the habit of the court. You see the lady, who the day before was as various as a rainbow, upon the time ap pointed for beginning to mourn, as dark as a cloud. This humour does not prevail only on those whose for tunes can support any change in their equipage, nor on those only whose incomes demand the wantonness of new appearances; but on such also who have just enough to clothe them. An old acquaintance of mine, of ninety pounds a year, who has naturally the vanity of being a man of fashion deep at his heart, is very much put to it to bear the mortality of princes. He made a new black suit upon the death of the King of Spain, he turned it for the King of Portugal, and he now keeps his chamber while it is scouring for the Emperor. He is a good economist in his extravagance, and makes only a fresh black button on his iron-grey suit for any potentate of small territories; he indeed adds his crape hat band for a prince whose exploits he has admired in the Gazette.-Steele-On Public Mournings.

MCCLVI.

We may compare the soul to a linen cloth; it must be first washed, to take off its native hue and colour, and to make it white; and afterwards it must be ever and anon washed, to preserve and to keep it white.-South.

MCCLVII.

Poets may boast, as safely vain,

Their works shall with the world remain
Both bound together live or die,

The verses and the prophecy.

*

Poets that lasting marble seek,

Must carve in Latin or in Greek:

We write in sand, our language grows,

And like the tide, our work o'erflows.

Waller-On English Verse.

MCCLVIII.

The ordinary writers of morality prescribe to their readers after the Galenic way; their medicines are made

up in large quantities. An essay-writer must practise in the chemical method, and give the virtue of a full draught in a few drops. Were all books reduced thus to their quintessence, many a bulky author would make his appearence in a penny-paper. There would be scarce such a thing in nature as a folio; the works of an age would be contained on a few shelves; not to mention millions of volumes that would be utterly annihilated.Addison.

MCCLIX.

Those that go up hill use to bow

Their bodies forward, and stoop low,
To poise themselves, and sometimes creep,
When th' way is difficult and steep:
So those at court, that do address

By low ignoble offices,

Can stoop at any thing that's base,
To wriggle into trust and grace,
Are like to rise to greatness sooner

Than those that go by worth and honour.

MCCLX.

Butler.

The sword of wit, like the scythe of time, cuts down friend and foe, and attacks every thing that accidentally lies in its way.-Lord Orrery.

MCCLXI.

It is true fortitude to stand firm against

All shocks of fate, when cowards faint and die
In fear to suffer more calamity.

MCCLXII.

Massinger.

A large retinue upon a small income, like a large cascade upon a small stream, tends to discover its tenuity. -Shenstone.

MCCLXIII.

It is no disgrace not to be able to do every thing; but to undertake, or pretend to do, what you are not made for, is not only shameful, but extremely troublesome and vexatious.-Plutarch.

MCCLXIV.

Good manners is the art of making those people easy with whom we converse. Whoever makes the fewest persons uneasy, is the best bred in the company.-Swift.

MCCLXV.

Some men are so covetous, as if they were to live for ever, and others so profuse, as if they were to die the next moment.-Aristotle.

MCCLXVI.

A contented citizen of Milan, who had never passed beyond its walls during the course of sixty years, being ordered by the governor not to stir beyond its gates, became immediately miserable, and felt so powerful an inclination to do that which he had so long contentedly neglected, that, on his application for a release from this restraint being refused, he became quite melancholy, and at last died of grief. The pains of imprisonment also, like those of servitude, are more in conception than in reality. We are all prisoners. What is life, but the prison of the soul? To some men the wide seas are but narrow ditches, and the world itself too limited for their desires: to roam from east to west, from north to south, is their sole delight; and when they have put a girdle round the globe, are discontented, because they cannot travel to the moon.-Burton.

MCCLXVII.

Among well-bred people, a mutual deference is affected; contempt of others disguised; authority concealed; attention given to each in his turn; and an easy stream of conversation maintained, without vehemence, without interruption, without eagerness for victory, and without any airs of superiority.-Hume.

MCCLXVIII.

Base is their nature, who will not have their branches lopt, till their bodies be felled; and will let go none of their goods, as if it presaged their speedy death; whereas

it does not follow, that he that puts off his cloke, must presently go to bed.-Fuller.

MCCLXIX.

Nor custom, nor example, nor vast numbers
Of such as do offend, make less the sin.

For each particular crime, a strict account will be exacted; and that comfort which

The damned pretend, fellows in misery,
Takes nothing from their torments.

MCCLXX.

Massinger.

When children go to school, they should have one to attend them, who may take care of their manners, as well as the schoolmaster doth of their learning; for, among boys all vice is easily learned; and here I could wish as constantly observed, that neither the master should correct him for fault of his manners, nor his governor for manners for the faults of his learning.Life of Lord Herbert of Cherbury.

MCCLXXI.

I have sometimes seen a couple of armies drawn up together on the stage, when the poet has been disposed to do honour to his generals. It is impossible for the reader's imagination to multiply twenty men into such prodigious multitudes, or to fancy that two or three hundred thousand soldiers are fighting in a room of forty or fifty yards in compass. Incidents of such nature should be told, not represented.—Addison.

MCCLXXII.

Man is supreme lord and master
Of his own ruin and disaster;
Controls his fate, but nothing less
In ord❜ring his own happiness:
For all his care and providence
Is too, too feeble a defence
To render it secure and certain
Against the injuries of fortune;

And oft', in spite of all his wit,
Is lost with one unlucky hit,
And ruin'd with a circumstance,
And mere punctilio, of chance.

MCCLXXIII.

Butler.

The difference between what is called ordinary company and good company, is only hearing the same things said in a little room, or in a large saloon, at small tables or at great tables, before two candles or twenty sconces. -Pope.

MCCLXXIV.

Extreme volatile and sprightly tempers seem inconsistent with any great enjoyment. There is too much time wasted in the mere transition from one object to another. No room for those deep impressions, which are made alone by the duration of an idea, and are quite requisite to any strong sensation, either of pleasure or of pain. The bee to collect honey, or the spider to gather poison, must abide some time upon the weed or flower. They whose fluids are mere sal volatile, seem rather cheerful than happy men. The temper above described is oftener the lot of wits, than of persons of great abilities. Shenstone.

MCCLXXV.

He who writes what he should speak, and dares not speak what he writes, is either like a wolf in sheep's clothing, or like a sheep in a wolf's skin.-Lavater.

MCCLXXVI.

A man advanced in years that thinks fit to look back upon his former life, and call that only life which was passed with satisfaction and enjoyment, excluding all parts which were not pleasant to him, will find himself very young, if not in his infancy. Sickness, ill-humour, and idleness, will have robbed him of a great share of that space we ordinarily call our life.-Steele.

MCCLXXVII.

The continuance and frequent fits of anger produce an evil habit in the soul, called wrathfulness, or a propensity