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916. A Coquette is one that is never to be persuaded out of the passion she has to please, nor out of a good opinion of her own beauty; time and years she regards as things that only wrinkle and decay other women ; forgets that age is written in the face, and that the same dress which became her when she was young, now only makes her look the older. Affectation cleaves to her even in sickness and pain; she dies in a highhead and coloured ribbons.-Bruyere.

917. Honesty and Respectability.---Your only honest, upright, respectable character in the world's catalogue, is he who pays what he owes. There is no nobility like the nobility of the purse; no roguery to be compared to that which is ragged and pennyless." It will sometimes happen, however, that the man of thousands lets his thousands all slip from him, while he himself slips into debts which are a thousand-fold greater than his means to discharge them; but---there is such a thing as misfortune to account for the accident in his hehalf who cannot plead necessity. How fares the man who never had his thousand pounds, yet owes his fifty, with an insolvent pocket? Where are the accidents and misfortunes to speak for him? Alas! there is only one voice that can be made audible, and that is the golden one; only one answer for his applications, and that is a receipt in full. His creditor is an adept in nice and subtle distinctions; a master of metaphysical ethics. He would never have adopted proceedings against him, but--he considered himself ill-used; the ill-usage, correctly translated, consisting simply in the fact that he had not been paid; and he would willingly drop the business now, but---it is in the lawyer's hands, and he cannot interfere. This, too, requires translation, when it reads thus :---"I shall be satisfied with any thing that satisfies my solicitor; and I have told my solicitor, that he is not to be satisfied with any thing except the money."--- Anon.

918. Impressing for Soldiers.---In 1760 in Scotland, soldiers were sent in time of war to the farm houses, to carry off by force young men for the army. As this was against the law, they were accused of some imaginary offence, such as a trespass, or an assault, which was proved by false witnesses; and the magistrates, perfectly aware of the farce and its object, threatened the victim with transportation to the colonies as a felon, if he would not enlist---which, unprotected and overwhelmed by power and injustice, he was of course compelled to do.---Combe.

919. Opinions.-Neither accept an opinion, or except against it, merely on the score of its novelty: all that is new is not true, but much that is old is false.-Zimmerman.

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920. Ignorance of the Old Kings." What is the use of so much reading?" said Louis the Fourteenth, to his too faithful journalist Dangeau. It is an historical fact that this much-lauded monarch never read Pascal, and that though he called the 'Telemachus' of Fenelon a foolish book," he never perused it. To the Duc de Marsillac he once replied, "I hate persons who reason," and the Abbe Longuerue declared of him that he never read a book in the world, save his Prayerbook (ses Heures), but that he was very learned in ceremonies: "that,' says the Abbe, "is his sphere." All that had gone before him was lost to him; for he never opened a work of history; and in his own times, he was himself, in his own eyes, the beginning and the end. It was this profundity of ignorance, (studiously maintained by Anne of Austria, and by Mazarin, for the express purpose of their policy and power) that placed him so abjectly under the controul of his priestly directors. When his Jesuit confessor, Le Tellier, (to quiet those periodical scruples which came with indigestion after his full-fed media nocte) assured him " that all the goods of his subjects were his own private property, and that, in taking them to his own personal use, he only took what belonged to him," he believed the dictum and acted upon it. Alternately the dupe of his confessor and his mistresses, he hoped to expiate by a timid submission to the former the irregularities which he committed with the latter; and supposing that he had secured salvation by the dragonades, he reproached heaven with neglect of his worldly affairs, during the reverses of his latter life, and was heard to exclaim, "How, then, has God forgotten all that I have done for him?"-Lady Morgan.

921. Conscience is merely our own judgment of the moral rectitude or turpitude of our own actions.-Locke.

922. Gods of Homer and Lucretius.—I confess I do not know why the account given by Lucretius of the Gods should be thought more impious than that given by Homer, who makes them not only subject to all the weakest passions, but perpetually busy in all the worst and meanest actions of men.-Sir W. Temple. [Perhaps the reason is, that in Homer they retain something of sympathy with others, however misdirected or perturbed; whereas the gods of Lucretius are a set of selfish bon-vivants (as it were) living by themselves and caring for nobody else.]-The Tatler.

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923. Primogeniture.-In England, the powers of the state, however theoretically divided, are, for all practical purposes, vested in a pure oligarchy. A close aristocracy of the titled nobility and the greater landed proprietors, monopolize a paramount influence in Parliament; and the King and his Ministers can do nothing without their permission while the people have little direct controul over affairs, and are allowed no greater liberty than serves to increase their productive powers as labourers for the benefit of the privileged consumers of the public revenue. It is a notion, deeeply engraven in the Englishman's imagination, that the possession of land is something very different, and very superior to all other sorts of wealth; and that if to this claim to distinction be added a title, and two or three generations of ancestors, the possessor is fairly privileged to quarter his family on the tithes and taxes of the nation. Before this power every knee bows; to it the throne has gradually yielded its prerogative, and the people surrendered their rights; and in it is vested all the substantial authority and real influence, in the English scheme of Government. Although the principal part of the public business be transacted in the Commons, the Lords (represented there by their nominees) in reality decide on all important questions, and give the tone and character to public affairs. In France, on the contrary, the rights of primogeniture are abolished, aristocracy has scarcely any privileges, and the Chamber of Peers is a mere surplusage, a supernumerary wheel in the state machine, which complicates without materially modifying its movements. It is in vain that the executive in creating a peer, dignifies him with a title, and confers on him a legislative power; he is not thereby separated from the mass of the people, in sentiment or interest, and the spirit of liberty shows itself in the upper house, with nearly as much firmness and purity as in the Chamber of Deputies.-Sir C. Morgan.

