Obrazy na stronie
PDF
ePub

YOUNG MEN IN BUSINESS.

In the first place make up your mind to accomplish whatever you undertake-decide upon some particular employment-persevere in it. All difficulties are overcome by diligence and assiduity.

RAILWAY INTELLIGENCE.

A NEW fender has been invented for breaking the force of collisions. The new fender is said to be a vast improvement upon the old buffer.

TICKLED BY A STRAW.

A NEW paper, manufactured entirely of straw, has been discovered. Perhaps the most appropriate purpose it can be put to, will be for men of straw, to draw and accept their bills upon.

VALUABLE EVIDENCE.

a

In a case of assault, where a stone had been thrown by the defendant, the following evidence was drawn out of a Yorkshireman :— "Did you see the defendant throw the stone?" "I saw a stone, and I'ze pretty sure the defendant throw'd it." "Was it a large stone? What was its size ?" "I should say sizeable stone." "Can't you answer definitely how big it was ?" "I should say was a stone of some bigness." "Can't you compare it to some other object ?" Why, if I were to compare it, so as to give you some notion of the stone, I should say it were as large as a lump of chalk."

[ocr errors]

it

WHAT if you fail in business? You still have life and health. Don't sit down and cry about mishaps, for that will never get you out of debt, nor buy your children frocks. Go to work at something, eat sparingly, dress moderately, drink nothing exciting, and above all, keep a merry heart, and you'll be up in the world.

Be not afraid to work with your own hands, and diligently too. A cat in gloves catches no mice.

A pot

ATTEND to your business and never trust it to another. that belongs to many is ill-stirred and worse boiled. TREAT every one with respect and civility. Every thing is gained, and nothing lost, by courtesy. Good manners insure

success.

He who waits for dead men's shoes, may have to go for a long time barefoot. He who runs after a shadow has a wearisome race. RISE early, the sleeping fox catches no poultry. Plough deep, while sluggards sleep, and you will have corn to sell and keep.

NEVER anticipate wealth from any other source than labour : especially never place dependence upon becoming the possessor of an inheritance.

LORD GEORGE BENTINCK.

He

ALTHOUGH he had not much sustained his literary culture, and of late years at any rate had not given his mind to political study, he had in the course of his life seen and heard a great deal, and with profit. Nothing escaped his observation; he forgot nothing, and always thought. So it was that on all the great political questions of the day he had arrived at conclusions which guided him. always took large views, and had no prejudices about things, whatever he might indulge in as to persons. He was always singularly anxious to acquire the truth, and would spare no pains for that purpose; but when once his mind was made up it was impossible to influence him.-Disraeli's Political Biography.

[blocks in formation]

LET other people's business alone, you will have enough to do, if you attend to your own. Don't buy what you don't want. Think twice before you throw away a shilling. Remember you will have another to make for it. Look over your books regularly, and if an error occurs, trace it out.

An old toper, chancing to drink a glass of water for want of something stronger, smacked his lips and turned to one of his companions, remarking-"Why it don't taste badly, I have no doubt 'tis wholesome for females and tender children.'

"An'

AN Emeralder, being advised to purchase a trunk, askedwhat should I do with it ?" To this, his adviser replied " Put your clothes in it, sure.' Upon which Pat gazed at him with a look of surprise, and then with that laconic eloquence, which is peculiar to a son of the Emerald Isle, exclaimed-" An' go naked."

FORCE OF HABIT.

Mr. STUMPS, the celebrated Cricketer of the Zingari Club, dining lately at a house where the children were brought down to dessert, was requested by Mamma, to roll an orange down the table for Master Jackey. Mr. Stumps "delivered" the orange with such address that it bowled over the claret jug standing at the end of the table, between the port and sherry, and flooded Papa's legs with wine. Instead of apologising for his mishap, Mr. Stumps in the height of his cricketing enthusiasm, and with a characteristic, sang froid, called out "How's that Umpire ?"

66

REMARKS ON THE DEATH AND FUNERAL OF THOSE OF ROYAL RANK.

APPLIED то THE LATE QUEEN CAROLINE.

VERY little, indeed, can generally be known of their real characters; they move in a sphere far remote from common observation; the variations and uncertainties of report cover with a veil of misty indistinctness alike their virtues and their views; invention, detraction, and sycophancy, are ever at work, in their different ways, upon greatness; nor have we any sure means of detecting their falsehoods, rejecting their additions, reducing their exaggerations, discriminating between their tales, and that of honest truth, and making such allowances as will bring them to its dimensions. Even of Sovereigns themselves, the goodness must be most energetic, or the wickedness most atrocious, to be clearly discernible to those who have only the distant glimpse, which is all the million usually obtain. Their connexion with political wants is a different concern. This only applies to their private character. They come like shadows so depart." The bells ring at their accession, and toll at their death. The first event is an occasion for merriment, and the latter a signal for being decorously clothed in sable. Then another face is seen at a distance in the next grand ceremony; another voice is heard at the next levee; another name or numeral is appended to the next public document; and that is all. They do not live amongst us, they are not accessible to all classes, as she was; their imputed offences are not publicly and solemnly, and severely scrutinized to the very minutest circumstance, as her's were. The inmost recesses of their dwellings; their morning walks and evening amusements; their meals and journeyings; their actions, words, and looks; are not blazoned, by observers, both friendly and hostile, for universal inspection. There is not with them the interchange of unprompted zeal aud unaffected kindness which there was with her and therefore (to whatever the difference be imputed, however unavoidable it may be, and connected neither with praise nor blame in any quarter), they can be little more than names to us, hung round with no associations, but those

