93.

It seems to me, my son, that those who employ extreme and violent remedies, do not know the nature of the evil, occasioned in part by heated minds, which, left to themselves, would insensibly be extinguished; they rather rekindle them afresh by the force of contradiction;-above all, when the corruption is not confined to a small number, but diffused through all parts of the state. Besides, the reformers said many true things! The best method to have reduced little by little the Huguenots of my kingdom, was not to have pursued them by any direct severity pointed at them.-Louis XIV. to his son.-D'Israeli.

Let us

94.

Act with cool prudence, and with manly temper,
As well as manly firmness..

'Tis godlike magnanimity, to keep,

When most provoked, our reason calm and clear,
And execute her will, from a strong sense

Of what is right, without the vulgar aid

Of heat and passion, which, tho' honest, bear us
Often too far.

95.

Thomson.

Were honour to be scanned by long descent
From ancestors illustrious, I could vaunt
A lineage of the greatest, and recount
Among my fathers, names of ancient story,
Heroes and godlike patriots, who subdued
The world by arms and virtue:

But will I borrow merit from the dead,
Myself an undeserver?

96.

Give thy thoughts no tongue,

Nor any unproportioned thought its act:

Rowe.

Be thou familiar, but by no means vulgar;
The friends thou hast, and their adoption try'd,
Grapple them to thy soul with hooks of steel:
But do not dust thy palm with entertainment
Of each new-hatched, unpledged comrade. Beware
Of entrance to a quarrel; but being in,

Bear't, that th' opposed may beware of thee.
Give every man thine ear, but few thy voice;
Take each man's censure, but reserve thy judgment.
Costly thy habit, as thy purse can buy,
But not expressed in fancy; rich, not gaudy;
For the apparel oft proclaims the man.
Neither a borrower nor a lender be;

For loan oft loseth both itself and friend;
And borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry.
This, above all-TO THINE OWN SELF BE TRUE;
And it must follow as the night and day,
THOU CANST NOT THEN BE FALSE TO ANY MAN.
Shakspeare.

97.

For who shall go about

To cozen fortune, and be honourable

Without the stamp of merit? Let none presume
To wear an undeserved dignity.

O that estates, degrees, and offices,

Were not derived corruptly; that clear honour
Were purchased by merit of the wearer!
How many then should cover, that stand bare.

How many be commanded that command!

How much low peasantry would then be gleaned
From the true seed of honour? How much honour
Pick'd from the chaff and ruin of the times,
To be new varnished!

98.

Ib.

A decided character we may often observe is repugnant to a particular pursuit, delighting in another;

talents, languid and vacillating in one profession, we might find vigorous and settled in another; an indifferent lawyer might become an admirable architect. At present all our human bullion is sent to be melted down in an university, to come out, as if thrown into a burning mould, a bright physician, a bright lawyer, a bright divine—in other words, to adopt themselves for a profession, preconcerted by their parents. By this means we may secure a titular profession for our son, but the true genius of the avocation in the bent of the mind, as a man of great original powers called it, is too often absent! Instead of finding fit offices for fit men, we are perpetually discovering on the stage of society, actors out of character!-Ïb.

99.

"A laughing philosopher, the Democritus of our day, once compared human life to a table pierced with a number of holes, each of which has a pin made exactly to fit it, but which pins, being stuck in hastily and without selection, chance leads inevitably to the most awkward mistakes. For how often do we see, how often, I say, do we see the round man stuck into the three-cornered hole!"-D'Israeli.

100.

Whatever a young man at first applies himself to, is commonly his delight afterwards.-Ib.-Hartley.

101.

When I have a great design, I ever take physic and let blood; for when you would have pure sweetness of thought, and fiery flights of fancy, you must have a care of the pensive part; in fine you must purge the belly!-Dryden

102.

The thing that gives me the highest spirit (it seems absurd but true) is a dose of salts; but one can't take them like champagne.-—Byron.

103.

Plato thought that a man must have natural dispositions towards virtue to become virtuous; that it cannot be education ; you cannot make a bad man a good man; which he ascribes to the evil disposition of the body, as well as to a bad education.-D'Israeli.

104.

There are crimes for which men are hanged, but of which they might easily have been cured by physical means. Persons out of their senses with love, by throwing themselves into a river, and being dragged out nearly lifeless, have recovered their senses and lost their bewildering passion.—Ib.

105.

What is this mind, of which men appear so vain? If considered according to its nature, it is a fire which sickens, and an accident most sensibly puts out; it is a delicate temperament, which soon grows disordered; a happy conformation of organs, which wear out; a combination and a certain motion of the spirits, which exhaust themselves; it is the most lively and the most subtile part of the soul, which seems to grow old with the body.-Flechier.

106.

We may safely consider some infirmities and passions of the mind as diseases, and could they be treated as we do bodily ones, to which they bear an affinity, this would be the great triumph of "morals and medicine." The passion of avarice resembles the

thirst of dropsical patients; that of envy is a slow wasting fever; love is often frenzy, and capricious and sudden restlessness, epileptic fits.—D'Israeli.

107.

Fellowship in suffering breeds attachment,

108.

Voltaire.

A singular result of reminiscences, this: Even the most painful possess an undefinable charm.-Mde Dudevant.

109.

The people are seldom wrong-woe to those who despise their remonstrances.-Chateaubriand.

110.

There are moral disorders which at times spread like epidemical maladies through towns, and countries, and even nations.-Ib.

111.

Should the body sue the mind before a court of judicature for damages, it would be found that the mind would prove to have been a ruinous tenant to its landlord.-Plutarch.

112.

Our domestic happiness often depends on the state of our biliary and digestive organs, and the little disturbances of conjugal life may be more efficaciously cured by the physician than by the moralist; for a sermon misapplied will never act so directly as a sharp medicine.-D'Israeli.

C