FOR spectre and phantom seeing the Saxon cure was to eat the flesh of a wild beast; and an excellent cure too, if the patient was first obliged to hunt, and kill his wild beast.

THERE are some to whose eye external nature, which is but the garment of the Creator, by the very grace and amplitude of its foldings, seems to conceal the feet of Divinity.

THE unsocial man is generally looked upon as selfish however, it is as easy to be socially, as solitarily, selfish. The solitary says, "I am continually encountering in society that which excites my envy, or grates against my prejudices, I will retire." The socially selfish argues, "Let me get as much pleasure as ever I can out of life; that is my doctrine. It is of no use to mope; there is no merriment in solitude. Let me rough it; let me give and take; and, in the general conflict of interests, I will trust to myself not to be a loser."

I say this is a guard against the idea that the solitaires have nearly all the selfishness to themselves, which is rather a too prevalent one.

"For the most generous spirits are the most combining, they delight most to move in concert; and feel (if I may say so) in the strongest manner, the force of the confederating charm."-SHAFTESBURY'S Essay on Wit and Humour.

Evidently all depends on the motives for combination.

THERE are some men so matter-of-fact that they would have a map of the world to their Joe Miller, in order to verify the locality of the jokes. These are the men who will not permit you to talk about an empty bottle, because it has got air in it.

THOSE who do not care what truths they abuse or desecrate, in order to buttress up some favourite position, resemble the Athenians whom Thucydides describes as building up the walls of their city, with masonry pillaged from its temples and its shrines.

The Duke of Guise, in the war between Henry II. of France and the Emperor Charles V, levelled churches, monasteries, &c. for the defence of Metz in Lorraine, but with religious ceremonies, that he might avoid the charge of impiety.-ROBERTSON'S Charles V., vol. vII.

THE most pious men have complained that they are often harassed by distressing doubts. They are scarcely fair to the sceptic, or inquirer, when they tell him, authoritatively, that all his doubts have been a thousand times urged, and a thousand times refuted; but this is the ordinary phrase, even when the difficulties are perhaps substantially the same.

THE monarch is in our days the figure-head of the vessel. It looks, indeed, very imposing, and, to ignorant eyes, appears to be seeing its own way over

the ocean, but the helmsman in the background is the prime minister. Nevertheless, the sailors are very fond of their figure-head.

NATIONS resemble men more delicately than in the mere general facts of growth, culmination, and decay. In America, for instance, there is the excessive wilfulness of youth, together with its energy, recklessness, and love of movement in every direction.

There is also another defect of extreme youth which applies to some of the Americans. Pliny says, in his Sixth Letter, Second Book: " Igitur memento nihil magis esse vitandum quàm istam luxuriæ et sordium novam societatem, quæ cum sint turpissima discreta, et separata, turpius junguntur." The child loves to have a fine dress, and does not care how soon it dirties and spoils it; as a low American spits on a Turkey carpet, and spoils good furniture with his heels. But the better class of Americans have long passed out of this muddle of vulgarity and magnificence. You know this, my transatlantic friends, A▬▬t, B——e, G

M

-d,

-d, R--s, Northerners and Southerners. Only adopt

the Athenian Menander's grand liberality,

Ος αν, εὖ γεγονως ή τη φύσει προς τ' αγαθα,

Κ ̓ ἂν ̓ΑΙΘΙΟΥΣ ᾖ, μητες, εστιν ευγενής,

and be Athenians. I need scarcely say that I have taken sordes in its primary sense.

WHERE there is much to be said on both sides of a question, and neither disputant will yield, we are fain, like Buonaparte and Alexander on the Niemen, to make terms on some raft which lies in the middle

of the stream of truth; or on some island which seems to divide it for a moment into two channels, as Mazarin and De Haro arranged the peace of the Pyrenees in the Isle of Pheasants on the Bidassoa.

SOMBRE thoughts and fancies often require little real soil or substance to flourish in; they are the dark pine-trees which take root in, and frown over, the rifts of the scathed and petrified heart, and are chiefly nourished by the rain of unavailing tears, and the vapours of fancy.

THE absurdity of men is often the wisdom of Providence. We are inclined to laugh at rages and at fashions, with their energetic zigzag movements, first in one direction, and then in another; yet probably, on the whole, they produce a greater amount of improvement in art, science, and society, than would be effected by progress directed by sincere taste and cool judgment, advancing slowly and equably in every direction, no matter what the frenzy may be, whether for church architecture, washing-houses, or azaleas.

So it is in nearly everything. Surely Bolingbroke is only partially true in the following passage, at any rate in the latter part of it (Patriot King) :

"We must not proceed in forming the moral character as a statuary proceeds in forming a statue; who works sometimes on the face, sometimes on one part, and sometimes on another: but we must proceed, and it is in our power to proceed, as Nature does in forming a flower, an animal, or any other of her productions; rudimenta partium omnium simul

parit et producit: she throws out altogether and at once the whole system of every being, and the rudiments of all the parts. The vegetable or the animal grows in bulk, and increases in strength, but is the same from the first." This would seem to imply an equable growth; on the contrary, till natural productions are getting towards perfection, it almost invariably happens that the different parts take their turns in an exaggerated development, and so it very often is in the growth of character.

THERE are some good men with such an invincible though innocent personal conceit, that even in the angelic state one may fancy they would contrive to wear their rays slightly on one side.

THERE are some men who seem to exert all their bodily powers in violating the law, and their mental ones in eluding it.

NATURAL sons are said to excel in vigour; certainly the illegitimate children of the Church, the dissenters, born in her days of indolence and luxury, have often taught lessons of energy and exertion to her regular and acknowledged offspring.

MEN of great power of imagination have often very strong views of things: this tends to make them intolerant; but, on the other hand, they have pre-emi