LXXXII.

ISCRETION.-There are many more shining qualities in the mind of man, but there is none so useful as

that of discretion; it is this, indeed, which gives a value to all the rest, which sets them at work in their proper times and places, and turns them to the advantage of the person who is possessed of them. Without it, learning is pedantry, and wit impertinence; virtue itself looks like weakness; the best parts only qualify a man to be more sprightly in errors, and active to his own prejudice.-Addison.

LXXXIII.

RIGIN OF TRADES AND PROFESSIONS. Most of the trades, professions, and ways of living among mankind, take their original either from the love of pleasure, or the fear of want. The former, when it becomes too violent, degenerates into luxury, and the latter into avarice.-Ibid.

LXXXIV.

OMAN'S LOVE.-As the dove will clasp its wings to its side, and cover and conceal the arrow that is preying on its vitals, so is the nature of woman to hide from the world the pangs of wounded affection.—Anon.

LXXXV.

RIENDSHIP.-Aristotle considers friendship as of three kinds, one arising from virtue, another from pleasure, and another from interest; but justly determines, that there can be no true friendship which is not founded on virtue. - Boltan.

main as they are. Hence, as we have before observed on this topic, all parties now seem to agree; they who possess the good things, being afraid to risk the least alteration that might effect their possession, and the candidates of future. expectation, dreading the utter extinction of those good things, which they still look up to with hope and avidity.-Ibid.

LXXXVIII.

HE BRITISH CONSTITUTION.-If the British constitution be fundamentally good, why is the nation precluded from the full benefits of it? Let the army and navy be reduced to the proper legal establishment-to an establishment founded on just principles; and, as the first step preparatory to the annihilation of corruption, restore integrity and purity to parliaments; shorten their duration; and render to every man, not disqualified by nature or by crime, the right of voting for his representative; then the system may be meliorated-wars abolished-no more the real interests of the people be sacrificed to the ideal honour and dignity of crowns, nor fresh burthens imposed, merely to increase the revenue, and to enslave themselves.-Ibid.

decided by themselves." An immense treasure, and the lives of perhaps a million of people, might have been saved, if Louis the Fourteenth of France, when he was young, and first began to disturb Europe, had been thus engaged to fight singly. Our William the Third, if he had come a little sooner into the world, would not, I believe, have refused the combat; though I could rather have wished that circumstances had concurred to have matched Louis with Charles the Twelfth of Sweden, and have brought them together upon the stage. The subjects of such a pair of royal gladiators would certainly have had reason to wish they might both have fallen in the dispute. But the worst is, that though these pernicious princes, or some of them, might have been by this means destroyed, yet bad kings are like the heads of the Hydra, if one is cut off, another immediately sprouts up.-Considerations on War.

XCII.

RUELTY PROCEEDING FROM AMBITION.-Many are the instances of ambition having expunged pity, com

passion, and humanity from the heart of man, and

in the room of these benign virtues substituting cruelty, and divers other destructive vices. What havoc has cruelty made, when excited and stimulated by ambition? It has in all ages and nations been the principal motive of offensive war, that bane of human happiness, and destroyer of the human species. This passion armed Cæsar against his country; and him and Alexander, and many such tyrants, not against their countries only, but against mankind. When a plague carries off a hundred thousand persons, it is thought to do great execution; but