but cannot. Whilst the whole town is filled with odours and incense, he, poor soul, is entertained with a sad mixture of hymns and sighs.-Plutarch on Superstition.

Epitaphs.

It is a well-known truth, that death is a leveller of all; but that it does, in many cases, elevate characters, to which little living merit was ascribed, epitaphs in various instances proclaim. Should a person judge from reading these inscriptions in any church, or its environs, he would imagine that all virtue and goodness had expired with the lives of those whose epitaphs he had been perusing. He would return to the business or the pleasures of the world and his acquaintance, with little hopes of finding such very excellent characters, such as he had lately contemplated on the tombs. He would soon be at a loss to understand how so many noble characters should have left the world on a sudden, and not at least have bequeathed their examples among those who remained behind them. This wonder will remain, till he shall recollect, that poets often write epitaphs, and rich men pay for them.

Corneille.

This French writer seems to sacrifice nature totally to national taste. His heroes are all Frenchmen; and witticism, according to Gallic goût, is not excluded from circumstances of the most grave and lugubrious situation. Polyeucte the Martyr, in the contemplation of his death, can speak very prettily, and exclaims on the pleasures of life on being about to quit the world:

Toute votre felicité,

Sujette à l'instabilité,

En moins de rien tombe par terre;
Et comme elle a l'éclat du verre,

Elle en a la fragilité.

Imitated,

Ah! what is thy felicity?

'Tis all unfix'd and all unsound;
And, in the twinkling of an eye,
It tumbles piece-meal on the ground.
Bright as the glass it is to view;
And is, alas! as brittle too.

Wit and Memory.

It is observable, that a great memory is sometimes unattended with any vast extent of intellect; and that such persons are more fond of quoting than of reasoning on any subject. Memory with

many an audience passes for native wit or understanding, which occasions such persons to reflect little, and keep their wits uncultivated. This matter seems attempted to be explained in our great moral poet-Pope:

Thus in the soul, while memory prevails,
The solid power of understanding fails;
Where beams of warm imagination play,
Memory's soft figures welt away.

That wits have short memories is a well-known proverb; and common experience will teach us, that memory by itself creates bold talkers and timid reasoners.

Female Education and Accomplishments.

We might be surprised in a common writer of novels to see this subject treated at once with such pregnant brevity, and so much perspicuity. "A well-informed mind," says the writer, "is the best security against the contagion of vice and folly. The vacant mind is ever on the watch for relief, and ready to plunge into error to escape from the languor of idleness. Store it with ideas, teach it the pleasure of thinking, and the temptations of the world without will be counteracted by the gratifications derived from the world within.

Thought and cultivation are necessary equally to the happiness of a country and city life. In the first place, they prevent the uneasy sensations of indolence, and afford a sublime pleasure in the taste they create for the beautiful and the grand : they make dissipation less an object of necessity, and consequently of interest."-Mysteries of Udolpho, vol. i. p. 16.

Plays and Paintings.

Much fastidious and false criticism has been displayed on these two popular subjects, and grounded upon a wrong supposition, viz. that they must be exact imitations of their objects. Now some fallacy with regard to the eye and mind must take place in both. A plain surface in a picture cannot really represent projecting figures, but by means of light and shade. Should a player mutter to himself the secret workings of his mind, the audience would not hear him; and much waggery of observation would be lost to the audience, were not the actors allowed to express their thoughts" aside," though much grace and much of propriety are thereby sacrificed. But licences, poetical and pictorial, must be allowed to the best artists in their respective pursuits. Practice tells this.

When Alexander the Great made some

false criticisms on the works of Apelles, his colourgrinder laughed at the monarch's ignorance of the subject, on which he had undertaken to speak without theory or practice.

Voltaire.

What a lesson has this amusing, acute, and unprincipled writer given on the danger of metaphysical pursuits, even to uncommon intellects. He ended his researches in philosophy by settling in fatalism.* Gray the poet has said, with poignant wit, and just contempt of this then fashionable philosopher," He must have a very good stomach that can digest the crambe recocta of Voltaire. Atheism is a vile dish, though all the cooks of France combine to make new sauces to it."Gray's Letters, 4to. p. 385.

Ibid.

Voltaire, who prefers telling a lively story, to investigating the truth of a dubious one, relates, that he often asked Pope why Milton did not write his grand poem in rhyme? and that Pope answered," because he could not." This seems very improbable to have been the opinion of the

* Questions sur l'Encyclopedie, part 19.