Borrows from his neighbour's hue

His white or black, his green or blue.'-Prior.

Some there are who cannot be convinced of their errors, or beaten out of their prejudices, even should an angel descend from heaven.

Some are so impenetrable, that you can beat nothing in, even with a hundred hammers; others so retentive of their opinions, that a hundred hammers could not beat them out. Many make the most ado, who are the least concerned: and thousands are the men, who hate opinions, facts, persons, and things, without the capacity of showing the slightest possible reason. Just as the winds blow, without any one's knowing from what recess of the universe they are generated, or to what quarter they are permitted to proceed.

'Non amo te, Sabidi, nec possum dicere quare:

Hoc tantum possum dicere, non amo te.'-Martial.

A stranger entering into a society, and seeing the zeal, fury, and passion, frequently exhibited by combatants in argument, would naturally suppose, that those wordy warriors have, at least, some real opinions relative to the doctrines they applaud or condemn; and yet nothing is more certain than that, in nine instances out of ten, they have none! They agree for the white to-day; for the purple to-morrow; and equally extravagant and equally ridiculous are they in both.

LX.

LOVERS OF DETRACTION.

" My learned Lord Cardinal,

Deliver all with charity.'-Henry VIII.

CERTAIN orders make a point of talking ungenerously of others, as they respectively retire. A man or a woman of this kind have no necessity to be branded either with mark or with name. They carry their punishments, wherever they think they are known.

Some, too, have the custom of provoking others to certain words and actions, and then reproaching them for what they have themselves provoked.

Men and women, who talk much against others in company, are not only very ill-bred, and very insolent, but very imprudent and blind. For the company never fail to expect they will talk of them, as of others. They become, in consequence, exceedingly captious; they apply every thing to themselves; they fancy every one will be looking and talking of them, the moment they go; they have scarcely a moment's repose. Smiles and shrugs are dangerous things!

'What king so strong,

Can tie the gall up of a slanderous tongue ?'

Meanness, baseness, folly; these are the very antipodes of a true man. Charles the Second is said to have been never so well pleased, as when a hole was picked in the reputation of a wise and eminently pious person.

This propensity sometimes exhibits itself even so

early as seven years of age. It is the parent of Obloquy; a miscreant, whose hovel one of the best of

poets fixes in the neighbourhood of the London fishmarket::

'Hard by a sty, beneath a roof of thatch,
Dwelt Obloquy, who, in her early days,
Baskets of fish at Billingsgate did wash;

Cod, whiting, oyster, mackerel, sprat, or plaice;

There learn'd she speech from tongues that never cease.'

Many persons imagine themselves degraded by another's reputation: for they fear but too rightly, when they fear that the excellences of others will cause their own vices, deficiencies, and deformities to be more rigidly examined.

Mirabeau gives an excellent canon of advice, in regard to detraction:- Deal with it as with a wasp;never attack it unless you are sure to destroy it, or it ' will assail you again with increased exasperation and greater force.'

LXI.

WHOSE ABUSE IS FATAL.

Most men resemble Addison's maiden lady. They consider whatever happens to themselves as trials; whatever happens to their neighbours as judgments. They look, on most occasions, through the wrong end of the telescope. Ever lenient to themselves, in some respects, too, they resemble those ancient Moors, who seized upon all strangers, and set them up as marks to aim their javelins at. The abuse of some, however,

is sufficiently harmless; because they go too far. Thus Lucan, having, in his resentment to the memory of Cæsar, represented him as riding in triumph over the field of Pharsalia, the day after the battle, and glutting his sight with the spectacle of his enemies, and commanding them neither to be buried nor burnt; the accusation being contrary not only to the policy, but to the character of the man, and in opposition, also, to all other accounts in history, the effect falls upon Lucan, rather than upon the person he condemns.

In public life, the more a really eminent man is abused, the greater is his influence, and the more effective is his power.

Some men's abuse, however, is sufficiently fatal.. Thus Rufinus of Aquileia* lost the fame he so eminently deserved, merely by the circumstance of having had St. Jerome for his adversary. He was too meek for the abuse of the worthy monk of Palestine, who assailed him, after an uninterrupted friendship of many years. The cause of this implacable hatred arose out of the regard, which Rufinus entertained for the writings of Origent. In fact, St. Jerome as little deserved' to be canonized, as either of the Scioppii. He resembled a puffin, as it were; a bird, which has a large’ head only from the circumstance of its being puffed out with feathers.

The best account of this eminent presbyter is by Fontaninus, Hist. Lib. V. Aquileiensis, lib. v. p. 149.

† Ibid. p. 177.

LXII.

WHO TAKE PRAISE TO OTHERS AS CENSURE ON THEM

SELVES.

SOME are as prone to accuse others of what they are guilty of themselves, as to any other vice whatever. Persons, living in the country, complain bitterly of this; and, in revenge, practise it themselves with equal activity and malice. And were we to be heartily angry with every one, who follows the example, we might be angry with almost every man and woman we meet.

Men, too, are equally profuse in passing encomiums on the dead, when they think, in doing so, they can insult the living with impunity. I am happy, at all times, to see my neighbours whether in London or 'the country,' said my friend, Orontes, the other day, as we were enjoying ourselves over a bottle of Burgundy -he having produced it. All I request of them is to talk of farming, manufacturing, mining, physic, law, even the art of making horseshoes; provided they are silent in respect to their servants, their children, ' their neighbours, and their enemies. Every praise to 'another seems a disguised censure on themselves. C They build a house, as it were of glass; and, after satisfying their envy, by railing at every one about them, find their mansion peopled with those hated guests, fear, distrust, malevolence, disappointed ' pride, and impotent ambition.'

What a hard fate it is to be obliged to contend for a subsistence among such worthless and ignoble persons as these!