thus-"Died yesterday, in her 89th year," said the narrator. What a pity!' exclaimed the fortune-hunter; what a fine match she would have made two days ago!'

Jealousy.

This passion is twofold, mental and corporeal. The husband who does not suspect his wife of any criminal act with another man, may yet be jealous of his friend's superior powers of pleasing in manners and conversation, and of the diminution of her attentions to him; and examples are not unfrequent, where children are the objects of jealousy, for the same reason, between the parties.

Pronunciation.

It is wonderful how different the same discourse appears, pronounced by a good and a bad reader. When Eschines, after his retreat to Rhodes, was one day reading aloud to some friends his rival's famous speech, and the hearers were lost in wonder at the eloquence of Demosthenes; "What," said he, "would you have thought, if you had heard him pronounce it." Martial, in an epigram, has well illustrated this subject

"Those verses that you read, my friend, are mine;
But as you read them, they may pass for thine."

Singular Opinion of Philosophy.

Boswell relates an anecdote of an old schoolfellow of Dr. Johnson, who said to him, "You are a philosopher, Dr. Johnson: I have tried too in my life to be a philosopher; but I do not know hqw, cheerfulness was always breaking in." This was an opinion natural enough in a dull man, as Johnson's friend is represented to have been; and the error on this important subject is forcibly corrected by our great, and learned, and philo. sophical Poet

How charming is divine philosophy!

Not harsh and crabbed, as dull fools suppose,

But musical as is Apollo's lute,

And a perpetual feast of nectar'd sweet,

Where no crude surfeit reigns.

Milton's Comus,

Men of Phlegm.

These "cool observers" of life have great ne gative advantages over persons of more lively imaginations and more ardent passions. The former have very little need of much reason to direct and govern their actions: they seem to possess great patience, and even fortitude, amidst the evils, and against the temptations, of life, but it is mere appearance; and Swift, with his usual acute and

sarcastic description of characters, has strongly sketched that of a phlegmatic man,

Indifference in wisdom's guise
All fortitude of mind supplies.

Harington, author of the Oceana.

or

It has been often observed, that the best writers of history are liable to ascribe events to causes either inadequate to their consequences, altogether irrelative to their probable issues. The following observations of a writer much conversant with political subjects are worthy of our most serious consideration. Speaking of the convulsions of the state in the time of Charles I., Sir James Harington remarks, "The troubles of the times are not to be attributed wholly to willfulness or faction; neither to the misgovernment of the prince, nor to the stubbornness of the people; but to a change in the balance of property; which, since Henry the Seventh's time, has fallen into the scale of the Commons, from that of the King and Lords."-Harington's Oceana.

Odes.

This mode of composition, so difficult to be well executed, and which seems the " 'pons asininus" of moderate poets, and the foolish wonder of "gentle readers," has had admirers from Cowley to Mason.

The former poet sinned often against the conviction of his own opinion, "that the execution of an irregular ode, as it is familiarly and justly called, was liable to all the severity of criticism;" as we may see in the following lines of this ingenious bard:

'Tis not to force some lifeless verses meet

With their five gouty feet.

All every where like man's must be the soul,
And reason the inferior powers controul.
Such were the numbers which could call
The stones into the Theban wall.

Such miracles are ceased, and now we see
No towns, or houses, raised by poetry.

Cowley's Ode on Wit, stanza 4.

Novelty of Thoughts.

The following illustration of this subject seems eminently happy. "I own that there is something in the glitter of a new thought like that of a new coin it, of course, catches our attention for some moments, and we view it, perhaps, in two or three different lights; but, when that is over, we lay no more value upon it, or believe that it has really any more weight than the coins of former princes. It is just so with our thoughts; they may lose something of their lustre by being given and taken so often upon common occasions, but their real value is the same." Clarke's Letter to Bowyer. Selection of Articles from the Gent. Mag. 1814.

Reading and Thinking.

Many a reader is contented with the recollection of what he gains by means of books, and remains inattentive to the consideration that he cannot really profit by them, unless he has used the powers of his own mind in reflecting and meditating on their contents. To a literary man, in the solitude of a country life, this is a very baneful neglect. In a letter of Shenstone, he observes, "I am miserable to think that I have not thought enough to amuse me. I walk a day together, and have no idea, but what comes in at my eyes."Letter 26. Leasowes, November 1742.

Horace's Greek Style.

This very sensible and amusing author seems, to young students, replete with difficulties in his peculiar phrases and idioms. This embarrassment arises from their not considering that Horace, who remained a long time at Athens, (then the fashionable school of literature,) had contracted much of the then most agreeable peculiarities of the Greek tongue; as a young Englishman who had been resident for years at Paris, would now express himself often in French or Gallic modes of phraseology. With this recollection, Horace soon becomes easy and familiar to a Greek student.