the superlative at the door, and if the person be pan huper sebastus (Right entirely worshipful, there is a hyper-superlative ceremony, that of conducting him to the bottom of the stairs, or to the very gates, as if there were such rules set to these Leviathans, as are to the sea— "Hitherto shalt thou go, and no further." Thus wretchedly the precious day is lost.-Cowley.

946. Oratory.-Women are better qualified to succeed in oratory than men. It is certain too, that they are possessed of some springs of rhetoric which men want, such as tears, fainting fits, and the like, which I have seen employed upon occasion, with good success. Spectator.

947. Progress of Opinion.—Men of abilities scatter seeds that grow up, and have a great influence on the forming opinion; and when once the public opinion preponderates, through the exertion of reason, the overthrow of arbitrary power is not very distant.-—Rights of Woman.

948. Fictitious Rank a Curse.---The preposterous distinctions of rank, which renders civilization a curse, by dividing the world between voluptuous tyrants, and cunning envious dependents, corrupt, almost equally, every class of people, because respectability is not attached to the discharge of the relative duties of life, but to the station; and when the duties are not fulfilled, the affections cannot gain sufficient strength to fortify the virtue of which they are the natural reward.---Ibid.

949. The Circle of Humanity.-Fenelon was accustomed to say, "I love my family better than myself; my country better than my family; and mankind better than my country: for I am more a Frenchman than a Fenelon; and more a man than a Frenchman."-Tatler.

950. Love of Nature.---How few people seem to contemplate nature with their own eyes! I have "brushed the dew away" in the morning! but pacing over the fruitless grass, I have wondered that, in such delightful situations the sun was allowed to rise in solitary majesty, while my eyes alone hailed its beautiful beams. The webs of the evening have still been spread across the hedged path, unless some labouring man, trudging to work, disturbed the fairy structure: yet, in spite of this supineness, when I joined the social circle, every tongue rang changes on the pleasures of the country.---Mary Wolstonecraft.

951. A Flatterer is said to be a beast that biteth smiling. But it is hard to know them from friends, they are so obsequious and full of protestations ; for as a wolf resembles a dog, so doth a flatterer a friend. Raleigh.

952. Measures not Men.-Changing hands without changing measures, is as if a drunkard in a dropsy should change his doctors and not his diet.-Saville.

953. Guidance without Dictation.—It is inconceivable how much a man of true culture can accomplish for himself and others, if, without attempting to rule, he can be the guardian over many; if he can induce them to do that in reason, which they are at any rate disposed enough to do; can guide them to their objects, which in general they see with due distinctness, though they miss the road to them. Let us make a league in this it is no enthusiasm ; but an idea which may be fully executed, which indeed is often executed, only with imperfect consciousness, by people of benevolence and worth.-Goethe.

954. Love of truth sure of some reward.—

The man who consecrates his hours

By vig'rous effort and an honest aim,
At once he draws the sting of life and death,

He walks with nature; and her paths are peace.-Young.

955. A Hint to Legislators.-The Ephesians were equally noticed for their enthusiastic worship of Diana, and the profligacy of their manners.-Blackwell.

956. Malthus.-Cobbett and the Irish reformers look with detestation on Malthus and his doctrines: and many "right-thinking" persons, as they call themselves, fancy that they have discovered a valuable ally in him. The same error is common to both. If Malthus's position be true, (and no naturalist can doubt it) it follows as a matter of demonstration, that there is a greater necessity for political freedom. The greater the obstacles nature opposes to man's comfortable existence, the greater efforts are required to overcome them, and the greater is the necessity that all his powers should be developed to the uttermost. Hitherto the animal has been fully equal to the task of self-subsistence, wherever bad governments have not interfered with the natural distribution of the products of industry, and quartered noble indigence on plebeian activity. Civilization confers an increased power over the elements, and a corresponding facility in manufacturing food; but unjust governments weigh down the labourer, and avail themselves of every improvement to increase the lion's share of the product. Malthus, properly understood, is a powerful Radical Reformer. Lady Morgan.

957. A Hint to the Dogmatical.-They are ill discoverers that think there is no land when they can see nothing but sea.-Bacon.

958. Blindness of Self-love.-'Tis great folly to run away from other people's faults and not part with your own. This is going quite the wrong way to work, grasping at a work impracticable, and losing an advantage which is in your power.-Marcus Antoninus.

959. A Warrior against a Sportsman.-Sporting was the object of Frederic's abhorrence. Any gentleman known to be addicted to this passion, would wholly have lost his esteem. His nephew, who enjoyed the pleasures of the field but once or twice a year, took every precaution that the intelligence might not reach the ears of Frederic. The butcher," said this monarch, “even the butcher, does not kill animals for his pleasure; he does it to supply the necessities of man: but the sportsman kills for pleasure! This is odious! The sportsman should be placed below the butcher in the order of society.' Frederic was right; but it is odd to hear this opinion from the mouth of one who killed his thousands of human beings.-Leigh Hunt.

960. Consolation for the Dull.-There is no talent so useful towards rising in the world, or which puts men more out of the reach of Fortune, than that quality generally possessed by the dullest sort of people, and in common speech called discretion—a species of lower prudence, by the assistance of which, people of the meanest intellect, without any other qualification, pass through the world in great tranquillity, and with unusual good treatment, neither giving nor taking offence.-Swift.

