to yield to the public safety, Cavendum est ne quid damni capiat Respublica. And the opposition of this, or any country, might take a useful hint from what was observed in the Roman senate. While a question was under debate, every one was at freedom to advance his objections, but the question being once determined on, it became the acknowledged duty of every member to support the majority; Quod pluribus placuisset cunctis tuendum.'†

Pleasure is to women, what the sun is to the flower: if moderately enjoyed, it beautifies, it refreshes, and it improves; if immoderately, it withers, deteriorates, and destroys. But the duties of domestic life, exercised as they must be in retirement, and calling forth all the sensibilities of the female, are perhaps as necessary to the full development of her charms, as the shade and the shower are to the rose, confirming its beauty, and increasing its fragrance.

If dissimulation is ever to be pardoned, it is that which men have recourse to, in order to obtain situations which may enlarge their sphere of general usefulness, and afford the power of benefiting their country, to those who must have been otherwise contented only with the will. -Liberty was more effectually befriended by the dissimulation of one Brutus, than by the dagger of the other. But such precedents are to be adopted but rarely, and nore rarely to be advised. For a Cromwell is a much more common character than a Brutus; and many men who have gained power by an hypocrisy as gross as that of Pope Sixtux, have not used it half so well. This pope, when cardinal, counterfeited sickness, and all the infirmities of age, so well, as to dupe the whole conclave. His name was Montalto; and on a division for the vacant apostolic chair, he was elected as a stop-gap by both parties, under the idea that he could not pos sibly live out the year. The moment he war chosen, he threw away his crutches, and began to sing Te Deum with a much stronger voice than his electors had bargained for; and instead of walking with a tottering step, and a gait almost bending to the earth, he began to walk, not only firm, but per fectly upright. On some one remarking to him on this sudden change, he observed, while I was looking for the keys of St. Peter, it was necessary to stoop, but having found them, the case is altered. It is but justice to add, that he made a most excellent use of his authority and power; and although some may have obtained the papal chair by less objectionable means, none have filled it with more credit to themselves, and satisfaction to others.

It has been said, that to excel them in wit, is a thing the men find it the most difficult to pardon in women. This feeling, if it produce only emulation, is right, if envy, it is wrong. For a high degree of intellectual refinement in the female, is the surest pledge society can have for the improve ment of the male. But wit in women is a jewel, which, unlike all others, borrows lustre from its setting, rather than bestows it; since nothing is so easy as to fancy a very beautiful woman extremely witty. Even Madame de Stael admits that she discovered, as she grew old, the men could not find out that wit in her at fifty, which she possessed at twenty-five; and yet the external attractions of this lady, were by no means equal to those of her mind.

That politeness which we put on, in order to keep the assuming and the presumptuous at a proper distance, will generally succeed. But it sometimes happens, that these obtrusive characters are on such excellent terms with themselves, that they put down this very politeness to the score of their own great merits and high pretensions, meeting the coldness of our reserve, with a ridiculous condescension of familiarity, in order to set us at ease with ourselves. To a bystander, few things are more amusing, than the cross play, underplot, and final eclaircissements, which this mistake invariably occasions.

England, with a criminal code the most bloody, and a civil code the most expensive in Europe, can, notwithstanding, boast of more happiness and freedom than any other country under heaven. The reason is, that despotism, and all its minor ramifications of discretionary power, lodged in the hands of individuals, is utterly unknown. The laws are supreme.

The Christian does not pray to be delivered from glory, but from vain-glory. He also is ambitious of glory, and a candidate for honour; but glory, in whose estimation? honour, in whose judgment ? Not of those, whose censures can take nothing from his innocence; whose approbation can take nothing from his guilt; whose opinions are as fickle as their actions, and their lives as transitory as their praise; who cannot search his heart, seeing that they are ignorant of their own. The Christian then seeks his glory in the estimation, and his honour in the judgment of Him alone, who, 'From the bright Empyrean where he sits, High throned above all height, casts down his eye, His own works, and man's works, at once to view.

The great Remora to any improvement in our civil code, is the reduction that such reform must produce in the revenue. The law's delay, bills of revival, rejoinder, and renewal, empty the stamp office of stamps, the pockets of plaintiff and defendant of their money, but unfortunately they fill the exchequer. Some one has said, that injustice, if it be speedy, would, in certain cases, be more desirable than justice, if it be slow; and although we hear much of the glorious uncertainty of the law, yet all who have tried it will find, to their cost, that it can boast of two certainties, expense and delay. When I see what strong temptations there are that government should sympathize with the judge, the judge with the counsellor, and the counsellor with the attorney, in throwing every possible embarrassment in the way of legal despatch and decision, and when I weigh the humble, but com parative insignificant interests of the mere plaintiff or defendant, against this combined array of talent, of influence, and power, I am no longer astonished at the prolongation of suits, and I wonder only a. their termination.*

• Mr. Jeremy Bentham considers litigation a great evil, and deems it the height of cruelty, to load a lawsuit, which It has been asked, which are the greatest ininds and to which do we owe the greatest reverence: to those, who, by the powerful deductions of reason, and the well known suggestions of analogy, have made profound discoveries in the science, as it were a priori?" or to those, who, by the patient road of experiment, and the subsequent improvement of instruments, have brought these discoveries to perfection, as it were a posteriori; who have rendered that certain, which before was only conjectural, practical, which was problematical, safe, which was dangerous, and subservient, which was unmanageable? It would seem that the first class, demand our admiration, and the second, our gratitude. Seneca predicted another hemisphere, but Columbus presented us with it. He that standing on the shore, foretells with truth, many of the undiscovered treasures of the ocean of science, even

،

's one evil, with taxation, which is another. It would be quite as fair, he thinks, to tax a man for being ill, by enacting that no physician should write a prescription without a stamp. Mr. Pitt, on the contrary, considered a lawsuit a luxury, and held that, like other luxuries, it ought to be taxed. Westminster Hall,' said he, 'is as open to any man, as the London Tavern; to which Mr. Sheridan replied, he that entered either without money, would meet with a very scurvy reception.' Some will say that the heavy expenses of law prevent the frequency of lawsuits, but the practice does not confirm the theory. Others will say that they originate from men of obstinate and quarrelsome dispositions, and that such ought to suffer for their folly. There would be something in this, provided, it were not necessary for a wise man to take a shield, when a fool has taken a sword. Lawsuits, indeed, do generally originate with the obstinate and the ignorant, but they do not end with them; and that lawyer was right, who left all his money to the support of an asylum for fools and lunaties, saying from such he received it, and to such he woud bequeath it.