even without the thunder, but never the thunder without the lightning.

X.

LET us so employ our youth that the very old age, which will deprive us of attention from the eyes of the women, shall enable us to replace what we have lost with something better, from the ears of the men

XI.

THE reason why great men meet with so little pity or attachment in adversity, would seem to be this. The friends of a great man were made by his fortunes, his enemies by himself, and revenge is a much more punctual paymaster than gratitude. Those whom a great man has marred, rejoice at his ruin, and those whom he has made, look on with indifference; because, with common minds, the destruction of the creditor is considered as equivalent to the payment of the debt.

XII.

OUR achievements and our productions are our intellectual progeny, and he who is engaged in providing that these immortal children of his mind shall inherit fame, is far more nobly occupied than he who is industrious in order that the perishable children of his body should inherit wealth. This reflection will help us to a solution of that question that has been so often and so triumphantly proposed, "What has posterity ever done for us? This sophism may be replied to thus. Who is it that proposes the question? one of the present generation of that particular moment when it is proposed. but to such it is evident that posterity can exist only in idea. And if it be asked, what the idea of posterity has done for us? we may safely reply that it has done, and is doing two most important things; it increases the energies of virtue and diminishes the excesses of vice; it makes the best of us more good, and the worst of us less bad.

XIII.

NO improvement that takes place in either of the sexes can possibly be confined to itself; each is an universal mirror to each; and the respective refinement of the one, will always be in reciprocal proportion to the polish of the other.

XIV.

THOSE who at the commencement of their career meet with less cotemporaneous applause than they deserve, are not unfrequently recompensed by gaining more than they deserve at the end of it: and although at the earlier part of their progress such persons had ground to fear that they were born to be starved, yet have they often lived long enough to die of a surfeit. But this applies not to posterity, which decides without any regard to this inequality. Contemporaries are anxious to redeem a defect of penetration, by a subsequent excess of praise; but from the very nature of things it is impossible for posterity to commit either the one fault or the other. Doctor Johnson is a remarkable instance of the truth of what has been advanced; he was considered less than he really was in his morn of life, and greater than he really was in its meridian. Posterity has calmly placed him where he ought to be,-between the two extremes. He was fortunate in having not only the most interesting, but also the most disinterested of biographers, for he is constantly raising his hero at the expense of himself. He now and then proposes some very silly questions to his oracle. He once asked him, pray, Doctor, do you think you could make any part of the Rambler better than it is? Yes, sir, said the Doctor, I could make the best parts better. But posterity, were she to cite the Doctor before her, might perhaps propose a more perplexing question,—Pray, Doctor, do you think you could make the worst parts worse?

XV.

THE testimony of those who doubt the least is not,

unusually, that very testimony that ought most to be doubted.

XVI.

IT is curious that intellectual darkness creates some authors, whom physical darkness would destroy; such would be totally silent if they were absolutely blind, and their ability to write would instantly cease with their ability to read. They could neither draw, like Shakspeare, on imagination; like Bacon, on reflection; like Ben Jonson, on memory; nor, like Milton, on all. These traffickers in literature are like bankers in one respect, and like bakers in another. Like bankers, because they carry on business with a small capital of their own, and a very large one of other men's, and a run would be equally fatal to both. They are like bakers, because while the one manufactures his bread and the other his book, neither of them has had any hand in the production of that which forms the staple of his respective commodity.

XVII.

WITH the offspring of genius, the law of parturition is reversed; the throes are in the conception, the pleasure in the birth.

XVIII.

AS no roads are so rough as those that have just been mended, so no sinners are so intolerant as those that have just turned saints.

XIX.

WHEN dunces call us fools without proving us to be so, our best retort is to prove them to be fools without condescending to call them so.

XX.

PEDANTRY crams our heads with learned lumber,

and takes out our brains to make room for it.

XXI.

HE that pleases himself without injuring his neighbour, is quite as likely to please half the world, as he who vainly strives to please the whole of it; he also stands a far better chance of a majority in his favour, since upon all equal divisions he will be fairly entitled to his own casting vote.

XXII.

I HAVE often heard it canvassed how far it would be beneficial that written speeches should be permitted to be read in our Houses of Parliament. Madame De Stael, who in the infancy of the French revolution, saw the consequences of written speeches developed before her eyes, has, with her usual discernment, set the question at rest, by deciding in favour of the system that excludes them. In the British Senate, she observes, it is a rule not to read a written speech, it must be spoken, so that the number of persons capable of addressing the House with effect is of necessity very small. But, she adds, as soon as permission is given to read either what we have written for ourselves, or what others have written for us, men of eminence are no longer the permanent leaders of an assembly, and thus we lose the great advantages of a free government, that of giving talent its place, and consequently of prompting all men to the improvement of their faculties.

XXIII.

WOMEN will pardon any offence rather than a neglect of their charms, and rejected love re-enters the female bosom with a hatred more implacable than that of Coriolanus, when he returned to Rome. In good truth we should have many Potiphars, were it not that Josephs are scarce. All Addison's address and integrity were found necessary to extricate him from a dilemma of this kind. The Marquiss Des Vardes fared not so well. Madame the Duchess of Orleans fell in love with him, although she knew

he was the gallant of Madame Soissons, her most intimate friend. She even went so far as to make a confidante of Madame Soissons, who not only agreed to give him up, but carried her extravagance so far as to send for the Marquis, and to release him, in the presence of Madame, from all his obligations, and to make him formally over to her. The Marquis Des Vardes deeming this to be only an artifice of gallantry to try how faithful he was in his amours, thought it most prudent to declare himself incapable of change, but in terms full of respect for Madame, but of passion for the Duchess. His ruin was determined upon from that moment, nor could his fidelity to the one, save him from the effects of that hatred his indifference had excited in the breast of the other. As a policiser, the marquis reasoned badly; for had he bcen right in his conclusion, it would have been no difficult matter for him, on the ladies discovering their plot, to have persuaded his first favourite that his heart was not in the thing, and that he had fallen into the snare, only from a deference to her commands; and if he were wrong in his conclusion, which was the case, women do not like a man the worse for having many favourites if he deserts them all for her; she fancies that she herself has the power of fixing the wanderer; that other women conquer like the Parthians, but that she herself, like the Romans, cannot only make conquests, but retain them.*

XXIV.

IN civil jurisprudence† it too often happens that there is so much law that there is no room for justice, and that the

*It follows upon the same principle that the converse of what has been offered above will also be true, and that women will pardon almost any extravagancies in the men, if they appear to have been the uncontrolable effects of an inordinate love and admiration. It is well known from the confession of Catharine herself, that Alexis Orloff, though at that time a common soldier in the guards, had the hardiesse to make the first advances to the Autocatrix of all the Russias.

+ Grievances of this kind are not likely to be speedily redressed, on many accounts, some of which I have elsewhere enumerated. There is