-frise of cane and birch. There is
the duality donned by the exigency of position.
The fat man who knows himself inwardly,
and is notoriously at home a ninny, yet, awake
to the responsibility of a cocked hat and staff
and gold laced coat, frowns himself into the
semblance of the most austere of beadles.
Necessity is the mother not only of invention,
but of duality in men; and habit is
the great wet nurse. She suckles the twins,
and sends them forth into the world.

Look at Lord de Rougecoffer, Secretary of
the department of State for no matter what
affairs, and see how double a man habit has
made him. To look at him, throning on the
Treasury bench, you would think that nothing
less than the great cauldron of broth political
could simmer and bubble beneath his hat, and
that the domestic pot-au-feu, could find no
place there. To hear him pleading with all
the majesty of official eloquence the cause of
tapeology, irremediably crushing into an inert
and shapeless mass her Majesty's Opposition
on the other side of the house (he has been
crushed himself, many a time, when he sat
opposite), sonorously rapping the tin box of
office, zealously coughing down injudicious
grievance-mongers, nay, even imitating the
cries of the inferior animals, for the better
carrying on of the Government of which he is
a member. To watch the wearying and
laborious course of his official life, the treadmill
industry to which he is daily and nightly
doomed, the matter-of-fact phraseology and
action to which he is confined; to observe all
this you might think that he was an incarnation
of Hansard's Debates, Babbage's calculating
machines, and Walkingame's Tutor's
Assistant, indefinitely multiplied; that his
bowels were of red tape, his blood of liquefied
sealing-wax, his brain a pulp of mashed
bluebooks. Yet this Lord de Rougecoffer of
Downing Street, the Treasury bench, and the
division lobby, this crusher of Oppositions,
and pooh-pooher of deputations, has a double
in Belgrave Square, enthusiastically devoted
to the acquisition of Raphaels, Correggios,
Dresden china and Etruscan vases; a double
so thoroughly a magister coquinæ that he
seriously contemplates writing a cookery-book;
a double enjoying Punch, and with an
acknowledged partiality for Ethiopian
serenaders; a double at a beautiful park down
in Hampshire, who is regarded as an oracle
on all matters connected with agriculture by
ill-used and ruined gentlemen with top-boots
and heavy gold chains; who has a penchant
almost amounting to a foible for the cultivation
of the pelargonium; a double who is the
delight of the smaller branches of a large
family; who can do the doll trick to a nicety,
make plum-puddings in his hat, cut an orange