lakes, refusing in their haste and fulness to suffer an admixture of the circumfluous element, even though of the same nature with their own. Such writers are careless about ornament, and often too self-confident to ask for or even to accept confirmation.

THE humourist is difficult to deal with, he speaks at one time so seriously that you are tempted to address him as Mentor; and he says, "Pardon me, Sir, you mistake me, I am only Momus." So you look in his hand for his bauble, and lo, there is a scourge.

PRACTICALLY a certain amount of the elements of evil seems necessary for what is commonly called national progress. A little disputation or persecution, to keep religion awake and astir.

It is the condition of a church to be ever under trials; and there are but two trials, the one of persecution, the other of scandal and contention, and when the one ceaseth, the other succeedeth: nay, there is scarce any one epistle of St. Paul unto the churches, but containeth some reprehension of unnecessary and schismatical controversies. So likewise in the reign of Constantine the Great, after the time that the church had obtained peace from persecution, straight entered sundry questions, and controversies, about no less matters than the essential parts of the Faith.

BACON'S Observations on a Libel.

The desire of rather more than enough money, to make commerce enterprising; a little too strong love of supremacy, to make statesmen toil; a little too

much self-indulgence, to give employment to the working classes who minister to it.

"THE whalers," says Turner, "have a superstition that when they are going to harpoon a whale, it is their duty to put their best jackets on." A good hint for the critic when he is going to strike a heavy fish.

The Fejée Islanders put charges into their guns according to the size of the person they intend to shoot at. A bad rule enough for musquetry, but not for criticism.

Of late it has been the mode to make as wide a difference as possible between "education” and “instruction;" to pretend that these provinces are totally distinct.

I refer here particularly to a speech of Mr. Drummond's in the House of Commons in, I think, 1857.

But there is more connection between the two than people generally fancy. I should like to know, who can separate from the barest good intellectual instruction a demand for the following moral elements in the pupil, order, effort, obedience, attention, perseverance, truth.

WHAT men aim at in the present day seem to be chiefly dogmatical religious, and substantial intellectual acquirements; to give a wide range of sym- . pathy, and a generosity of character, seems not to enter into the ideas of one educator out of twenty.

THERE are few people so thoroughly truthful as not gently to put suspicion or opinion on a false track, when by doing so they can save themselves or their friends.

OTHER creatures have no wish but to follow the appointed order of things. Man, as a subordinate master of nature, can, in a measure, controvert its course, and make it subservient.

Nos fruges serimus, nos arbores, nos aquarum inductioni. bus terris fœcunditatem damus; nos flumina arcemus: dirigimus advertimus nostris denique manibus in rerum naturâ, quasi alteram naturam efficere conamur.-CICERO, de Nat. Deor. II.

Is not this power, deeply considered, the strongest natural proof of responsibility to some evidently still higher agent?

Do not be equally angry with a child for the vulgarity of disposing inelegantly of his cherry-stones, and the greediness of taking more than his share of cherries. If you have not sense enough to see the difference between a real fault and a conventional one, depend upon it he has as yet enough conscience to do so.

CÆSAR is a good emblem of all states which strive to make military glory atone for other deficiencies: he covered his head with laurels to conceal his bald

ness.

MONTHLY nurses would make excellent philologists, they have such an eye for detecting resemblances between a parent stock and its derivatives, which no one else can discover.

NEXT to those faults in others by which we have been made to suffer, we are often the most angry at those which we have ourselves had the most difficulty in overcoming or sacrificing. There is no such bitter enemy of unchastity as the prude, next to the injured wife.

*

IN some sententious writers there is an evident consciousness that they are saying smart things, as Young, Shaftesbury, Fontenelle, La Bruyère. In others, as Dr. Johnson, and Bacon, that they are saying just, true, and weighty ones. Whilst, in a third class, of which Addison and Montaigne are instances, (though in other respects most widely different,) there is no apparent consciousness of the quality of what they are writing.

CESAR, holding his commentaries in one hand. above the waves as he swam, is but a minor instance, and an inadequate emblem, of the marvellous preservation, and transmission to our own times, of the vast body of Greek and Roman literature, amidst the storms and dangers through which they have had to pass.

A LOAD of epistolary liabilities is the heaviest baggage that a traveller can bear about with him.

*

THE law is very imperfect when any species of rascality can afford to pay its fines out of its profits.

*Merchants, arise,

And mingle conscience with your merchandise.

Quarles.

I do not know whether the following passage, written now some years ago, will indirectly comfort those who have suffered by, or lament over, the decline of English honesty :

:

"Pervérti par de scandaleux exemples, le bas commerce 1a répondu, surtout depuis dix ans, à la perfidie des conceptions du haut commerce par des attentats odieux sur les matières premières. Partout où la chimie est pratiquée, on ne boit plus de vin, et l'industrie vinicole succombe, on vend du sel falsifié pour échapper au fisc. Les tribunaux sont effrayés de cette improbité générale, et le commerce Français est en suspicion devant le monde entier. Le mal vient de la loi politique, elle a proclamé le règne de l'argent, et le succès devient alors la raison suprême d'une époque athée. Aussi ⚫ les corruptions des sphères élévées, malgré des résultats éblouissants d'or, et leurs raisons spécieuses, est elle infiniment plus hideuse que les corruptions ignobles, et quasi personnelles, des sphères inférieures."-BALZAC, Esther.

But Balzac himself was doing what he complains of in another way.

Hear another more recent testimony, regarding the state of French commerce, from Mendez, who told me personally what he has here written:

"Le vin on l'entend, on le frelate, on frelade ou adultère *toutes les denrées; on empoisonne les populations en tran

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