terbalanced by evil. A man may have a strong reason not to drink wine, and that may be greater than the pleasure. Wine makes a man better pleased with himself. I do not say that it makes him more pleasing to others. Sometimes it does. But the danger is, that while a man grows better pleased with himself he may be growing less pleasing to others. Wine gives a man nothing. It neither gives him knowledge nor wit; it only animates a man, and enables him to bring out what a dread of the company has repressed. It only puts in motion what has been locked up in frost. But this may be good or it may be bad.

MISERS MADE, not Born.

No man was born a miser, because no man was born to possession. Every man is born cupidus -desirous of getting; but not avarus-desirous of keeping.

CONTRADICTION.

To be contradicted in order to force you to talk is mighty unpleasing. You shine, indeed; but it is by being ground.

THE FREEDOM OF LONDON.

London is nothing to some people; but to a man whose pleasure is intellectual, London is the place And there is no place where economy can be so well practised as in London ; more can be had here for the money, even by ladies, than anywhere else. You cannot play tricks with your fortune in a small place; you must make a uniform appearance. Here a lady may have well furnished apartments, and elegant dress, without any meat in her kitchen.

UNANSWERABLE QUESTIONS.

There are innumerable questions to which the inquisitive mind can in this state receive no answer: Why do you and I exist? Why was this world created? Since it was to be created, why was it not created sooner.

MORAL CONSISTENCY.

Because a man cannot be right in all things, is he to be right in nothing? Because a man sometimes gets drunk, is he therefore to steal? This doctrine would very soon bring a man to the gallows.

DIFFERENCE BETWEEN AN ENGLISHMAN AND A

FRENCHMAN.

A Frenchman must be always talking, whether he knows anything of the matter or not; an Englishman is content to say nothing when he has nothing to say.

ROMANCES.

There are good reasons for reading romancesas, the fertility of invention, the beauty of style and expression, the curiosity of seeing with what kind of performances the age and country in which they were written was delighted; for it is to be apprehended that, at the time when very wild improbable tales were well received, the people were in a barbarous state, and so on the footing of children, as has been explained.

PLEASURE.

Pleasure is a word of dubious import; pleasure is in general dangerous, and pernicious to virtue; to be able therefore to furnish pleasure that is harmless, pleasure pure and unalloyed, is as great a power as man can possess.

WINE AND BRANDY.

Claret is the liquor for boys, port for men; but he who aspires to be a hero must drink brandy. In the first place, the flavour of brandy is most grateful to the palate; and then brandy will do soonest for a man what drinking can do for him. There are, indeed, few who are able to drink brandy. That is a power rather to be wished for than attained. And yet, as in all pleasure hope is a considerable part, I know not but fruition comes too quick by brandy. Florence wine I think the worst; it is wine only to the eye; it is wine neither while you are drinking it nor after you have drunk it; it neither pleases the taste nor exhilarates the spirits.

ENVY.

What a man avows he is not ashamed to think; though many a man thinks what he is ashamed to avow. We are all envious naturally; but, by checking envy, we get the better of it. So we are all thieves naturally; a child always tries to get at what it wants the nearest way; by good instruction and good habits this is cured, till a man has not even an inclination

to seize what is another's; has no struggle with himself about it.

THEOCRITUS AND VIRGIL.

Theocritus is not deserving of very high respect as a writer; as to the pastoral párt, Virgil is very evidently superior. He wrote when there had been a larger influx of knowledge into the world than when Theocritus lived. Theocritus does not abound in description, though living in a beautiful country: the manners painted are coarse and gross. Virgil has much more description, more sentiment, more of nature, and more of art. Some of the most excellent parts of Theocritus are, where Castor and Pollux, going with the other Argonauts, land on the Bebrycian coast, and there fall into a dispute with Amycus, the king of that country, which is as well conducted as Euripides could have done it, and the battle is well related. Afterwards they carry off a woman, whose two brothers come to recover her, and expostulate with Castor and Pollux on their injustice; but they pay no regard to the brothers, and a battle ensues, where