sidered as no exaggerated account of women in general, about his time.

A set of phrases learnt by rote,
A passion for a scarlet coat.
When at a play to laugh or cry,
Yet cannot tell the reason why.
Never to hold her tongue a minute,
While all she prates has nothing in it.
Whole hours can with a coxcomb sit,
Aud take his nonsense all for wit.

Her learning mounts to read a song,

But half the words pronouncing wrong, &c.

Dr. Swift's Furniture of a Woman's Mind. Written 1727.

Poets.

It is astonishing when we consider what advantage poets have over men of cool reasoning. The man of business, and the man of study, if they be for a moment led astray by a ray of fancy in their rational pursuits, fall into very pernicious errors in their calculations. On the contrary, the poet, the more he wanders from reality and truth, the more he is indebted to his imagination, the more he exercises his poetical faculties, and may exclaim, in the language of honest Jack Falstaff, Is it not my vocation, Hal?" But Fancy is sometimes a skittish jade, and the poor bard may sometimes find that Reason's light is a more safe guide through life than the ignis fatuus of imagination.

Orators

Seem to resemble poets in one striking circumstance, viz. their power of influencing our minds without the aid of reason, and, perhaps, better without it. Gibbon, the historian and orator, depends more on his faculty of talking than arguing. M. Buffon, the great animal historian, covers his dubious facts, and his more dubious inferences, with the splendour of his oratory; and Voltaire, by his wit, (a kind of short-hand oratory,) shews that a very easy and beaten path opens to persuasion, which is very far apart from reason and just argument. Ovid has well marked the easy abuse of this faculty of eloquence

Dicitur innocuas ut agat facundia cansas,
Protegit hæc sontes immeritosque premit.

"Tis said, indeed, that eloquence
Is a staunch friend of innocence;
But yet, alas! how oft we see
It takes for wicked men a fee.

De Tristibus, b.2.

Gibbon, the Historian.

The following observation of M. D'Alembert, on writing history, seems very applicable as a description of the philosophic style of the writer on the Rise and Fall of the Roman empire. “An historian resembles, in his duty, a person who, as a witness,

makes a certain deposition of facts, but if he mixes comments with them, he will be suspected of being a partial narrator. Moreover, it seems that the style of the writer may be such as to bring the author's partiality in question; but whatever side he takes, the least tedious style is the best." How far the pompous and theatrical style of Gibbon is monotonous and fatiguing, let better critics determine. His narration is in the Venetian style of colouring, though the correctness of his outline has been thought by readers of profound learning not to be conformable with the correctness of the Roman school.

Rings.

A. Gellius, in his tenth book and tenth chapter, relates the custom of the Greeks and Romans wearing a ring on the left hand, and upon the finger next to the least. He quotes Appian, in his Egyptian history, as giving this reason for the custom," that it was discovered, by the anatomists of that country, that a small nerve extended from that finger on the left hand all along to the heart, and so the finger above mentioned was entitled to this honourable mark." Pancerollus seems to give a more obvious reason for the ring being placed on the left hand, &c. viz. that it was not

liable to the danger which the activity of the right hand might often expose it. The fancy, however, is more gratified by the Egyptian narrative, in our present use of that finger as a place for the marriage ring, viz. that it should have a connection with the heart, and become a symbol of the cordial attachment which it thus represents, and of the duties which it implies, when the husband trembles to think

Of the loss of her,

Who, like a jewel, has hung twenty years
About his neck, and never lost her lustre.

Henry VIII, scene 3.

Humble Stations.

In the Latin language, men who have chosen a situation remote from the bustle of life are called "umbratiles viri," men who delight in the shade. The figure of speech is elegant and expressive. They who live too near the sun are represented as men of fiery passions and strong sensual appetites, unknown to the cooler and more shady regions of the north. This tropical state of the body's humours and the mind's affections contributes little to ease, or to any state susceptible of happiness; and those storms or violent currents of air that are felt on the cloudcapt mountain, become gentle zephyrs in the vallies below.

Envy among Contemporaries, &c.

It is said, on high authority, that "a prophet has no honour in his own country." It may also be said that authors meet with a similar ill fate. Distance of place and distance of time put objects in a very different point of view. In Horace's age, writers required the lapse of a century to insure their fame. The great Lord Bacon was aware of this envy among his contemporaries, and in his last will has these remarkable words, "my name and memory I leave to foreign nations, and to mine own country after some time is passed over!"

Modern Superstition and Ancient the same
in appearance.

How lively is this ancient description of modern saints. "The superstitious person utterly baffles the saying of Pythagoras, that we are then best, when we come near the gods;' for the superstitious man is then in his worst and most pitiful condition, when he approaches the temples and oratories of the gods. So that I cannot but wonder at those who charge atheism with impiety, and in the mean time acquit superstition. The ignorant devotee would fain be pleasant and gay,