He may commence with the most honest and earnest desire to do his work completely; but he must end with scamping it, or turning it over to others, and so gradually lose that interest in it which no man can long maintain when he is compelled to let his practice fall immeasurably below his theory. It will be well indeed, if, from the necessity of letting many things take their chance, he is not led into the habit of letting nearly everything do so. It is still more ruinous to the young to demand of them more than you are quite sure they can accomplish with moderate industry; it not only tends to make their minds superficial, but, what is still less thought of, their characters slippery, slip-shod, and slip-slop.

At first we must be contented to take things by halves. It is curious to watch the first turn of the tide. "Redwald of East Anglia built an altar to Christ, in the same temple where the sacrifices to Odin were performed; but even this strange combination of worship had the effect of drawing the attention of his East Anglians to the Christian faith." (TURNER, Anglo Saxons, vol. 1. chap. vii.) "From the pulpit the priest might be heard, at Wittenburgh, to thunder against the mass as idolatrous, and then he might be seen to come down to the altar and go scrupulously through the prescribed form of service." (D'AUBIGNE'S Reformation in Germany, B. Ix.) There are many instances of the same kind, but these are cited as strong ones.

IN some respects, as far as capacity and mental condition go, the young may possess some advantages over the more mature; but then each of these is counterbalanced by a corresponding defect. Is the memory at once strong and impressible? it is also indiscriminating. Is the attention eager and easily attracted? for the same reason it is diverted no less easily. Are the perceptions quick? they generally want steadiness and accuracy. If the boy has no discouraging sense of the boundlessness of knowledge, it is because he does not see it in its connections. If he is free from that sickening and delusive feeling of its uselessness, which often, for a time, almost paralyzes the man, it is because he rarely views knowledge with an eye to its utility.

-

"CAVE hominem unius libri ;"- "Beware of the man of one book," says the old Latin proverb. Yes, and in one more sense besides that intended by the proverbialist; for such a man is not only likely to be very dangerous on his own ground, but very tiresome. There are few more curious phenomena in the world of mind than that of a man, and a sensible man, making an eternal companion of one printed volume, a Virgil, for instance, long after his mind has drawn all the knowledge or improvement from it which it is capable of affording.

*

THERE is no truer test of affection and admiration than that of being kissed in sleep; but, unfortunately,

it is one of which the receiver is not conscious: for to be kissed out of it is, though often, not always, quite so sincere or disinterested.

THERE are no troubles like domestic ones for driving men to suicide or the bottle. In spite of the superior comforts of married life, there are as many or more suicides amongst married men than amongst bachelors, to judge from the public accounts.

"I SERVE" is a royal motto, and the Pope formally announces himself" the servant of servants :" it is only the really powerful who can afford thus afficher l'humilité.”

66

THERE are some historians who describe mere externals so well, that they resemble telescopes which bring distant groups so near us that we almost see their lips move, and expect every moment to hear them speak, but in vain. There are others whose pages resemble those thick mists-conductors of sound-in which we hear men talking, and reasoning or quarrelling, distinctly, close at hand, but without discovering a single lineament of their persons.

THE self-educated have as much dislike to the pedigree of words as the self-elevated to the pedigree of persons.

EVERY national or social preference or prejudice is perpetually striving to divert particular words from the service of universal truth, and to make them subserve its private purposes; thus such words as "liberal" and "conservative" become terms of reproach, each of them signifying, to the vulgar, ignorant, and violent of the opposite party, everything that is bad and contemptible. The first confusion of language was owing to resistance to the Deity: a second Babel is produced by the mutual enmities of mankind. There is, probably, not a language in Europe which has not been positively damaged by the distortions and perversions left in it by party-spirit.

THE wings of a bachelor's freedom and inconstancy are sometimes preferred to the chains of connubial roses. But afterwards, when

"Shed, one by one, its sweet leaves to the ground,"

(HOOD.) those leaves, though no longer fresh, often preserve their odour; and, if tolerably free from thorns, form a pleasanter couch for age to recline upon than the fallen plumes of celibate liberty.

WHAT an amazing rebuff we often meet with when addressing something to the mind of another which, from its truth, we fancy must necessarily find an echo there. One Tavannes, who had assisted in the mas

sacre of St. Bartholomew's day, when asked on his deathbed whether he repented of it, replied, that, so far from repenting of it, he considered it an atonement for all the other sins of his life. (Sully.)

LET a reflecting man be very cautious how he changes a course of action founded on deliberation and on a knowledge of his own circumstances, character, and temperament, at the persuasion even of his best friends. He often yields, distrusting his own judgment; and knowing the purity and sincerity of their motives to be such that he might almost fancy them the providence-inspired guides which they think themselves to be. It has been said, "Every man (i. e. every sensible man) can see farther along his own path than others can see for him." Many will dispute the maxim, but I believe it to be in the main true.

Those that look on

See more than those that play.

BEAUMONT and FLETCHER.

This is such an universally applied proverb, that it is just as well to give those who are constantly plied with it one or two countercharges,

Sir William Temple quotes a Spanish proverb, which says:-"A fool often sees more in his own house than a wise man in his neighbour's."

Barrow gives interfering people a good scolding, and adds:

"Each man is apt to study his own business, to weigh his case, to poise his abilities with the circumstances in which he standeth; and thence is likely to get righter notions of the state of his affairs, to descry better ways of accomplishing them than others less regarding them can do. Every