CCCCXX.

ITLES AND NOBILITY.—It is surprising what an influence titles shall have upon the mind, even though

these titles be of our own making. Like children, we dress up the puppets in finery, and then stand in astonishment at the plastic wonder. I have been told of a ratcatcher here who strolled for a long time about the villages without finding any employment; at last, however, he thought proper to take the title of his majesty's ratcatcher in ordinary, and this succeeded beyond his expectations. When it was known that he caught rats at court, all were ready to give him countenance and employment.—Goldsmith.

CCCCXXI.

REE INQUIRY.-To the attainment of truth, freedom of inquiry is absolutely essential. A man may as well attempt to penetrate the mazes of an entangled wood in fetters as to investigate the vast variety of intellectual subjects, with a mind trammelled by the imperative decisions of human institutions. And to the reducing of the general mind to this degrading predicament, do the proscriptions of civil authority in matters of literature usually tend. They lead to the fostering of prejudice, and to the perpetuation of error. They necessarily keep a nation stationary in the march of intellect, and repress that expansion of thought which is the parent of excellence. To a certain degree they may be productive of decided and powerful effects; but the uniformity of habit and character which they are calculated to produce, rather tends to lower man to the level of brutal instinct, than to raise him higher in the scale of the intelligent. creation. Shepherd and Joyce's Systematic Education.

A

CCCCXXII.

N HONEST MEANS OF GETTING A LIVING.-There

seems to be but three ways for a nation to acquire wealth: the first is by war, as the Romans did, in plundering their conquered neighbours-this is robbery; the second by commerce, which is generally cheating; the third by agriculture-the only honest way, wherein a man receives a real increase of the seed thrown into the ground, in a kind of continual miracle, wrought by the hand of God in his favour, as a reward for his innocent life and his vir tuous industry. Franklin.

OMAN.-The right education of this

utmost importance to human life.

sex is of the

There is no

thing that is more desirable for the common good of all the world; since, as they are mothers and mistresses of families, they have for some time the care of the education of their children of both sorts,-they are intrusted with that which is of the greatest consequence to human life. As the health and strength or weakness of our bodies is very much owing to their methods of treating us when we were young, so the soundness or folly of our minds is not less owing to their first tempers and ways of thinking, which we eagerly received from the love, tenderness, authority, and constant conversation of our mothers. As we call our first language our mother-tongue, so we may as justly call our first tempers our mother-tempers; and perhaps it may be found more easy to forget the language than to part entirely with those tempers we learned in the nursery. It is therefore to be lamented, that the sex, on whom so much depends, who have the first forming both of our bodies and our minds, are not only educated in pride, but in the silliest and most contemptible part of it. Girls are indulged in great vanity; and mankind seem to consider them in no other view than as so many painted idols, who are to allure and gratify their passions.-Law.

CCCCXXIX.

NJUSTICE AND TYRANNY.-Of all injustice, that is the greatest which goes under the name of law; and of all sorts of tyranny, the forcing of the letter of the law against the equity is the most insupportable.-Sir R. L'Estrange.