the worst, the new acquaintance and his faults can together be shaken off without much difficulty. CHAGRIN at their own want of discernment forms a considerable element in the displeasure of our friends at the discovery of unsuspected faults in us. This is one reason of the loudness of the outcry against hypocrisy. It is therefore, perhaps, safer for us to hint at these, than to allow them suddenly "éclater." I may here quote what Crabbe has said on a very different subject: "Sorrow takes new sadness from surprise." THERE are some people whose professions, compared with their performances, remind us of the French national assembly, voting eighty-eight accomplished instructors for the eight years old dauphin. He was ultimately entrusted to the care of one cobbler. THE pride of the most wicked of us is hurt if even our darling vices are presumed upon by new acquaintances; we think that, at any rate, they have no right to suppose that we shall sympathize with them. THE tendency of excessive reading, often is, not only to indispose us for conversing ourselves, but to make the general conversation of others insipid. ON the whole, the pleasantest subjects of conversation are those, respecting which we are neither excessively well informed, nor excessively ignorant. MANY aphorisms, which appear general, are strictly national: thus Rochefoucauld's "To hear patiently, and to answer precisely, are the two great arts of conversation." This is applicable to the French, who are never likely to fail in vivacity; certainly not to the English. THE chisel with which the satirist is sculpturing a knave, sometimes acts as a lancet on the prototype in real life; but vanity too often produces in some measure the effects of chloroform; and, in this case, if there is no pain, there is no cure. THE writings and speeches of great men, some of Burke's for instance, though they may fail of their entire immediate purpose, yet often contain truths which answer a higher end;—as the fragments of Ruggiero's shattered spear, in Ariosto, are said by the poet to have flown up to the sky, and sparkled in the firmament. I tronci fin al ciel ne sono ascesi : Orlando Furioso, Canto xxx. 49. OUR virtuous indignation is raised to the greatest pitch against those particular vices by which others have made us individually suffer. We should be contented with a very cool and phlegmatic disapprobation of avarice; but if we consider ourselves the injured nephew of a close-fisted uncle, we feel a noble warmth against this "the most degrading and detestable vice of human nature." THERE are some men capable within half an hour of accepting your services, annoying you to your face, and slandering you behind your back; even the cherished serpent does not warm itself, feed, sting, and hiss, at such short intervals. THE lawyer is always a gainer by the continuance of your litigation; the doctor may be tempted to protract your disease: but the good parish priest has no immediate personal interest, except in the quickness of your cure, and the permanence of it. THE lucid intervals of some moody, deranged, and gloomy minds, like the lightning flashing out of darkness, reveal to us more than the lifelong, steady, dim daylight of others. THERE are some modern systems of German philosophy which are so clear, or so much the contrary, that to turn over a couple of pages by accident at once, does not make the slightest difference in the facility of interpretation. MANY prefer taking to their love or companionship a rough pebble, in which there is the slightest chance of discovering the smallest diamond; rather than a highly-polished unquestionable bit of the most educated rock crystal. WE occasionally find the strangest mixture of awkwardness and dexterity in the same people. There are men who, by a kind of instinct, never miss a snipe, and can translate Terence, off hand: yet who blunder over Virgil, and can scarcely touch a feather of a partridge. THOSE may be taken in by the false, who have never seen the true. There is a sparkle in the eye of a loving woman, when she first sees us after a long absence, which can never be successfully imitated, as ordinary smiles or tears may. Those who have been happy enough once to see this light, are not likely to be deceived by false fires, or quite satisfied with faint ones. * To read three hours a day is quite enough to earn you the title of bookworm from those who are too C stupid, or too clever, to read at all. To deserve the sneer, a man ought to feed on the pages, to live, die, and be buried without a revival in them. The man who, from reading, learns to act, to influence society by his opinions, or even to entertain it by his conversation, is not a bookworm. How is it that there is such an excessive discrepancy of opinion about the length of time which the brain can labour? Scott worked six hours a day (see his Life by Lockhart). Sir B. Brodie says that he does not think a man can work effectively much longer (Psychological Essays). Bulwer writes, three, (Memoirs of Lady Blessington.) Many Cambridge men talk of ten hours a day as nothing very extraordinary. At Oxford, very few men worked, when I remember it, more than five or six at the utmost, exclusive of lectures; and of those, I may add, who, as an old comedy says, "could not lose their time whate'er they did.” look at the feats of the ancients in this line. Pliny, in his letters, represents his uncle, old Pliny, as scarcely ever having a book out of his hands. Sir Matthew Hale " studied for many years at the rate of sixteen hours a day" (Burnet's Life). Dr. Hammond, "during the whole time of his abode at the University, generally spent thirteen hours of the day in study" (Walton's Life of Hammond). Bishop Burnet, eleven hours. But But these were not men likely to dream over their work. On the child's tears the avigibuov yeλarua is waiting. Those of manhood and womanhood are seldom without a partial iris, or they are dried by the agitated airs, the movements and cares of active life. But for the old man's tears there is little absorption on this side the everlasting sunshine. |