961. True Nobility.-In the estimate of honour, we should learn to value the gifts of nature above those of fortune; to esteem in our ancestors the qualities that best promote the interests of society; and to pronounce the descendant of a king less truly noble than the offspring of a man of genius, whose writings will instruct or delight the latest posterity.-Gibbon.

962. Exclusive love of our own Country.-There is scarcely any folly or vice more epidemical among the sons of men, than that ridiculous and hurtful vanity by which the people of each country are apt to prefer themselves to those of every other; and to make their own customs, and manners, and opinions, the right and wrong, of true and false. The Chinese Mandarins were strangely surprised and almost incredulous when the jesuits showed them how small a figure their empire made in the general map of the world.-Bolingbroke.

963. Masters.---In the statutes of St. Paul's Cathedral, the vergers are ordered to be unmarried men, because a man cannot serve two masters, viz. his wife and his official duty.---Tatler.

964. Consolation.-This is the foundation of contentment in all conditions, and of patience under sufferings; that death, which is not far off, when it removes us out of this world, will take us from the sufferings of it.-Sherlock.

965. Acquired Talent often Mistaken for Natural.-As it is in the body, so it is in the mind; practice makes it what it is, and most even of those excellencies which are looked on as natural endowments, will be found, when examined into more narrowly, to be the product of exercise, and to be raised to that pitch only by repeated actions. Some men are remarked for pleasantness in raillery, others for apologues and apposite diverting stories. This is apt to be taken for the effect of pure nature, and that the rather because it is not got by rules; and those who excel in either of them never purposely set themselves to the study of it as an art to be learnt. But yet it is true, that at first some lucky hit which took with somebody, and gained him commendation, encouraged him to try again, inclined his thoughts and endeavours that way, till at last he insensibly got a faculty in it without perceiving how, and that is attributed wholly to nature, which was much more the effect of use and practice.-Locke.

966. Generous and True Reflection.-Upon the whole, mankind have used me well; and though I have as yet reached only the first stage of my journey, I feel myself much indebted for that urbanity, which I always thought more general than many think it to be; and were it not for the mischievous laws and bad examples of some governments I have passed through, I am persuaded I should be able to give you a better account of our fellow-creatures.-Ledyard.

967. Gaming is a vice the more dangerous as it is deceitful, and contrary to every other species of luxury, flatters its votaries with the hopes of increasing their wealth; so that avarice itself is so far from securing us against its temptations, that it often betrays the more thoughtless and giddy part of mankind into them, promising riches without bounds, and those to be acquired by the most sudden, as well as easy, and indeed pleasant means.-Fielding.

968. Impolicy of adding to the Gloominess of Death.--I do verily believe that it is those terrible ceremonies and preparations wherewith we set death out, that more terrifies us than the thing itself: a new quite contrary way of living; the cries of mothers, wives, and children; the visits of astonished and afflicted friends; the attendance of pale and blubbered servants; a dark room set round with burning tapers; our beds environed with physicians and divines; in sum, nothing but ghostliness and horror round about us, render it so formidable, that a man almost fancies himself dead and buried already.-Montaigne.

969. A Prince's best Guards.-Princes by hearkening to cruel counsels, become in time obnoxious to the authors, their flatterers and ministers; and are brought to that, that when they would, they dare not change them; they must go on and defend cruelty, with cruelty : they cannot alter the habit. It is then grown necessary, they must be as ill as those who have made them and in the end, they will grow more hateful to themselves, than to their subjects. Whereas, on the contrary, the merciful Prince is safe in love, not in fear. He needs no emissaries, spies, intelligencers, to intrap true subjects. He fears no libels, no treasons. His people speak what they think; and talk openly what they do in secret. They have nothing in their breasts, that they need a cypher for. He is guarded with his own benefits.-Ben Johnson.

970. Magic of Good Temper.—A cheerful temper, joined with innocence, will make beauty attractive, knowledge delightful, and wit good-natured. It will lighten sickness, poverty and affliction; convert ignorance into an amiable simplicity, and render deformity itself agreeable.--Addison.

971. Envy.-Like a corroding plaster, it lies gnawing at the heart, and indeed is founded in grief, that being the object of it, either in himself or others, through all the conditions that are. Either he grieves in himself when another is happy, or else, if ever he does rejoice, it is certainly because another does suffer; so calamity seems the centre that he points unto.-Feltham.

972. Titles.-Through all the vocabulary of Adam there is not such an animal as a Count or Duke; neither can we connect any certain ideas with the words. Whether they mean strength or weakness; wisdom or folly; a child or a man; the rider or the horse; is all equivocal. What respect then can be paid to that which describes nothing, and which means nothing? Imagination has given figure and character to centaurs and satyrs, down to all the fairy tribe: but titles baffle even the powers of fancy, and are a chimerical nondescript.—Rights of Man.

973. Noise and Narrowness—It is with narrow-souled people as with narrow-necked bottles: the less they have in them, the more noise they make in pouring it out.-Pope.

974. The wisdom of the ancients, as to the government of life, was no more than certain precepts what to do, and what not; and men were much better in that simplicity; for, as they became to be more learned, they grew less careful of being good. That plain and open virtue is now turned into a dark and intricate science; and we are taught to dispute, rather than to live.-Seneca.