of hypocrisy. All sorts of dangerous hues line the way to this fountain. Blooming apples of Sodom, full of ashes, hang over its margin, and the fatal nightshade grows around. The symbol of its presiding genius is the crocodile, of whom ancient travellers were wont to fable that he always shed tears over the victims he swallowed, moistening them with a pretence of sorrow in order to facilitate deglutition. There are, undoubtedly, feigned and treacherous tears wept from cold hearts and pitiless eyes. There are persons of such malignant selfishness that they have recourse to every means to overreach and betray their fellows, and of such singular control of their faces that they laugh or weep at pleasure. When these persons, for their own designing ends, affect sympathy, and put on the artful deceits of tenderness and sorrow, the indignant scorn with which human nature instinctively regards such a character, leaps forth in the withering phrase, crocodile tears! The thought of those who are capable of shedding such tears is too loathsome to be dwelt on. Let them pass by. With the condemning pity and malediction of every generous breast, let them go—to their own place.
The next fountain from which the events of life sometimes fetch our tears, is of a brighter character, and surrounded by fairer emblems. It is the brilliant and ebullient fountain of joy. Roses bloom about it, sunshine sparkles through its crystal depths of sweetness and purity. The genius that watches by its brink is a guileless and laughing cherub. There are a few tears of joy shed in the world. As if an excessive gladness "could not show itself modest enough without a badge of bitterness," the greatest delight wears the same ocular livery as the greatest wretchedness.
Our plenteous joys,
Wanton in fulness, seek to hide themselves
In drops of sorrow.
Thanks be to God that in the gloomy streams that flow from human eyes there are discernible a few drops of ecstacy, gleaming amid the stain and darkness of earthly defilements and agony. What a pity it is that there are not more of them, since they are so much clearer than the rest! The tear of joy, as Jean Paul says, is a pearl of the first water; the mourning tear, only of the second. "How delicious," exclaims Rousseau, "are the tears of tenderness and joy! How my heart bathes in them! Why have they made me shed so few such?" The mother clasps her long-lost son to her bosom, and the rapture of her delight can only find expression in tears. Two yearning hearts, sundered by cruel fortune, meeting at last, throb to throb, their extreme happiness overflows in weeping. The prodigal, wandering back in misery and penitence to his native village, and forgivingly welcomed to the old familiar home—when the ring is on his finger, and the father's arms are round his neck—cannot see distinctly, everything glistens so through a bright rain of grateful pleasure falling from his eyes. O, tears of joy! welcome visitors! too rarely do ye come to us mortals. Be ye invoked, and come to us more. Come, with your celestial anodyne, to bathe our aching eyeballs and wash the dust of worldly care and the wrinkles of hate from our cheeks!
There is another fountain of tears, of a character utterly opposite to the foregoing. In the blistering wastes of life it rises, a cauldron of anguish. Around its edges every vestige of verdure has withered away. At its bottom lies a dragon, twisted and panting in the contortions of torment. It is the fount of pain. Many are the tears of this sort that are forced to fall. When the bodily frame is stretched on the rack of disease; when pangs dart along the
