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But lest this declaration of mine should pass only for assertion, I shall support it by proof, for it is material to the character and principle of the revolution to shew, that no condition of America, since the declaration of independence, however trying and severe, ever operated to produce the most distant idea of yielding it up either by force, distress, artifice, or persuasion.

The consequence was, that every raw youth or unskilful body, that was sent to receive money, was put upon by the cunning tradesmen, and all the bad money they had was tendered in payment among the good, that by ignorance or oversight some might possibly be made to pass; and as these took it, so they were not wanting again in all the artifice and sleight of hand they were masters of, to put it off again; so that, in short, people were made bites and cheats to one another in all their business; and if you went but to buy a pair of gloves, or stockings, or any trifle, at a shop, you went with bad money in one hand, and good money in the other, proffering first the bad coin, to get it off, if possible, and then the good, to make up the deficiency, if the other was rejected.

An ingenious man, with an inventive mind, might have managed, in the same number of lines, to offend more Englishmen than Bright struck in this sentence; but he must have betrayed artifice and hurt his oratory.

The passion of fear, the instinct of craft, the malady of suspicion, in a frail old man who has power over every one but himself: that is what Sir Henry Irving represents, in a performance which is half precise physiology, half palpable artifice, but altogether a unique thing in art. See him in "The Merchant of Venice." His Shylock is noble and sordid, pathetic and terrifying.

I insist upon this point, because one of the first of living critics has declared of Paradise Lost that it is a poem in which every artifice of invention, is consciously employed, not a single fact being, for an instant, conceived as tenable by any living faith.

Barbara, who did not, like Susan, bear with her father's testy humour from affection and gentleness of disposition, but who always humoured him from artifice, tried all her skill to fathom his thoughts, and when she found that it would not do, she went to tell her maid so, and to complain that her father was so cross there was no bearing him.

He had always been bland in society, but now his courtesy breathed less of artifice, it took a more hearty tone. Another alteration was discernible in him, and that was precisely the reverse of what might have been expected. He became more thrifty, more attentive to the expenses of life than he had been.

ALMORAN observing the success of his artifice, soon after, as if by a sudden and casual recollection, again mentioned the lady; and told him, he would congratulate Abdallah upon having resigned her to his bed.

"In truth, I cannot; I have tried every artifice, but she passes all my wit and skill. If she were a man, I would have drawn her very teeth out with less difficulty than I have tried to extract the name of this lady. When I was the Charming Josephine of Lake Beauport, I could wind men like a thread around which finger I liked; but this is a tangled knot which drives me to despair to unravel it."

Suspended between these fears and his own most ardent desires, Cromwell protracted the time, and seemed still to oppose the reasonings of the committee; in hopes that by artifice he might be able to reconcile the refractory minds of the soldiers to his new dignity.