with this caution, that you are not to use those ancients as unlucky lads do their old fathers, and make no conscience of picking their pockets and pillaging them. Your business is not to steal from them, but to improve upon them, and make their sentiments your own; which is an effect of great judgment; and though difficult, yet very possible without the scurvy imputation of filching; for I humbly conceive, though I light my candle at my neighbour's fire, that does not alter the property, or make the wick, the wax, or the flame, or the whole candle less my own.-Swift.

CCCXCIII.

Fleet-street has a very animated appearance; but I think the full tide of human existence is at Charing-cross. -Johnson.

CCCXCIV.

`How many are like those trees, which being already tall and well grown, are transplanted into gardens, to the surprise of those who behold them in those fine places, where they never saw them grow, and who know neither their beginning nor progress.—Bruyere.

CCCXCV.

Every medicine is an innovation, and he that will not apply new remedies must expect new evils; for time is the greatest innovator; and if time of course alter things to the worse, and wisdom and counsel shall not alter them to the better, what shall be the end?-Lord Bacon.

CCCXCVI.

It is a short step from modesty to humility; but a shorter one from vanity to folly, and from weakness to falsehood.-Lavater.

CCCXCVII.

People will, in a great degree, and not without reason, form their opinion of you, upon that which they have of your friends; and there is a Spanish proverb which says, very justly, Tell me with whom you live, and I will tell you who you are." One may fairly suppose that a man who makes a knave or fool of his friend,

has something very bad to do or conceal. But at the same time that you carefully decline the friendship of knaves and fools, if it can be called friendship, there is no occasion to make either of them your enemies, wantonly and unprovoked: for they are numerous bodies; and I would rather choose a secure neutrality, than an alliance of war, with either of them.-Chesterfield.

CCCXCVIII.

He that will give himself to all manner of ways to get money, may be rich; so he that lets fly all he knows or thinks, may by chance be satirically witty. Honesty sometimes keeps a man from growing rich, and civility from being witty.-Selden.

CCCXCIX.

Some men use no other means to acquire respect, than by insisting on it; and it sometimes answers their purpose, as it does a highwayman's in regard to money. -Shenstone.

CCCC.

Those who lose nothing when they lose all, are the most deplorable of mortals; and those who gain nothing when they gain the most, deserve the greatest portion of pity.-Zimmerman.

CCCCI.

Prejudice may be considered as a continual false medium of viewing things, for prejudiced persons not only never speak well, but also never think well of those whom they dislike, and the whole character and conduct is considered with an eye to that particular thing which offends them.-Butler.

CCCCII.

In comedy, the plot turns on marriage; in tragedy, it turns on murder. The whole intrigue, in the one and the other, turns on this grand event; will they marry? will they not marry? will they murder? will they not murder? There will be a marriage; there will be murder; and this forms act the first. There will be no marriage; there will be no murder; and this gives birth to act

the second.

A new mode of marrying and of murdering is prepared for the third act. A new difficulty impedes the marriage or the murder, which the fourth act discusses. At last, the marriage and the murder are effected for the benefit of the last act.-Rosseau.

CCCCIII.

To be flattered is grateful, even when we know that our praises are not believed by those who pronounce them; for they prove at least our power, and show that our favour is valued, since it is purchased by the meanness of falsehood.-Johnson.

CCCCIV.

Some men make it a case of conscience whether a man may have a pigeon-house; because his pigeons eat other folks' corn. But there is no such thing as conscience in the business; the matter is, whether he be a man of such quality that the state allows him to have a dove-house. If so, there's an end of the business, his pigeons have a right to eat where they please themselves. -Selden.

CCCCV.

Look out of your door-take notice of that man; see what disquietude, intriguing, and shifting, he is content to go through, merely to be thought a man of plain dealing: three grains of honesty would save him all this trouble:-alas! he has them not.-Sterne.

CCCCVI.

The web of our life is of a mingled yarn, good and ill together: our virtues would be proud if our faults whipped them not; and our crimes would despair, if they were not cherished by our virtues.-Shakspeare.

CCCCVII.

The embroiderer and confectioner would be superfluous, they would have no vent for their delicacies and finery, were we modest and temperate: courts would be deserts, and kings unattended, if we were void of vanity and interest. Men are willing to be slaves in one place, to lord it in another. It seems as if a proud imperious

air was there given by wholesale to the great ones, for them to retail in their provinces. They do exactly what is done with regard to them, they are apes of majesty.Bruyere.

CCCCVIII.

Deference, before company, is the genteelest kind of flattery. The flattery of epistles affects one less, as they cannot be shown without an appearance of vanity. Flattery of the verbal kind is gross. In short, applause is of too coarse a nature to be swallowed in the gross, though the extract or tincture be ever so agreeable.— Shenstone.

CCCCIX.

A man shall see, where there is a house full of children, one or two of the eldest respected, and the youngest made wantons; but in the midst, some that are as it were forgotten, who, many times, nevertheless, prove the best. The illiberality of parents, in allowance towards their children, is a harmful error, and makes them base; acquaints them with shifts; makes them sort with mean company; and makes them surfeit more when they come to plenty: and therefore the proof is best when men keep their authority towards their children, but not their purse.-Lord Bacon.

CCCCX.

A certain air of pleasantry and humour, which prevails now-a-days in the fashionable world, gives a son the assurance to tell his father, he has lived too long; and a husband the privilege of talking of his second wife before his first. But let the airy gentleman, who makes thus bold with others, retire a while out of company, and he scarce dares tell himself his wishes.-Shaftesbury.

CCCCXI.

Indigence exists by the vanity of opulence: the vanity of poverty is gratifying; but its pride is death to the grandees of the earth.-Zimmerman.

CCCCXII.

Courtship is a fine bowling-green turf, all galloping round, and sweet-hearting, a sunshine holiday in sum

mer time. But when once through matrimony's turnpike, the weather becomes wintry, and some husbands are seized with a cold aguish fit, to which the faculty give the name of indifference. Courtship is matrimony's running footman, but seldom stays to see the stocking thrown; it is too often carried away by the two grand preservatives of matrimonial friendship, delicacy and gratitude. There is also another distemper very mortal to the honey-moon; 'tis what the ladies sometimes are seized with, and the college of physicians call it sullenness. This distemper generally arises from some ill-conditioned speech, with which the lady has been hurt; who then, leaning on her elbow upon the breakfast table, her cheek resting upon the palm of her hand, her eyes fixed earnestly upon the fire, her feet beating tat-too time;-the husband in the mean while biting his lips, pulling down his ruffles, stamping about the room, and looking at his lady like the devil. At last he abruptly demands of her, "What's the matter with you, madam?" The lady mildly replies-"Nothing." "What is it you do mean, madam?” "Nothing." "What would make you me, madam?". Nothing.' "What is it I have done to you, madam?"-"O-h-nothing." And this quarrel arose as they sat at breakfast: the lady very innocently observed, "She believed the tea was made with Thames water." The husband in mere contradiction insisted upon it that the tea-kettle was filled out of the New river.-G. A. Stevens.

CCCCXIII.

People may be taken in once, who imagine that an author is greater in private life than other men. Uncommon parts require uncommon opportunities for their exertion.-Johnson.

CCCCXIV.

Supposing the body of the earth were a great mass or ball of the finest sand, and that a single grain or particle of this sand should be annihilated every thousand years. Supposing then that you had it in your choice to be happy all the while this prodigious mass of sand was consuming, by this slow method, until there was not a grain