"Remember, man, the Universal cause Life, says Blackwood, consists not in the number of minutes we live, but in the multiplicity and richness of our sensations and impressions. Dissipation has often been called seeing life; but while it is so, inasmuch as it crowds sensation into small spaces of time, it is not so, inasmuch as the life thus used up becomes sooner extinct -if not physically (as generally happens), at any rate, morally, intellectually, and spiritually. Nothing can be more inglorious than a gentleman only by name, whose soul is ignorant and life immoral. Your smooth, respectable, plausible gentlemen, often unite in those charming qualities a depth of cunning and readiness of expedient so perfectly disguised and so deeply seated, that a superficial observer would never suspect their existence. Young man,-let the windows of thy soul, like the windows of a house, not disclose everything within, but at the same time admit notices of every thing without. CHAPTER XX. APHORISTIC STYLE OF WRITING RECOMMENDED.-SKETCH OF DR. JOHNSON.--DRAGS ON THE WHEELS OF PROGRESS. "A man's mind is parcel of his fortune."-SHAKSPEARE. THE Princess Royal a bride at seventeen-at an age when the child and the woman are struggling against each other. Upon this question we concur with the editor of the Magnet, it is not a brilliant example for her liege subjects to follow. Precocious as she may be-however she may be graced with all the feminine virtues of the illustrious parent stock, exhibiting virtues in the bud which will adorn and glorify her in the flowering-these are not sufficient reasons for a matrimonial compact, which will conduct her suddenly from childhood to womanhood, from the sports of a play-room to the duties of a wife and matron. For her, there will be indeed no girlhood. The most beautiful, innocent, and happiest period of woman's life will be unknown to her. Educated as she may be, drilled as she may be, there can be no forming of nature. You can no more displace the thoughts and feelings of a child, and put those of a woman in their place than you can add one inch to her stature. You may obtain a simulation; but the true woman is a growth of time. The gentle spirit, the true and holy affection of the young princess, which fully warrant all that has been said in Parliament, may ensure a happy lot, and a thornless path in the new land which our princess will make her own; but similar good fortune may not be hoped for in those numberless instances of early and imprudent marriages which it is to be feared the royal nuptials will give rise to. It will be the apex of feminine honour to be a bride, and the lowest depths of feminine humiliation to die an old maid. All sorts of humbugs profess morality, from the House of Commons to the House of Correction. The heavy walls of wisdom are not, however, to be battered down with pop-guns and paper pellets. paper pellets. We honour the Queen, and respect the people; but we cannot agree sincerely with Lord Mansfield, whose judicial character still ranks high. Many things acquired by the favour of either, are in our account not worth ambition. We wish popularity, but it is that popularity which follows, not that which is run after. It is that popularity which sooner or later fails to do justice to the pursuit of noble ends by noble means. We will not do what conscience tells is wrong, to gain the huzzas of thousands, or the daily laudations of all the papers which come from the press. We will not avoid doing what is right, though it should draw on us the whole artillery of libels, all that falsehood and malice can invent, or the credulity of a deluded populace can swallow. We can say with a great magistrate-"Ego hoc animo, semper fui, ut invidiam virtute, partem gloriam haud infamiam putarem." The Reformation did not settle final results. Its effect was to awaken and discipline thought, not to stereotype it for future ages. God help us to preserve our independent individuality! Bourdalone is neither elegant like Massillon, nor majestic like Bossuet, nor grave like the Paschal of "the thoughts," nor witty like him of "the Provincials," nor concise like Rochefoucald, nor dry like Descartes, nor gracious like Fenelon. What then is he? He is himself; and the signet of his individuality, as we say in these days, is profoundly impressed on every page, or we may rather say, on every line of his discourses. Language in Bourdalone's eyes, is but the garment of thought; and not a luxurious garment, but a necessary one, in which the least amplitude would be superfluous, and the reader has no trouble to become so while reading. Sidney Smith tenderly implored every writing man before he put pen to paper, to think of the deluge-to gaze on Noah, and be brief. Mankind, he said, cannot now lounge over a pamphlet for ten years, as they did before the submersion, when an average life extended 800 years. In the ark, moreover, a great deal of matter was crowded into a very small space. Therefore, on all accounts, gaze on Noah, and be brief. We say with the Spartan-Why do you speak so much to the purpose, of that which is not to the purpose? and if you do not speak to the purpose, to what purpose do you speak? We repeat, being a warm disciple of this giant mind, we have endeavoured to follow such oracular and sage advice, at the great cost of being thought by many abrupt and ambiguous. We hope Johnson's prediction—(viz., that all aspirants to literary noto riety, will in the end have to write and lecture in the aphoristic style)-will not be very remote before it is verified. We have no sympathies in common with a cer tain clique of literati, who dream that words were intended to hide, rather than explain, a meaning. Our unbiassed readers, we think, will concur with us when we assert— he may justly be numbered among the benefactors of mankind, who contracts the great rule of life into short sentences.* No one denies the highest force in the Universe is mind. It is, however, in low neighbourhoods, but too * THE SPEECH-MAKING NUISANCE.-In the appalling twenty-nine columns of Wednesday's Times-a mass of type not "dark with the excess of light"-it is surprising disheartening to those who value the precious staff of life, to discover so very little remunerative to the indefatigable and constant reader. Column rolls after column, and how few the grains of gold carried along by the turbid stream! How very leafy the trees of Parliamentary knowledge, and how few the pippins from the boughs! What heaped up bottles of hay, with only here and there a proverbial needle to reward the desperate searcher! We have somewhere read of a bird of the parrot tribe whose tongue is longer than its whole body. Far deep in Indian forests those birds, we doubt not, compose the Parliament of Parrots. In earnest seriousness, we state our belief in the necessity of parliamentary reform of tongue. We think the time is gone, when speeches, like the sea snake, are to be considered astonishing, merely with reference to their length. Why will Lords and Commoners run out their eloquence like interminable balls of twine? Why not give in substance what they spin in tenuity? Her Majesty was an early patroness of Tom Thumb, graciously rewarding that briefest span of humanity. Now, we most heartily desire, both for our readers and ourselves, the institution of some court reward-some new order of brevity-to be conferred from session to session upon two members, a Peer and a Commoner, whose speeches shall have contained the greatest wisdom in the fewest syllables. —Jerrold's Weekly News. |