:

of the public events whose course they chronicle, while with her we strongly sympathized, and for her we deeply grieved.

It is the necessary tendency of a limited monarchy to render the personal character of the monarch as unimportant as possible. He is identified with the state; he acts only by his ministers; his name is a mark of reference, to so many pages of history, but his private feelings, disposition, wishes, and conduct, have scarcely more influence or interest than those of thousands of his subjects. In unmixed despotisms the case is widely different. There the personal character of the monarch is everything. He is the destiny of his people for evil or for good. He is to them improvement or degradation, happiness or misery, ease or oppression, peace or war, and his breath is health or pestilence. The degree of importance which attaches to the personal antipathies or predilections of a sovereign, in affairs of state, affords, perhaps, as accurate a measure as can be obtained of the approximation of a government to limited or absolute monarchy. The wailings or the execrations of a people may follow a despot to his grave, but a limited monarch can earn neither for himself: he is usually too abstract a personage for his loss to excite much real emotion; the history of his times is not his history, and though the one may be eventful, the other preserves its uniformity; and, in a perpetual limited monarchy, dynasties of sovereigns may pass away, and all the emotion that shall grace all their funerals still fail to exceed that called forth, in one day, by the mournful close of the late queen's varied but mournful history.

There is another circumstance which must ever keep down inordinate sorrow on the demise of royalty, and that is, that royal virtues are generally as hereditary as crowns, and the successors of the best of reigning kings and favoured queens succeed not only to their honours but to their goodness too. A royal race never deteriorates, at least in the professed opinions of those who take on themselves to be the organs of the public voice on such occasions. 'Tis only as if the same immortal soul of goodness had evacuated one corporeal tenement to inhabit another. To the sorrows of Caroline, there is no successor-may there never be, in the history of our country!

More of a sincere and respectful sorrow than can usually attend a limited monarch to the grave, followed his late Majesty George III. His decent or decorous conduct in matters of religion and morality; his sturdy (though in the opinion of many mistaken) conscientiousness in reference to the Catholic question, on which I doubt not, he would as soon have abdicated his throne, as violate (his own view) his coronation oath; his generous protection of her, whose protector now is the grave; his long reign which implanted a sort of regard upon habit, and made the present generation, who had advanced in it from infancy to maturity, and even to age, consider George III. almost as much a part of the country as its

VOL. I.

H

hills and rivers; and the sad affliction of his later years, all contributed to touch the mind with solemnity, when he ceased to exist. The honourable patronage, too, afforded by the Duke of Kent, to many benevolent institutions, and the frequent and familiar association with the people to which he was led in their promotion, made his loss much felt. Yet in neither case, either as to the intensity of the feeling, or the number who participated in it, was there an approximation to what has been witnessed now. The death of the Princess Charlotte, indeed, produced an awful and majestic burst of sorrow. The nation groaned in the anguish of lacerated affection and blighted hope. Still the public feeling now, distinguished from that on other occasions by its strength, is diversified even from this, by a sort of gloomy satisfaction, by the melancholy consolation, that the life which has closed was such a deeply embittered life, and its prospects so devoid of brightness, that the royal sufferer herself welcomed death with sad cheerfulness of a broken heart; and when Providence commanded, readily sprung into the grave, as her only place of shelter and repose, as the asylum where "the wicked cease from troubling, and where the weary are at rest."

LOVE AND CONSTANCY.

Though years have past since first I gave

My youthful heart to thee,

Thy love is still the boon I crave,

For thou art all to me.

And often like a gentle sigh,

This thought will heaven-ward soar

My heart is thine, love, 'till I die,

And I can give no more.

Should danger threaten, I'll be near,
Protection round thee throw;

Or dark affliction, I will cheer,
Or gladly share the blow.

Thus throughout life, I'll love but thee,
And as we near death's shore,

My after years no change shall see,
Or changing love thee more.

PARTY DISTINCTIONS.

PARTY, described to be the madness of many for the gain of a few. This definition applies more to a dinner party, which is certainly a madness with a large class of peopie; but we never could find out that it was a gain to any body, with the exception, perhaps, of the pastry cook who supplied the dinner.

SILENCE.

THE silence of a person who loves to praise is a censure sufficiently

severe.

« PoprzedniaDalej »