able character, he needs only to be a man of common honesty, well advised. There is nothing meritorious but virtue and friendship; and indeed friendship itself is but a part of virtue. FROM LAVATER. He who is open, without levity; generous, without waste; secret, without craft; humble, without meanness; cautious, without anxiety; regular, yet not formal; mild, yet not timid; firm, yet not tyrannical: is made to pass the ordeal of honour, friendship, virtue. He who begins with severity in judging of another, ends commonly with falsehood. A sneer is often the sign of heartless malignity. There is a manner of forgiving so divine, that you are ready to embrace the offender for having called it forth. He who is master of the fittest moment to crush his enemy, and magnanimously neglects it, is born to be a conqueror. Everything may be mimicked by hypocrisy, but humility and love united. The humblest star twinkles most in the darkest night. The more rare humility and love unite, the more radiant when they meet. The wrath that on conviction subsides into mildness, is the wrath of a generous mind. If you ask me which is the real hereditary sin of human nature, do you imagine I shall answer pride, or luxury, or ambition, or egotism? No; I shall say indolence: who conquers indolence will conquer all the rest. Avoid the eye that discovers with rapidity the bad, and is slow to see the good. Sagacity in selecting the good, and courage to honour it, according to its degree, determines your own degree of goodness. Who cuts is easily wounded. The readier you are to offend, the sooner you are offended. He who is respectable when thinking himself alone and free from observation, will be so before the eye of all the world. The manner of giving shows the character of the giver more than the gift itself: there is a princely manner of giving and a royal manner of accepting. He who affects useless singularity, has a little mind. Know, that the great art to love your enemy consists in never losing sight of man in him: humanity has power over all that is human; the most inhuman man still remains man, and never can throw off all taste for what belongs to man-but you must learn to wait. The most abhorred thing in nature is the face that smiles abroad, and flashes fury when it returns to the lap of a tender, helpless family. Between passion and lie there is not a finger's breadth. Then talk of patience, when you have borne him who has none, without repining. Trust not him with your secrets, who, when left alone in your room, turns over your papers. It is possible that a wise and good man may be prevailed on to game; but it is impossiblethat a professed gamester should be a wise and great man. He who believes not in virtue, must be vicious; all faith is only the reminiscence of the good that once arose and the omen of the good that may arise within us. If you mean to know yourself, interline such of these aphorisms as affected you, and set a mark to such as left a sense of uneasiness with you, and then show your copy to whom you please. PLEASURES OF PROMISE. Things may be well to seem that are not well to be, we deem the distant tide a blue and solid ground; Yet hope the storm can quell with a soft and happy tune, Or hang December's cell with figures caught from June: When summer shadows break, and gentle winds rejoice, The more honesty a man has, the less he And every pulse replied in tales as fondly told. affects the air of a saint: the affectation of sanctity is a blotch on the face of piety. The wrangler, the puzzler, the word-hunter, are incapable of great actions. Who, at the relation of some unmerited misfortune smiles, is either a fool, a fiend, or a villain. Though illusion aids no more the poetry of youth, S. LAMAN BLANCHARD. |