fall into the same error from the influence of their passions and their senses. If any of my male readers doubt this judgment, let them doubt their own. KING.-According to the doctrine of despots and their worshippers, the hereditary proprietor of a nation; ---according to reason, its accountable first magistrate. Monarchs are the spoilt children of fortune; and, like the juvenile members of the class, are often wayward, peevish, and ill at ease. We talk of being "as happy as a king;" but which of us is not happier,—at least, in love and friendship, the great sweeteners of life? There is no courtship in Courts. A king goes a wooing in the person of his privy counsellors; marries one whom he never saw, in order to please the nation, of which he is the ruler, only to be its slave; and is generally cut off from those domestic enjoyments that constitute the highest charm of existence. Friendship cannot offer him a substitute, for equality is its basis; and he who wears a crown is at once prevented by station, and prohibited by etiquette, from indulging in any communion of hearts. Truly he ought to be exempted from all other taxes, since he pays quite enough for his painful pre-eminence. A wise man, however well qualified to shine in courts, will seldom desire to share their dangerous splendour. Diogenes, while he was washing cabbages, seeing Aristippus approach, cried out to him—“If you knew how to live upon cabbages, you would not be paying court to a tyrant."—" If you knew how to live with kings," replied Aristippus, "you would not be washing cabbages." "Of all kinds of men," says a French writer, "God is least beholden to kings; for he does the most for them, and they the least for him." And yet the patriot king, who confers happiness upon a whole nation, must render a more acceptable service to the Deity than any other mortal can proffer. KISSES-admit of a greater variety of character than perhaps even my female readers are aware, or than Joannes Secundus has recorded. Eight basial diversities are mentioned in Scripture; viz.-The kiss of Salutation.........Sam. xx. 41. 1 Thess. v. 26. Subjection ......Psalms ii. 12. Approbation...... Proverbs ii. 4. But the most honourable kiss, both to the giver and receiver, was that which Queen Margaret of France, in the presence of the whole Court, impressed upon the lips of the ugliest man in the kingdom, Alain Chartier, whom she one day found asleep, exclaiming to her astonished attendants-"I do not kiss the man, but the mouth that has uttered so many charming things." Ah! it was worth while to be a poet in those days. KITCHEN. The burial-place of the epicure's health and fortune.-" What a small kitchen!" exclaimed Queen Elizabeth, after going over a handsome mansion." It is by having so small a kitchen, that I am enabled to keep so large a house," replied its owner. man KNOWLEDGE.-A molehill removed from the mountain of our ignorance. Where shall we discover a finer illustration of disinterestedness than the outcry raised against the taxes on knowledge by Alderwho can never be affected by the impost. To call the newspaper stamp, however, a tax upon knowledge, is to term the duty upon gin a tax upon provisions. Away with the former, nevertheless, in order that men of respectability and talent may enter into the arena, and compete with the authors of the illegal penny and twopenny publications. If danger be apprehended from the darkness or perversion of the popular mind, what security so effectual as that of enlightening and guiding it? How preposterous to cla 2 mour against the poison, and interdict the antidote ! If the people will endanger their own constitution, and that of the country, by plucking sour apples from the forbidden tree of knowledge, the only way to cure them of their propensity, is to allow them free access to a sweeter and better fruit. ،، What will be the best method of saving this small beer from depredation ?" said a lady to her butler.-" By placing a cask of strong beer at the side of it," was the reply. A knowledge of useful things, of which others are ignorant, is never considered an excuse for an ignorance of trifles that are generally known. After a scholar has attained a certain age, no knowledge that you can let in upon his mind will do him any harm. Cattle may be admitted into an orchard, to graze it after the trees are grown up, but not when they are young. Partial instruction may be a partial evil, but universality of knowledge, however high the standard, will never take the poor out of their sphere. Elevating the lower, without depressing the upper classes, it will be an unmixed good to both. But if knowledge be power, will not its universality give a dangerous ascendancy to the multitude? No-for the few will be still wiser than the many. The most ignorant will then run the greatest risk. In a general illumination, it is only the unlighted windows that are pelted and broken by the mob. KNOWLEDGE-of the world. The fancied wisdom of those whose reflections are created by a mirror. There is a class of persons who think they evince prodigious penetration into the human heart, when they ascribe every action to the worst possible motives, taking it for granted that all men are sordid, profligate, or designing, all women dissipated, thoughtless, and inconstant. This misanthropical ignorance they presume to term knowledge of the world. So it may be, but it is of that world only which is comprised in their own persons. END OF VOL. I. C. WYMAN, Printer, Chichester Place, London. |