every appearance, he would take the same to be two or three different birds.

The oliva of the bay of Logoa, also, changes its plumage several times, and is scarcely to be recognised as the same bird at every change. Many animals in northern latitudes, too, change their colour during the continuance of the snow. Such, also, is our friend, or rather acquaintance, Marcella.

Dip in the rainbow, trick her off in air,

Choose a firm cloud before it fall, and in it

Catch, ere she change, the Cynthia of the minute. Some flowers assume many changes, and that in a very short period of time. Thus those of the mutable rose expand but for one day; during which period they change from white to a deep red, and, as they decay, rapidly change into purple. The Conferva polymorpha, also, changes its colour from red to brown, and then to black; and losing its lower leaves, and elongating some of its upper ones, it is frequently mistaken for separate plants.

Many men, in the same way, are ever changing their characters; constant only in being changeable. They do not, however, possess quite the powers, which Virgil gives to Proteus :

'Omnia transformat sese in miracula rerum.'-Georg., iv. There is magnetism, as it were, in goodness, and there is an equal one in evil. I am not the rose,' says the Indian proverb, but I have lived with the 'rose.' 'I am not the night-shade,' some might also exclaim, if they had but the courage, but I have sat ⚫ with the night-shade.'

6

We can never be certain what men will do; for they are, frequently, not only ignorant of their own interests, but they act contrary even to their own natures. Thus was it with Byron. 'If ever he was truly himself,' we are told, it was when he was theoretically decrying the opinions which he really entertained, or practi'cally belying the virtues to which he was naturally 'inclined *.' He was never two days alike,' says Lady Blessington. The day after he had awakened 'the deepest interest, his manner of scoffing at himself ' and others destroyed it; and we felt as if we had been duped into a sympathy only to be laughed at.'

CCXXXVI.

WHO ARE EASILY RUINED.

A neighbour of ours keeps a multitude of pigeons; and, of a fine day, to see them flying beneath the clouds, now turning their blue backs, and now exposing their white fronts, so free and yet so orderly, it is delightful to watch them in their whirling flights.' They remind us often of a few unfortunate passengerpigeons, that, during a fire we saw in Drury Lane (London), would, as it were, be ruined: for they flew round and round the house to which they were attached; and it was with great difficulty that their owner, with a long pole, could keep them out of the flames. How many men and women do we all know of the same unfortunate cast! They will be ruined :— like moths in the candle, of a fine summer's evening.

*Critical Notice.

Some, like moist plants rooted up, are soon lost: others resemble charcoal, which nothing but fire can decompose and consume. Throw the latter into the sea; they rise, and swim safely to the shore. The former, like glass, crack, break, and fall to pieces at the touch, as it were, of an infant, sleeping in a cradle. It is certain, however, that there are persons to whom even a throne would prove no benefit.

When all the broad expansion, bright with day,
Glows with th' autumnal or the summer ray,
The summer and the autumn glow in vain,
The sky for ever lours, for ever clouds remain.'

Odyssey, xii. 91.

CCXXXVII.

WHO SUCCEED AGAINST APPARENT IMPOSSIBILITIES.

ACCIUS NAVIUS, the augur, as an answer to Tarquin, who derided his art, cut a whetstone entirely through with a razor. Thus Livy informs us*; but he does not state, at the same time, that, most probably, the whetstone had been softened by some chemical pro

cess.

Success, with some, appears as if commanded to their wishes by some invisible hand; like that recorded in the Castle of Indolence :

'They did but wish, and, instantly obey'd,

Fair ranged the dishes rose, and thick the glasses play'df.' Quintilian observes, as the fruit of his experience,

that it occasionally happens that great things are accomplished by men, who strive at what is utterly above

their power.

'Tis a many-colour'd man;

Apt in fancy, quick in plan;

Making way, where others see
Stern impossibility.'

Aristophanes; The Demagogues; Mitchell.

Persons of this order contradict experience, as well as the whole process of human affairs.

CCXXXVIII.

WHO NEVER KNOW THE REASON OF THINGS TILL THE TIME FOR ACTION IS PAST.

Or this order was Jean Jacques Rousseau. He had no power of right action during first impressions. Two years, as it were, must elapse before he knew the meanings or bearings of the simplest thing. Hence, he was for ever giving false colourings to other men's motives and actions; throwing a veil, as it were, and looking through as in a mist at objects, which, to others, were as clear as the sun at noonday in the latitude of Peru.

CCXXXIX.

WHO DO EVERY THING IN A ROUND-ABOUT SORT OF

WAY.

'Downwards to climb, and backwards to advance.'

RICHARDSON has truly remarked, that many persons will not do even right things but in a wrong manner.

Thousands there are, who can never walk in a straight line. Let them do what they will, they must do it in a round-about sort of way. Of this, in one respect, we may accuse Warburton, Bishop of Gloucester. For, after proving that the doctrine of a future state of rewards and punishments is necessary to the well-being of civil society, and that all the wise and learned nations of antiquity concurred in so thinking, he entered with great hardihood into an immense line of argument (in his Divine Legation of Moses,' demonstrated on the principles of a religious deist), to prove, that the doctrine of a future state of rewards and punishments is not only not to be found in, and did not make any part of, the Mosaic dispensation; but that that very omission was, in itself, a decisive proof of its truth!

This round-about method reminds one of what Lord Clarendon says of Archbishop Laud: viz. that, as he so was assured in his own mind that he did nothing but what was pious and just, he never gave a moment's consideration as to the method. He thought, perhaps,' continues his Lordship, that any art or industry, that way, would discredit, at least make the integrity of 'the end suspected, let the course be what it might.' And, perhaps, this was not only a plausible reason, but the true one; though, it must be confessed, it does not appear to be quite so natural as it ought to be.