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py by a vain ambition of obtaining a species of honour which the eternal laws of Providence have placed beyond the reach of man.

The miscarriages of the great designs of princes are recorded in the histories of the world, but are of little use to the bulk of mankind, who seem very little interested in admonitions against errors which they cannot commit. But the fate of learned ambition is a proper subject for every scholar to consider; for who has not had occasion to regret the dissipation of great abilities in a boundless multiplicity of pursuits, to lament the sudden desertion of excellent designs upon the offer of some other subject made inviting by its novelty, and to observe the inaccuracy and deficiencies of works left unfinished by too great an extension of the plan?

It is always pleasing to observe how much more our minds can conceive than our bodies can perform! yet it is our duty, while we continue in this complicated state, to regulate one part of our composition by some regard to the other. We are not to indulge our corporeal appetites with pleasures that impair our intellectual vigour, nor gratify our minds with schemes which we know our lives must fail in attempting to execute. The uncertainty of our duration ought at once to set bounds to our designs and add incitements to our industry; and when we find ourselves inclined either to immensity in our schemes or sluggishness in our endeavours, we may either check or animate ourselves by rec ollecting, with the father of physic, that art is long and life is short.

ODIOUSNESS AND FOLLY OF AFFEC-
TATION.

"Such pageantry be to the people shown;
There boast thy horse's trappings and thy own;
I know thee to thy bottom, from within
Thy shallow centre, to thy utmost skin."

PERSEUS.-DRYDEN'S Trans.

AMONG the numerous stratagems by which pride endeavours to recommend folly to regard, there is scarcely one that meets with less success than affectation, or a perpetual disguise of the real character by fictitious appearances; whether it be that every man hates falsehood, from the natural congruity of truths to his faculties of reason, or that every man is jealous of the honour of his understanding, and thinks his discernment consequently called in question whenever anything is exhibited under a borrowed form.

This aversion to all kinds of disguise, whatever be its cause, is universally diffused and incessantly in action; nor is it necessary that, to exasperate detestation or excite contempt, any interest should be invaded, any competition attempted; it is sufficient that there is an intention to deceive, an intention which every heart swells to oppose, and every tongue is busy to detect.

The hatred which dissimulation always draws upon itself is so great, that if I did not know how much cunning differs from wisdom, I should wonder that any men have so little knowledge of their own interest as to aspire to wear a mask for life; to try to impose upon the world a character to which they feel themselves void of any just claim; and to hazard their quiet, their fame, and even their

profit, by exposing themselves to the danger of that reproach, malevolence, and neglect which such a discovery as they have always to fear will certainly bring upon them.

It might be imagined that the pleasure of reputation should consist in the satisfaction of having our opinion of our own merit confirmed by the suffrage of the public; and that to be extolled for a quality which a man knows himself to want, should give him no other happiness than to be mistaken for the owner of an estate over which he chances to be travelling. But he who subsists upon affectation knows nothing of this delicacy; like a desperate adventurer in commerce, he takes up reputation upon trust, mortgages possessions which he never had, and enjoys, to the fatal hour of bankruptcy, though with a thousand terrors and anxieties, the unnecessary splendour of borrowed riches.

Affectation is always to be distinguished from hypocrisy, as being the art of counterfeiting those qualities which we might, with innocence and safety, be known to want. Thus the man who, to carry on any fraud or to conceal any crime, pretends to rigours of devotion and exactness of life, is guilty of hypocrisy; and his guilt is greater, as the end for which he puts on the false appearance is more pernicious. But he that, with an awkward address and unpleasing countenance, boasts of the conquests made by him among the ladies, and counts over the thousands which he might have possessed if he would have submitted to the yoke of matrimony, is chargeable only with affectation. Hypocrisy is the necessary burden of villany, affectation part of the chosen trappings of folly; the one completes a villain, the other only finishes a fop. Contempt is the proper punishment of affectation, and detestation the just consequence of hypocrisy.

With the hypocrite it is not at present my intention to expostulate, though even he might be taught VOL. I.-N

the excellence of virtue by the necessity of seeming to be virtuous; but the man of affectation may, perhaps, be reclaimed, by finding how little he is likely to gain by perpetual constraint and incessant vigilance, and how much more securely he might make his way to esteem by cultivating real, than displaying counterfeit qualities.

Everything future is to be estimated by a wise man in proportion to the probability of attaining it, and its value when attained; and neither of these considerations will much contribute to the encouragement of affectation. For, if the pinnacles of fame be at best slippery, how unsteady must his footing be who stands upon pinnacles without foundation! If praise be made, by the inconstancy and maliciousness of those who must confer it, a blessing which no man can promise himself from the most conspicuous merit and vigorous industry, how faint must be the hope of gaining it, when the uncertainty is multiplied by the weakness of the pretensions! He that pursues fame with just claims, trusts his happiness to the winds; but he that endeavours after it by false merit, has to fear not only the violence of the storm, but the leaks of his vessel. Though he should happen to keep above water for a time, by the help of a soft breeze and a calm sea, at the first gust he must inevitably founder, with this melancholy reflection, that, if he would have been content with his natural station, he might have escaped his calamity. Affectation may possibly succeed for a time, and a man may, by great attention, persuade others that he really has the qualities of which he presumes to boast; but the hour will come when he should exert them, and then, whatever he enjoyed in praise, he must suffer in reproach.

Applause and admiration are by no means to be counted among the necessaries of life, and therefor any indirect arts to obtain them have very little

claim to pardon or compassion. There is scarcely any man without some valuable or improvable qualities, by which he might always secure himself from contempt. And perhaps exemption from ignominy is the most eligible reputation, as freedom from pain is, among some philosophers, the definition of happiness.

If we therefore compare the value of the praise obtained by fictitious excellence, even while the cheat is yet undiscovered, with that kindness which every man may suit by his virtue, and that esteem to which most men may rise by common understanding steadily and honestly applied, we shall find that when from the adscititious happiness all the deductions are made by fear and casualty, there will remain nothing equiponderant to the security of truth. The state of the possessor of humble virtues to the affecter of great excellences, is that of a small cottage of stone to the palace raised with ice by the Empress of Russia; it was for a time splendid and luminous, but the first sunshine melted it to nothing.

WIT AND LEARNING; AN ALLEGORY.

"Without a genius learning soars in vain;
And without learning genius sinks again;
Their force united crowns the sprightly reign."
HOR.-ELPHINSTON'S Trans.

WIT and Learning were the children of Apollo by different mothers: Wit was the offspring of Euphrosyne, and resembled her in cheerfulness and vivacity: Learning was born of Sophia, and retained her seriousness and caution. As their mothers were rivals, they were bred up by them from their birth

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