WILL AND REASON.

66 NONE SO BLIND AS THOSE THAT WON'T SEE."

BAXTER was credulous and incredulous for precisely the same reason. Possessing by habit a mastery over his thoughts such as few men ever acquired, a single effort of the will was sufficient to exclude from his view whatever he judged hostile to his immediate purpose. Every prejudice was at once banished, when any debateable point was to be scrutinized, and with equal facility every reasonable doubt was exiled when his only object was to enforce or to illustrate a doctrine of the truth of which he was assured.

Edinburgh Review.

So says Pascal, who was a good instance of his own theory. "La volonté est un des principaux organes de la croyance: non qu'elle forme la croyance; mais par ce que les choses paroissent vraies ou fausses, selon la face par où on les regarde. La volonté, qui se plaist à l'une plus qu'à l'autre, detourne l'esprit de considerer les qualités de celle qu'elle n'aime pas; et ainsi l'esprit marchant d'une pièce avec la volonté, s'arrête à regarder la face qu'elle aime; et jugeant

par ce qu'il y voit, règle insensiblement sa croyance suivant l'inclination de la volonté.

"Happy," continues the Edinburgh Review, "happy they, who, like Baxter, have so disciplined their affections as to disarm their temporary usurpation of all its more dangerous tendencies."

HE THAT'S CONVINCED AGAINST HIS WILL,

IS OF THE SAME OPINION STILL.

POVERTY.

66 THE GOAT MUST BROWSE WHERE SHE IS TIED."

POVERTY, we may say, surrounds a man with ready-made barriers, which, if they do mournfully gall and hamper, do at least prescribe for him, and force on him, a sort of course and goal; a safe and beaten, though a circuitous course. A great part of his guidance is secure against fatal error, is withdrawn from his control. The rich, again, has his whole life to guide, without goal or barrier, save of his own choosing; and tempted, as we have seen, is too likely to guide it ill.

Carlyle.

I cannot but say to Poverty, "Welcome! so thou come not

too late in life."

Richter.

CONVERSATION AND TALK.

To make a good Converser, good taste, extensive information, and accomplishments, are the chief requisites: to which may be added an easy and elegant delivery, and a well-toned voice. I think the higher order of genius is not favourable to this talent. Sir W. Scott.

It is a common remark, that men talk most who think least ; just as frogs cease their quacking when a light is brought to the water-side.

66 THE EMPTY CASK SOUNDS MOST."

Richter.

NATIVE AIR.

CHILDREN educated abroad return home to a strange country, not able to mark the places where they found the first bird's nest, the burn where they caught the first trout, or any of those dear associations of childhood, that bind us to our native soil by ties as small and numerous as those by which the Lilliputians bound Gulliver to the earth. Mrs. Grant.

HOMO SUM; HUMANI NIHIL A ME ALIENUM PUTO.

THE sentence which, when first spoken in the Roman theatre, made it ring with applause. Trite as it is, we can scarce come upon it now without the whole heart rising to welcome it.

No character, we may affirm, was ever rightly understood till it had been first regarded with a certain feeling, not of toleration only, but of sympathy.

Carlyle.

Lavater says, "He who begins with severity in judging of another, commonly ends with falsehood." But what did he begin with?

"It is only necessary to grow old," said Goethe, "to become more indulgent. I see no fault committed that I have not myself inclined to."

POETRY.

"MILTON is very fine, I dare say," said the mathematician, "but what does he prove?" What, indeed, does Poetry prove?

"It doth raise and erect the mind," says Bacon, "by

submitting the shows of things to the desires of the mind, whereas Reason doth buckle and bow the mind unto the nature of things."

But Sir Philip Sidney says, the poet shows the "nature of things" as much as the reasoner, though he may not "buckle and bow the mind" to it: "He doth not only show the way, but giveth so sweet a prospect into the way as will entice any man to enter into it. Nay, he doth as if your journey should lie through a fair vineyard, at the very first give you a cluster of grapes, that full of that taste you may long to pass further."

"Some have thought the proper object of Poetry was, to please; others that it was, to instruct. Perhaps we are well instructed if we are well pleased."

66 POETRY ENRICHES THE BLOOD OF THE WORLD."