924. Honour.

Honour is like the glassy bubble,

Which cost philosophers such trouble;
Where, one part crack'd the whole does fly,
And wits are crack'd to find out why.-Butler.

925. Catholicism.-Persons in general are not aware of the enormous sums which the Catholic Clergy of Ireland extort, in driblets, from their wretched and starving followers. Let us take the case of one single parish. From two thousand houses the priest receives two shillings each, besides the voluntary offerings at Easter and Christmas, not only from householders, but from bachelors, spinsters, and servants. The average number of baptisms annually is five hundred, for which the priest receives two shillings and eight pence halfpenny each, and for each marriage, he receives about one pound. Then he receives more for what is called "holding stations," for confessions, for absolutions, for administering extreme unction, and for saying masses to save the souls of the dead. The lowest fee that the poorest wretch can get his soul massed for is two shillings and sixpence, and if a man is too poor to pay this, his soul must stick in purgatory, whilst the soul of his richer neighbour can get into heaven at a quicker pace. The man who is still richer and can pay more than half-a-crown, can have a further benefit conferred on his soul, and if he be rich enough to pay for perpetual masses, the soul of course travels at the quickest pace from purgatory into heaven. There is something horribly repulsive in attaching the salvation of the human soul to the wealth of the dying party or of his relatives; but there is something very honourable in the idea of paying for perpetual masses. The perpetual mass implies that the soul soon gets out of purgatory, and the paying in perpetuity for services so soon rendered shows great generosity in the payer, and great confidence in those who will work for ever after the object of the work is accomplished and the money received. With respect to the fees for administering extreme unction, an author describes the ceremony, as he witnessed it in Ireland;-" A sash was worn over one shoulder, to which the holy ointment was appended, and with which he anointed the external organs of the senses, through whieh she (for it was a woman) might have committed sin,-reciting in Latin with such rapidity that I could not follow his words. She could not understand them." We never heard of internal senses, nor were we aware that the five external senses were to be anointed. Anointing the organs of smell and of taste, for instance, is curious; but we have nothing to do with ceremonies or prejudices; we only speak with horror of making the torment or happiness of the immaterial soul depend upon half-crowns, or upon large sums of money.-W. D.

926. Morals.-The rules of life drawn from the ascertained consequences of human actions. It is a science that has for its object the happiness of man; and there is no error fraught with so many evils as founding morals on mysteries and doctrines, rather than upon the real nature of man.-Anon.

927. Contempt is frequently regulated by fashion.-Zimmerman.

928. Sincerity never without Value.—The unfaithful woman, if she is known for such by the person concerned, is only unfaithful. If she is thought faithful, she is perfidious.-Bruyere.

929. Impudence is no virtue, yet able to beggar them all; being for the most part in good plight, when the rest starve, and capable of carrying her followers up to the highest preferments; as useful in a court as armour in a camp. Scotchmen have ever made good the truth of this, who will go farther with a shilling than an Englishman can ordinarily pass with a crown.-Osborn.

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930. Tyranny and Superstition.—One man only ventured to speak freely to the terrible Louis the Eleventh---his physician Cottier. spoke to the king with a rudeness that would have been unjustifiable in speaking to his valet: "I know very well," said he, "that you will some day get rid of me, as you do of so many others, but I swear that you will not live eight days afterwards." Louis complained of this insolent physician to every one, but he dared not to change: he loved life so well, that he would make any sacrifice to preserve it. This love of life, together with his natural superstition, saved an astrologer from execution. Incensed at this impostor who had predicted the death of his mistress, Louis summoned him into his presence, having determined that he should be hung. You who foretell every thing," said he, tell when will die ?"--" Sire," replied the man, you I shall die three days before your Majesty." This presence of mind saved the astrologer; and great care was taken of his

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Vie Privee des Francais.

931. Grasp of the Human Mind.---Our earth as is well known has the form of a spheroid, a little flattened towards the poles. Its radius is about 1500 leagues. The highest mountains do not rise to more than two leagues above the level of the sea; and there are but few tracts naturally situated below that level; and the greatest depths which have been reached by digging in the quarries, and more especially in the mines, do not exceed 1800 feet. The inequalities of the soil, then, are very trifling when compared with the whole mass of the terrestrial spheroid: and if the depths of the pits dug from the surface strike us with awe---if the elevations of the mountains, whose summits we perceive to be lost in the clouds confound us with astonishment, it is only because we judge of them by comparison with the extreme smallness of the objects which surround us. The earth, the superficies of which seems so irregular and rugged, would offer to the eye of an individual, capable of embracing the outline at a glance, only the appearance of the rind of an orange. For us who live on this globe there is no expression to describe our littleness. Nevertheless this puny

atom has measured the earth, the dimensions of which crush him to noth

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