material part of prudence it is to judge rightly of them, and make the best of them. If you have, for example, a favour to ask of a phlegmatic, gloomy man, take him, if you can, over his bottle. If you want to deal with a covetous man, by no means propose your business to him immediately after he has been paying away money, but rather after he has been receiving. If you know a person, for whose interest you have occasion, who is unhappy in his family, put yourself in his way abroad, rather than wait on him at his own house. A statesman will not be likely to give you a favourable audience immediately after meeting with a disappointment in any of his schemes. There are even many people who are always sour and ill-humoured from their rising till they have lined. And as in persons, so it is in things, opportunity is of the utmost consequence.-Ibid.

LXXVI.

ONTRADICTIONS IN THE HUMAN CHARACTER.-What is so hateful to a poor man as the purse-proud arrogance

of a rich one? Let fortune shift the scene, and make the poor man rich, he runs at once into the vice that he declaimed against so feelingly; these are strange contradictions in the human character.-Cumberland.

LXXVII.

OW TO GIVE ADVICE.-The most difficult province in friendship is the letting a man see his faults and errors, which should, if possible, be so contrived, that he may perceive our advice is given him, not so much to please ourselves as for his own advantage. The reproaches, therefore, of friend should always be strictly just, and not too frequent.-Budgell.

LXXVIII.

TE OF HISTORIANS.-I know not by what fate it comes to pass, that historians, who give immortality to others, are so ill requited by posterity, that their actions and their fortunes are usually forgotten; neither themselves encouraged while they live, nor their memory preserved entire to future ages. It is the ingratitude of mankind to their wisest benefactors, that they who teach us wisdom by the surest ways, should generally live poor and unregarded; as if they were born only for the public, and had no interest in their own well being, but were to be lighted up like tapers, and to waste themselves for the benefit of others.-Dryden.