and disclose one thing which had better have been concealed, our self-sufficiency; for what we have to say we know, but what they have to say we know not.

CCXXXVII.

PRIDE either finds a desert, or makes one; submission cannot tame its ferocity, nor satiety fill its voracity, and it requires very costly food---Its keeper's happiness.

CCXXXVIII.

LOVE is an alchymist that can transmute poison into food---and a spaniel, that prefers even punishment from one hand, to caresses from another. But it is in love, as in war, we are often more indebted for our success to the weakness of the defence, than to the energy of the attack; for mere idleness has ruined more women than passion, vanity more than idleness, and credulity more than either

CCXXXIX.

CALUMNY crosses oceans, scales mountains, and traverses deserts with greater ease than the Scythian Abaris,* and like him, rides upon a poisoned arrow.

CCXL.

IT is pleasant enough for a bye stander who happens to be in the secret, to note the double deception, and the reciprocal hypocrisy that is constantly going on between the young and the old, in this wicked and transitory world. The young are constantly paying every kind of attention to the old, without feeling the slightest esteem, and the old are as constantly levying the discount of their post obits from the

See the fabulous history of Abaris.

young, without intending the smallest remuneration. I remember a rich old gentleman at college, who constantly calculated the state of his health, by the rise and fall of these mercenary attentions. Some little time before he died, his physician would fain have persuaded him that he was much better; it would not do, he had just discovered, he said, six fatal symptoms in his own case,--three presents, and three visits in one day from his dear friend Mr. H.

CCXLI.

EVILS in the journey of life, are like the hills which alarm travellers upon their road; they both appear great at a distance, but when we approach them we find that they are far less insurmountable than we had conceived.

CCXLII.

IF a man could make gold, he would incur a double danger, first, from his own avarice, and secondly from the avarice of other men. The first would make him a slave, or the second a prisoner; for princes and potentates would think a goldmaker a very convenient member of their exchequer, and as there would be very little chance of his dismissal, they would take care that he should not enjoy a sinecure place.

CCXLIII.

IN the preface to the first volume of Lacon, I have observed that there are but two modes to obtain celebrity in authorship, discovery, or conquest. Discovery, by saying what none others have said, with this proviso, 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 they 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.

CCXLIV.

"Queis 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.

CCXLV.

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 steeds of far less showy acquirements. By the gentlemen on the turf knowing in horseflesh, these animals are significantly termed flatcatchers. This term should not be monopolised 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 to be denied the designation.

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 so 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 forgive the one, to those who shall accomplish the other

CCXLVI.

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.

CCXLVII.

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 truisms, 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 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 is, 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.

CCXLVIII.

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 embodied.

CCXLIX.

THERE is only one circumstance in which the up