very greatness that makes inaction misery. If God had made us only to be insects, with no nobler care incumbent on us than the preservation of our lives, or the pursuit of happiness, we might be content to flutter from sweetness to sweetness, and from bud to flower. But if men with souls live only to eat and drink and be amused, is it any wonder if life be darkened with despondency? Destiny. The scapegoat which we make responsible for all our crimes and follies; a necessity which we set down for invincible, when we have no wish to strive against it. The sea of Fortune doth not ever flow; She draws her favours to the lowest ebb: Her loom doth weave the fine and coarsest web; Not always fall of leaf, nor ever spring, The roughest storm a calm may soon allay. I can, and I will, are a strong couple when yoked together; but, disjoined by an if, they become weak as a rope of sand. - It is common for men to say, that such and such things are perfectly right—very desirable; but that, unfortunately, they are not practicable. Oh, no, no. Those things which are not practicable are not desirable. There is nothing in the world really beneficial, that does not lie within the reach of an informed understanding and a well-directed pursuit. There is nothing that God has judged good for us, that he has not given us the means to accomplish, both in the natural and the moral world. If we cry, like children, for the moon, like children we must cry on.-Burke. Detraction. To carp, to detract, and sinistrously to interpret others, are degenerate vices and unworthy depravities; not only beneath St. Paul's noble Christian, but Aristotle's true Gentleman!-Sir Thomas Browne. - There is no readier way for a man to bring his own worth into question, than by endeavouring to detract from the worth of other men.-Tillotson. Directors. People appointed by the shareholders of a public company to read newspapers in a back room made for that purpose, and to dine at the company's expense. Disappointment. No change of scene or climate suffices to renovate that weary flagging of the heart consequent upon the total disappointment of its earthly hopes. The young have courage and energy to bear them up against mortifications; but when the whole career of life has been run in vain, and by one who, formed in the school of worldliness, does not easily learn to estimate at their real value the paltry prizes which allured him to the course, his struggles are great, and bitter, and overcoming. Discontent. We look before and after, And pine for what is not : With some pain is fraught; Our sweetest songs are those which tell of saddest thought. Discretion. Shelley. There is a seede called Discretion, if a husbandman have of that seede and mingle it amongst his other corne, they will growe doubtless much the better, for that seede will tell him how many casts of corne a land ought to have. And if a husband, or, it may so fortune, a man that by possibility might have gray-headed experience, hath not sufficient of that seede, yet he that lacketh, it is lawful for him to borrow of his neighbours that have, and his neighbours be unkind if they will not lend this young husband part of their seede, for this seede of discretion hath a wondrous virtue, for the more it is eyther taken of or lent the more it is.-Boke of Husbandry. Law perplexes many points; but it has made one clear which, without its assistance, would have remained for ever in darkness; for it tells us at what period of his life a man arrives at years of discretion; and but for this information who could guess at it? When a young gentleman has come into possession of broad lands and a good store of wealth, and takes his station at the gaming-table till he loses all that he has the power of losing; when a young lady at the age of twenty and one years, emancipated by the law from parental control and all authority of guardianship, marries her father's groom, or gives her hand and fortune to a notorious gambler; when a middle-aged gentleman, who has lived many years, carefully avoiding an indiscreet marriage, guarding himself warily against the fascinations of beauty, and priding himself on his policy, at length marries his cook -we should hardly believe, if the law had not told us so, that either of these parties had arrived at years of discretion. What is discretion? We all have it; it comes to us by Act of Parliament the very day we have completed one-andtwenty years, and it sticks to us through life by virtue of the same. The real meaning of the word "discretion" is not that we know how to go alone, but that our leading strings are cut, and we must go alone as well as we can. Disease. I tell you honestly what I think is the cause of the complicated maladies of the human race; it is their gormandizing and stuffing, and stimulating their digestive organs to an excess, thereby producing nervous disorders and irritations. I never, with important air, Can grave and formal pass for wise, Who listens to the chattering pye? By stealth invade my neighbour's right. Kites, hawks, and wolves deserve their fate. Do not we just abhorrence find Against the toad and serpent kind? But envy, calumny, and spite, Can furnish hints to contemplation; And from the most minute and mean, A virtuous mind can morals glean.-Gay. Conversation should be pleasant without scurrility, witty without affectation, free without indecency, learned without conceitedness, novel without falsehood. There are few occasions in life in which we are more called upon to watch ourselves narrowly, and to resist the assaults of various temptations, than in conversation.-H. More. - The first ingredient in conversation is truth; the next, good sense; the third, good humour; and the fourth, wit.Sir W. Temple. There must, in the first place, be knowledge-there must be materials; in the second place, there must be a command of words; in the third place, there must be imagination to place things in such views as they are not commonly seen in; and, in the fourth place, there must be a presence of mind, and a resolution that is not to be overcome by failures-this last is an essential requisite: for want of it, many people do not excel in conversation.-Dr. Johnson. Co-operation. No man ever prospered in the world without the co-operation of his wife. If she unites in mutual endeavours, or rewards his labours with an endearing smile, with what confidence will he resort to his merchandise or his farm, fly over lands, sail upon the seas, meet difficulty, encounter danger, if he knows he is not spending his strength in vain, but that his labour will be rewarded by the sweets of home! Solicitude and disappointment enter into the history of every man's life; and he is but half provided for his voyage who finds but an associate for happy hours; while, for his months of darkness and distress, no sympathizing partner is prepared. Cottages. The cottage homes of England! They are smiling o'er her silvery brooks, Each from its nook of leaves, And fearless there the lowly sleep, As the birds beneath their eaves.-Hemans. Counsel. Ask counsel of both times-of the ancient time what is best, and of the latter time what is fittest.-Bacon. 'Remember," said a Quaker to his son, "in making thy way in the world, a spoonful of oil will go further than a quart of vinegar." Countenance. It is the common wonder of all men, how among so many millions of faces, there should be few alike: now, on the contrary, we wonder as much how there should be any. He who shall consider how many thousand different words have been carelessly, and without study, composed out of twentyfour letters; withal, how many hundred lines there are to be drawn in the fabric of one man-shall easily find that this |