66 PLAIN LIVING AND HIGH THINKING." OH, friend, I know not which way I must look To think that now our life is only drest Delights us-rapine, avarice, expense, This is idolatry, and these we adore ; PLAIN LIVING AND HIGH THINKING ARE NO MORE! Si ad naturam vives nunquam eris pauper: si ad opinionem, nunquam dives. Epicurus. WORDS THE SHADOWS OF DEEDS. THERE is in Seneca's 114th Epistle a very remarkable passage about the fashion of speech at Rome in his day, which is unconsciously, but quite substantially, thus translated: "No man in this fashionable London of yours," friend Sauerteig would say, 66 speaks a plain word to me. Every man feels bound to be something more than plain; to be pungent withal, witty, ornamental. His poor fraction of sense has to be perked up into some epigrammatic shape, that it may prick into me; perhaps (this is the commonest) to be topsy-turvied, left standing on its head, that I may remember it the better. Such grinning insincerity is very sad to the soul of man. A fashionable wit, ach Himmel!' if you will ask which, he or a death's head, will be the cheerier company for me, pray send not him." Insincere speech, truly, is the prime material of insincere action. Action, as it were, hangs dissolved in speech-in thought, whereof speech is the shadow; and precipitates itself therefrom. Ubicunque videris orationem corruptam placere, ibi mores quoque a recto descivisse non erit dubium. Seneca, KNOWLEDGE-OPINION-IGNORANCE. PERFECT ignorance is quiet-perfect knowledge is quietnot so the transition from the former to the latter. Carlyle. Les sciences ont deux extrémités qui se touchent; la première est la pure ignorance naturelle où se trouvent tous les hommes en naissant. L'autre extrémité est celle où arrivent les grands âmes, qui, ayant parcouru tout ce que les hommes peuvent savoir, trouvent qu'ils ne savent rien, et se rencontrent dans cette même ignorance d'où ils etoient partis. Mais c'est une ignorance savante qui se connait. When Newton was dying, he said he felt just like a little child who had picked up a few pebbles on the shore, while the great ocean lay undiscovered before him. Opinion in good men is but knowledge in the making. Milton. PEGASUS IN HARNESS. MEN of great parts are often unfortunate in the management of public business, because they are apt to go out of the common road by the quickness of their imagination. This I once said to my Lord Bolingbroke, and desired he would observe that the clerks in his office used a sort of ivory knife with a blunt edge to divide a sheet of paper, which never failed to cut it even, only requiring a strong hand. Whereas if they should make use of a penknife, the sharpness would make it go often out of the crease, and disfigure the paper. Swift. A man had a plain strong-bow with which he could shoot far and true. He loved his bow so well that he would needs have it curiously carved by a cunning workman. It was done; and at the first trial, the bow snapt. German. TRAVEL. FOOL, why journeyest thou wearisomely in thy antiquarian fervour to gaze on the stone pyramids of Geeza, or the clay ones of Sacchara? These stand there, as I can tell thee, idle and inert, looking over the desert foolishly enough, for the last 3000 years. But canst thou not open thy Hebrew Bible, then, or even Luther's version thereof? Carlyle. Once it was, "Farewell, Monsieur Traveller; look you lisp, and wear strange suits; disable the benefits of your own country-be out of love with your nativity, and almost chide God for making you that countenance you are; or I will scarce think you have swum in a gondola.” We may now add-"You must swear by Allah, smoke chibouques, and spell Pasha differently from every predecessor, or we shall scarce believe you have been in a hareem!" 66 NEVER WENT OUT ASS, AND CAME HOME HORSE. Still, "A good traveller," says Shakspeare, "is something at the latter end of a dinner." |