viso, that it be true as well as new, and conquest, by saying what others have said, but with more point, brevity and brightness. To demand that any writer, be his powers or calibre what it may, should avail himself of no materials whatever, except those that arise out of his own resources and invention, is as unjust and extravagant as it would be to insist that a Michael Angelo or a Canova should have no credit for a statue because they did not create* the block of marble from which it was produced.

'Quies dulce est digito monstrari et dicier hic est.'†

Pericles overrated the paltry distinction, if he were so pleased as we are told he was, by being pointed out to a stranger in the streets of Athens; for the very same thing happens every day in London to Cribb the champion. Yet London is a far superior city to Athens, and Cribb a far inferior man to Pericles.

There are some horses full of figure, that bend the knee, plant the hoof, and throw in their haunches to admiration, but with all these qualifications they possess little or no speed, cannot carry weight, and when put to the proof, are hollow beat by

* Readers of taste and candour will perceive the drift of this article, and apply it, if not according to my hopes, assuredly according to my deserts. I am certain it is a very easy thing to find fault with a work embracing su many topics as this which I have attempted, and I am as certain that it would be a very useful thing to produce something similar, but superior; I shall most freely for give the one, to those who shall accomplish the other.

To whom 'tis sweet,

When gaze: s pointing, whisper, It is he.'-PUB,

steeds of far less showy acquirements. By the gentlemen on the turf, knowing in horseflesh, these animals are significantly termed flat-catchers. This term should not be monopolized by quadrupeds, and there is a large room in the vicinity of Westminster, where some bipeds may be both heard and seen, who, as they possess all the qualities stated above, ought not be denied the designation.

Some men commence life in a career of honesty. but meet with so many disappointments that they are obliged to disrobe themselves of their conscience for fear it should grow as threadbare as their coat, 'Declinant cursus, aurumque volubile tollunt.** This is a degradation that will happen to most men whose principles are rooted only on earth, unrefreshed by the dews of heaven. Such men begin well, but end ill; like a certain lawyer who, on being asked why he defended so many bad causes, replied that he did so because he had lost so many good ones.

It has often struck me that most of those arguments which are adduced as pregnant with consolation under our misfortunes, are not an alleviation but an aggravation of our ills, and that they derive what little efficacy they possess, solely from our selfishness. Thus, if our friends can prove to us that the calamity under which we labour is what all are liable to, that none will in the end be exempted from it, and that many others are now actually suffering under it; these melancholy tru

• They shun the race, and snatch the slippery gold.—PUB

isms, which are so constantly urged as matters of consolation, ought rather, to a benevolent mind, to be a matter of regret, unless indeed we have the feelings of a Herod, who ordered many noble Jews to be executed at his death, that he might make sure of some companions in calamity. There would indeed be something in such reasoning, if it could be proved that an evil is diminished in weight by being put on many shoulders; but if life is a campaign where no man's knapsack is one jot the lighter because his comrade bears one too. My fever is not diminished, because I suffer it in an hospital, nor my plague, because I linger in a lazaretto. Because thousands have died in the bloom of youth, I am not the less unwilling to undertake the same journey in the maturity of manhood. If indeed my friends cite instances of those who have borne calamities similar to my own, with fortitude and resignation, this indeed is a proper topic on which to insist, and we have a right to rejoice, not because they had the same calamities, but because they have borne them well. But after all, I fear it must be admitted that our self-love is too apt to draw some consolation even from so bitter a source as the calamities of others; and I am the more inclined to think so when I consider the converse of this proposition, and reflect on what takes place within us with respect to our pleasures. The sting of our pains is diminished, by the assurance that they are common to all; but from feelings equally egotistical, it unfortunately happens that the zest and relish of our pleasures is heightened by the contrary consideration,namely that they are confined to ourselves. This conviction it are that tickles the palate of the epicure, that inflames the

ardour of the lover, that lends ambition her ladder, and extracts the thorns from a crown

Many books require no thought from those who read them, and for a very simple reason;-they made no such demand upon those who wrote them. Those works therefore are the most valuable, that set our thinking faculties in the fullest operation. For as the solar light calls forth all the latent powers and dormant principles of vegetation contained in the kernel, but which, without such a stimulus would neither have struck root downwards, nor borne fruit upwards, so it is with the light that is intellectual: it calls forth and awakens into energy those latent principles of thought in the minds of others, which without this stimulus, reflection would not have matured, nor examination improved, nor action imbodied.

There is only one circumstance in which the upright man will imitate the hypocrite; I mean in his attempts to conciliate the good opinion of his fellow-men. But here the similarity must cease, for their respective motives are wider than the poles asunder; the former will attempt this to increase his power of doing good, the latter to augment his means of doing harm.

Words are in this respect like water, that they often take their taste, flavour, and character, from the mouth out of which they proceed, as the water from the channels through which it flows. Thus were a spendthrift to discourse of generosity with a miser, a demagogue to declaim on public good to a patriot, or a bigot to define truth to a philoso

pher, ought we to wonder if the respective parties mutually misunderstood each other, since on these particular terms, each is his own lexicographer, and prefers his own etymologies to the industry of a Skinner, the real learning of a Junius, or the assumed authority of a Johnson?

Philosophy is a bully that talks very loud, when the danger is at a distance, but the moment she is hard pressed by the enemy, she is not to be found at her post, but leaves the brunt of the battle to be borne by her humbler, but steadier comrade, Religion, whom on all other occasions she affects to despise.

There are many that despise half the world; but if there be any that despise the whole of it, it is because the other half despises them.

The man of pleasure should more properly be termed the man of pain; like Diogenes, he purchases repentance at the highest price, and sells the richest reversion for the poorest reality

Who for the most part are they, that would have all mankind look backwards instead of forwards, and regulate their conduct by things that have been done? Those who are the most ignorant as to all things that are doing. Lord Bacon said, time is the greatest of innovators; he might also have said, the greatest of improvers; and I like Madame de Stael's observation on this subject, quite as well as Lord Bacon's; it is this: 'that past, which is so presumptuously brought forward as a precedent for the present, was itself founded on an alteration of