those who have the least pretensions to dogmatize, are not always those who have the least inclination to do so. It is upon such lamentable occasions as these, that the scriptural paradox has been carried to a still greater excess of absurdity, when the presumption of those that are blind, would insist upon leading those that can sec.

Every man, if he would be candid, and sum up his own case as impartially as he would that of his neighbour, would probably come to this conclusion, that he knows enough of others to be certain that he himself has enemies, and enough of himself to be as certain that he deserves them. We are dissatisfied, not so much with the quantum of the requital, as with the quarter from whence it comes, and are toe apt to fancy that our punishment is not deserved, because it is not always inflicted precisely by the proper hand. Inasmuch as the bitter seeds of offence are sometimes sown without producing revenge, their proper harvest, so we also are not to wonder, if at other times the harvest should spring up, even where no seed has been sown.

Gross and vulgar minds will always pay a higher respect to wealth than to talent; for wealth, although it be a far less efficient source of power than talent, happens to be far more intelligible.

Marriage is a feast where the grace is sometimes better than the dinner.

The freest possible scope should be given to all the opinions, discussions, and investigations of the learned; if frail they will fall, if right they will remain; like steam, they are dangerous only when pent in, restricted, and confined. These discordan-ces in the moral world, like the apparent war of the elements in the natural, are the very means by which wisdom and truth are ultimately established in the one, and peace and harmony in the other.

Great examples to virtue, or to vice, are not so productive of imitation as might at first sight be supposed. The fact is, there are hundreds that want energy, for one that wants ambition, and sloth has prevented as many vices in some minds, as virtues in others. Idleness is the grand Pacific ocean of life, and in that stagnant abyss, the most salutary things produce no good, the most noxious, no evil. Vice, indeed, abstractedly considered, may be, and often is, engendered in idleness, but the moment it becomes efficiently vice, it must quit its cradle and cease to be idle.

Whether we are fiddlers or philosophers, we are equally puffed up by our acquirements, and equally vain of our art. The fiddler is more ingenuous than the philosopher, since he boldly places his own profession at the head of every other, and, in all the self-complacency of egotism, exclaims 'one God, one Farrinelli.' Perhaps he is right, for in both pursuits the value of the prize often consists solely in the difficulty of attaining it. The philosopher, with as much arrogance as the fiddler, has a trifle more of circumspection. Proud of being thought incapable of pride, he labours less to exalt his particular pursuit, than to lower those of his neighbours, and from the flimsiness of their structures, would slyly establish the solidity of his own. He would rather be the master of a hovel amidst ruins, than of a palace, if confronted by piles of equal grandeur and dimensions. Pride is a paradoxical Proteus, eternally diverse, yet ever the same; for Plato adopted a most magnificent mode of displaying his contempt for magnificence, while neglect would have restored Diogenes to common sense and clean linen, since he would have had no tub, from the moment he had no spectators. Thus I tramp.e,' said Diogenes, on the pride of Plato.' But,' rejoined Plato, 'with greater pride, O Diogenes.'

So idle are dull readers, and so industrious are dull authors, that puffed nonsense bids fair to blow unpuffed sense wholly out of the field.

Contemporaries* appreciate the man rather than the merit; but posterity will regard the merit rather than the man.

We shall at times chance upon men of profound and recondite acquirements, but whose qualifications, from the incommunicative and inactive habits of their owners, are as utterly useless to others, as though the possessors had them not. A person of this class may be compared to a fine chronometer, which has no hands to its dial; both are constantly right without correcting any that are wrong, and may be carried round the world without assist

* Blair complains of the dearth of good historians in his day; an era that could boast of Hume, Robertson, and Gibbon.

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ing one individual, either in making a discovery or taking an observation.

Γνωθι σεαυτον, know thyself, is a precept which we are informed descended from heaven, a cælo des cendit, γνωθι σεαυτον. The same authority has not been bold enough to affirm that it had yet reached the earth; and from all that we can observe, we might be pardoned for suspecting that this celestial maxim was still on its journey. The mind, like the eye, sees all things rather than itself, and philosophers, like travellers, are often far better informed as to what is going on abroad than at home. I blame not those who run to scale the wall of China, or the pyramids of Egypt, the cataracts of the Missouri, or the apex of Chimborazo; but if they would examine that which far surpasses, not only the artificial wonders of the old world, but the natural wonders of the new, they must return to themselves.

As the mother tongue in which we converse, is the only language we all talk, though few are taught it, so the mother wit by which we act, is the only science we never learn: yet we are all more or less obliged to practise it, although it is never heard of in the schools. The ancient philosophers indeed scrutinized man in all his various bearings and connexions, both as to his individual and social relations, as to his present capabilities and future hopes. Although they have descanted so largely about him, yet about him, they have left us little that is satisfactory or conclusive, and one short sentence, uttered by a despised and persecuted man, in the streets of Jerusalem, perhaps, is worth it all. Truth is one, but error multifarious, since there may be a thousand opinions on any subject, but usually one that is right. That these sages of antiquity wandered very far from the mark, may be collected from their glaring contradictions, constantly of each other, and often of themselves. Like moles they were industrious, and like them they worked in the dark, fancied themselves very deep, when they were only a few inches beneath the surface, threw up a great deal of rubbish, and caused men to stumble and trip. Nevertheless, they had so numerous an audience, that the common business of life ran a risk of being neglected for speculations upon it, and it was fortunate that some of these sages not only walked barefoot themselves, but encouraged their followers to do the same; for logic had become far more cheap at Athens than leather, and syllogisms than shoes. Even this state of things had its portion of good; for he that knew not where to get a dinner, was in the highest state of practical discipline for a declamation on the advantages of temperance; and he that had no house, over his head, might naturally be expected to surpass. all others in his knowledge of the stars.

Those who would draw conclusions unfavourable to Christianity, from the circumstance that many believers have turned skeptics, but few skeptics, believers, have forgotten the answer of Arcesilaus, to one that asked him why many went from other sects to the Epicureans, but none from the Epicureans to the other sects. Because,' said he, 'of men, some are made cunuchs, but of eunuchs nevor any are made men.' In matters of religion,

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