GENEROSITY AND SELFISHNESS.

"A generous mind identifies itself with all around it, but a selfish one identifies all things with self. The generous man, forgetting self, seeks happiness in promoting that of others. The selfish man reduces all things to one-his own interest.”

"The good and generous, who look most closely into their own hearts, and scrutinize their own defects, will feel most pity for the frailties of others."

"Advice, like physic, is administered with more pleasure than it is taken."

ESTIMATION OF MEN OF THE WORLD.

"Those who give abundant dinners,

Are never deemed by guests great sinners."

"Your bon vivants, who are such good livers,' make very bad diers."

"Shiel describes one of our statesmen as a man who united the maximum of coldness with the minimum of light; 'he was an iceberg with a farthing rush-light on the summit.'"

"Those who judge of men of the world from a distance, are apt to attach an undue importance to them; while those who are in daily contact with them, are prone to underrate them."

"We are never so severe in dealing with the sins of others, as when we are no longer capable of committing them ourselves."

"Extremes of civilization and of barbarism approach very nearly-both beget feelings of intense selfishness."

"Inferior minds have as natural an antipathy to superior ones, as insects have to animals of a higher organization, whose power is dreaded by them.”

"The chief requisites for a courtier are a flexible conscience, and an inflexible politeness."

"The genius and talents of a man may generally be judged

of by the large number of his enemies, and his mediocrity by that of his friends."

THE YOUNG TO BE KINDLY TREATED.

'Childhood should not be a season of care and constant attention, incessant teaching and painful acquisition:-Puisque le jour peut lui manquer bientôt, laissons le un peu jouir de l'aurore."

SPARTAN MORALISTS.

Society, in its Spartan morality, punishes its members severely for the detection of their vices, but crime itself has nothing but detection to apprehend at its hands."

"Some people seem to consider the severity of their censures on the failings of others, as an atonement for their own."

THE VICTIMS OF SOCIETY.

Society is like the sea monster to which Andromeda was devoted by the oracle. It requires for its worship many victims, and the fairest must be occasionally given to its devouring jaws. But we now find no Perseus in its circles for the rescue of the doomed ones; and the monster is not converted into a rock, though we might show him many gorgons hideous enough to accomplish the transformation."

"In society we learn to know others, but in solitude we acquire a knowledge of ourselves."

SHORT NOTICES OF NOTABILITIES.

"'s conversation resembles a November fog-dense, oppressive, bewildering, through which you never can see your way."

"The poetry of

is like a field with wild flowers, many

of them beautiful and fragrant."

"The poetry of

resembles a bouquet of artificial

flowers, destitute of odour, and possessing none of the freshness of nature."

"It was said of, that his conversation was a tissue of bon mots, and was overlaid by them: a few spangles may ornament a garment, but if the texture of it is wholly covered by them, the dress is spoiled."

"formed few friendships in life, but he cultivated many enmities."

in his old age might be said to resemble a spent thunderbolt."

and

"The difference between the minds of this the one is introspective, and looks into the vast recesses of its intelligence for the treasures of deep thought: the other looks behind the shelves of others' thoughts, and appropriates all he finds there. The intellect of one is profound and solid, that of the second, sparkling and versatile." "The works of full mind, but rather the dregs of an exhausted one."

do not exhibit the overflowings of a

"When I see Lady -'s wrinkles daubed with rouge, and her borrowed ringlets wreathed with flowers, I am reminded of the effigies of the dead, which in ancient times were introduced at festivals, to recall the brevity of life, and give a keener zest to the pleasures of existence."

BIGOTRY AND FANATICISM.

"Men who would persecute others for religious opinions, prove the errors of their own."

"In fighting for the church, religion seems generally to be quite lost sight of."

SUPERSTITION.

"Superstition is but the fear of belief; religion is the con

fidence."

SCEPTICS.

Sceptics, like dolphins, change when dying."

"We render ourselves the ministers of the fatality which our weakness imagines."

"It is difficult to decide whether it is most disagreeable to live with fanatics, who insist on our believing all that they believe; or with philosophers, who would have us doubt every thing of which they are not convinced themselves."

INJURIES AND FORGIVENESS.

Forgiveness of injuries in general draws on the forgiver a repetition of wrongs-as people reason thus: as he has forgiven so much, he can forgive more."

"If we thought only of others, we might be tempted never to pardon injuries; but when we wish to preserve our own peace, it is a most essential step towards insuring it."

'It is easier to pardon the faults than the virtues of our friends, because the first excite feelings of self-complacency in us; the second, a sense of humiliation."

"Great injuries pardoned, preclude the enjoyment of friendship on the same happy terms of equality, of benefits received and conferred, and of kindly feelings, that subsisted previously to the interruption of amity between the parties who had been linked together in the bonds of mutual love. The friend who pardons a great wrong, acquires a superiority that wounds the self-love of the pardoned man and however the latter may admire the generosity of the forgiver, he can love as he had previously done-no more."

AMBITION. CHANGE.

"Those who are content to follow, are not formed to lead for the ambition which excites a man to put himself forward, is, in general, the attribute of the strong mind, how

ever beset by difficulties, resolved to effect an object much desired."

"Time and change, what are they but the same?

For change is but for time another name."

"A French writer says:

"Nos liens s'elongent quelquefois, mais

Ils ne se rompent jamais.'

"How like Goldsmith's line :

"And drags at each remove a lengthening chain.”

"The tide of life is continually ebbing and flowing, and myriads of human beings pass away to the ocean of eternity, succeeded by others, as do the ripples of a stream that flows on to the sea, continually disappearing and renewed."

Unfinished lines of Lady Blessington in a memorandum

book:

"The snow-drop looks as if it were a tear of winter,
Shed before it parts, touched by its icy breath,
Which doth become a flower,

Springing from snow-as souls emerge from death."

THE FLOWER TO THE STARS.

"Despise us not, we are the stars of earth,
And tho' we homage pay to ye on high,

Lifting our fragile heads to view your brightness;
Are ye not forced to let your shining eyes
Dwell on us denizens of the favoured earth?
Formed by the same Almighty cause of all,
Ye look down on us, from your azure fields,
And we from ours of green look up to you.”