PREVENTION BETTER THAN CURE.

An acre in Middlesex is better than a principality in Utopia. The smallest actual good is better than the most magnificent promises of impossibilities. The wise man of the Stoics

would, no doubt, be a grander object than a steam engine. But there are steam-engines; and the wise man of the Stoics is yet to be born. A philosophy which should enable a man to feel perfectly happy while in agonies of pain would be better than a philosophy which assuages pain. But we know that there are remedies which will assuage pain, and we know that the ancient sages liked the toothache just as little as their neighbours. A philosophy which should extinguish cupidity would be better than a philosophy which should devise laws for the security of property. Macaulay.

EXAMPLE BEFORE PRECEPT.

Preachers say, Do as I say, not as I do.

But if

a physician had the same disease upon him that I have, and he should bid me do one thing and he do quite another, could I believe him?

Selden.

GENTLE CHARACTERISTICS.

A gentleman's first characteristic is that fineness of structure in the body which renders it capable of the most delicate sensation, and of structure in the mind, which renders it capable of the most delicate sympathies; one may say, simply, "fineness of nature." This is, of course, compatible with heroic bodily strength and mental firmness; in fact, heroic strength is not conceivable with such delicacy. Elephantine strength may drive its way through a forest, and feel no touch of the boughs, but the white skin of IIomer's Atrides would have felt a bent rose-leaf, yet subdue its feeling in glow of battle, and behave itself like iron. I do not mean to call an elephant a vulgar animal; but if you think about him carefully, you will find that his non-vulgarity consists in such gentleness as is possible to elephantine nature; not in his insensitive hide, nor his clumsy foot, but in the way he will lift his foot if a child lies in his way, and in his scnsitive trunk, and still more sensi. tive mind, and capability of pique on points of honour.

Ruskin.

VANITY AND AFFECTATION.

I will not call vanity and affectation twins, because more properly vanity is the mother, and affectation is the darling daughter; vanity is the sin, and affectation is the punishment; the first may be called the root of self-love, the other the fruit. Vanity is never at its full growth till it spreadeth into affectation, and then it is complete. Saville.

ELOQUENCE.

True eloquence is good sense, delivered in a natural and unaffected way, without the artificial ornament of tropes and figures. Our common eloquence is usually a cheat upon the understanding; it deceives us with appearances, instead of things, and makes us think we see reason, whilst it is only tickling our sense.

Baker.

GUNPOWDER: an Emblem. Gunpowder is the emblem of politic revenge, for it biteth first, and barketh afterwards; the bullet being at the mark before the report is heard, so that it maketh a noise, not by way of warning, but of triumph. Thomas Fuller.

THE LIMITED POWER OF MONEY.

Money, no doubt, is a power; but a power of well-defined and narrow limits. It will purchase plenty, but not peace; it will furnish your table with luxuries, but not you with an appetite to enjoy them: it will surround your sickbed with physicians, but not restore health to your sickly frame; it will encompass you with a cloud of flatterers, but never procure you one true friend; it will bribe into silence the tongues of accusing men, but not an accusing conscience; it will pay some debts, but not the least one of all your debts to the law of God; it will relieve many fears, but not those of guilt-the terrors that crown the brows of death. Ile stands as grim and terrible by the dying bed of wealth as by the pallet of the poorest beggar whom pitiless riches has thrust from her door.

GARRICK'S BENEVOLENCE.

Guthrie.

Foote used to say of Garrick, that he walked out with an intention to do a generous action; but, turning the corner of a street, he met with the ghost of a halfpenny, which frightened him.

Boswell.

THE ART OF BEING AGREEABLE.

The art of being agreeable frequently miscarries through the ambition which accompanies it. Wit, learning, wisdom-what can more effectually conduce to the profit and delight of society? Yet I am sensible that a man may be too invariably wise, learned, or witty to be agreeable and I take the reason of this to be, that pleasure cannot be bestowed by the simple and unmixed exertion of any one faculty or accomplishment. Cumberland.

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LEAVING THE WORLD.

There is something painful in the thought of leaving for ever what has given us pleasure. I remember, many years ago, when my imagination was warm, and I happened to be in a melancholy mood, it distressed me to think of going into a state of being in which Shakspeare's poetry did not exist. A lady, whom I then much admired, a very amiable woman, humoured my fancy, and relieved me by saying, "The first thing you will meet with in the other world will be an elegant copy of Shakespeare's works presented to you." Boswell.