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.

THE power of Love consists mainly in the privilege that Potentate possesses of coining, circulating, and making current those falsehoods between man and woman that would not pass for one moment either between woman and woman, or man and man.

THE plainest man that can convince a woman that he is really in love with her, has done more to make her in love with him than the handsomest man, if he can produce no such conviction. For the love of woman is a shoot, not a seed, and flourishes most vigorously only when engrafted on that love which is rooted in the breast of another.

LOVE is an alliance of friendship and of lust: if the former predominate, it is a passion exalted and refined; but if the fatter, gross and sensual.

LOVE, like the cold bath, is never negative: it seldom leaves us where it finds us; if once we plunge into it, it will either heighten our virtues or inflame our vices.

Love and Gratitude.

Ir is a dangerous experiment to call in Gratitude as an ally to Love. Love is a "ebt which inclination always pays, obligation never; and the moment it becomes lukewarm and evanescent, reminiscences on the score of gratitude serve only to smother the flame by increasing the fuel.

Lobe and Jealousy.

LOVE may exist without jealousy, although this is rare; but jealousy may exist without love, and this is common; for jealousy can feed on that which is bitter, no less than on that which is sweet, and is sustained by pride as often as by affection.

Love's Revenge.

WOMEN will pardon any offence rather than a neglect of their charms, and rejected love re-enters the female bosom with a hatred more implacable than that of Coriolanus when he returned to Rome. In good truth we should have many Potiphars were it not that Josephs are scarce. All Addison's address and integrity were found necessary to extricate him from a dilemma of this kind. The Marquis des Vardes fared not so well. Madame the Duchess of Orleans fell in love with him, although she knew he was the gallant of Madame Soissons, her most intimate friend. She even went so far as to make a confidante of Madame Soissons, who not only agreed to give him up, but carried her extravagance so far as to send for the Marquis, and to release him in the presence of Madame from all his obligations, and to make him formally over to her. The Marquis des Vardes, deeming this to be only an artifice of gallantry to try how faithful he was in his amours, thought it most prudent to declare himself incapable of change, in terms full of respect for the Duchess, but of passion for Madame Soissons. His ruin was determined upon from that moment, nor could his fidelity to the one save him from the effects of that hatred which his indifference had excited in the breast of the other. As a policizer, the Marquis reasoned badly; for had he been right in his conclusion, it would have been no difficult matter for him, on the ladies discovering their plot, to have persuaded his first favourite that his heart was not in the thing, and that he had fallen into the snare only from a deference to her commands; and if he were wrong in his conclusion, which was the case, a woman does not like a man the worse for having many favourites, if he deserts them all for her; she fancies that she herself has the power of fixing the wanderer; that other women conquer like the Parthians, but that she herself, like the Romans, can not only make conquests, but retain them.*

*It follows, upon the same principle, that the converse of what has been offered above will also be true, and that women will pardon almost any extravagances in the

Lucrative Assaults.

WE most readily forgive that attack which affords us an opportunity of reaping a splendid triumph. A wise man will not sally forth from his doors to cudgel a fool, who is in the act of breaking his windows by pelting them with guineas.

Lucre.

An

To cure us of our immoderate love of gain, we should seriously consider how many goods there are that money will not purchase, and these the best; and how many evils there are that money will not remedy, and these the worst. ancient philosopher of Athens, where the property of the wealthy was open to the confiscations of the informer, consoled himself for the loss of his fortune by the following reflection: "I have lost my money, and with it my cares; for when I was rich, I was afraid of every poor man; but now that I am poor, every rich man is afraid of me."

Magistracy.

GOVERNMENTS connive at many things which they ought to correct, and correct many things at which they ought to connive. But there is a mode of correcting so as to endear, and of conniving so as to reprove.

Magnanimity.

MAGNANIMITY is incompatible with a very profound respect for the opinions of others on any occasion, and more particularly where they happen to stand between us and the truth. Had our Lord respected all the forms, usages, ceremonies, and tenets of his countrymen, there had been no Redemption; and had Luther been biassed by the opinions of his contem

men, if they appear to have been the uncontrollable effects of an inordinate love and admiration. It is well known from the confession of Catharine herself, that Alexis Orloff, though at that time a common soldier in the guards, had the hardiesse to make the first advances to the Autocratrix of all the Russias.

poraries, by the dogmas of synods, the creeds of councils, or the authority of titles, there had been no Reformation.

As the mean have a calculating avarice, that sometimes inclines them to give; so the magnanimous have a condescending generosity, that sometimes inclines them to receive.

Magnanimity in Poverty.

IN the obscurity of retirement, amid the squalid poverty and revolting privations of a cottage, it has often been my lot to witness scenes of magnanimity and self-denial as much beyond the belief as the practice of the great; a heroism borrowing no support either from the gaze of the many, or the admiration of the few, yet flourishing amidst ruins, and on the confines of the grave: a spectacle as stupendous in the moral world as the falls of the Missouri in the natural; and, like that mighty cataract, doomed to display its grandeur only where there are no eyes to appreciate its magnificence.

Mahomet.

NONE knew how to draw long bills on futurity, that never will be honoured, better than Mahomet. He possessed himself of a large stock of real and present pleasure and power here, by promising a visionary quantum of those good things to his followers hereafter; and, like the maker of an almanack, made his fortune in this world by telling absurd lies about another.

Mahometan Logic.

THERE are some benefits which may be so conferred as to become the very refinement of revenge; and there are some evils which we had rather bear in sullen silence than be relieved from at the expense of our pride. In the reign of Abdallah the Third there was a great drought at Bagdad; the Mahometan doctors issued a decree that the prayers of the faithful should be offered up for rain; the drought continued. The Jews were then permitted to add their prayers to those of the true believers; the supplications of both were ineffectual. As famine stared them in the face, those dogs, the Christians,

were at length enjoined also to pray. It so happened that torrents of rain immediately followed. The whole conclave, with the mufti at their head, were now as indignant at the cessation of the drought as they were before alarmed at its continuance. Some explanation was necessary to the people, and a holy convocation was held; the members of it came to this unanimous determination: That the God of their prophet was highly gratified by the prayers of the faithful, that they were as incense and as sweet-smelling savour unto him, and that he refused their requests that he might prolong the pleasure of listening to their supplications; but that the prayers of those Christian infidels were an abomination to the Deity, and that he granted their petitions the sooner to get rid of their loathsome importunities.

Man.

MAN, if he compare himself with all that he can see, is at the zenith of power; but if he compare himself with all that he can conceive, he is at the nadir of weakness.

Man a Paradox.

MAN is an embodied paradox, a bundle of contradictions; and as some set-off against the marvellous things that he has done, we might fairly adduce the monstrous things that he has believed. The more gross the fraud,* the more glibly will it go down, and the more greedily will it be swallowed; since folly will always find faith wherever impostors will find impudence.

Mansions of the Great.

THE wealthy and the noble, when they expend large sums in decorating their houses with the rare and costly efforts of genius, with busts from the chisel of a Canova, and with cartoons from the pencil of a Raphael, are to be commended, if they do not stand still here, but go on to bestow some pains

* Who could have supposed that such a wretch as Joanna Southcote could have gained numerous and wealthy proselytes in the nineteenth century, in an era of general illumination, and in the first metropolis of the world? I answer, None but philosophers, whose creed it is, "Nil admirari," when the folly of mankind is the subject.