narrow compass of his own being, nor in all those things that are tacked to him. man. Let good works use their own eloquence. Pride is one thing-assumption is another. The latter must always get the cold shoulder; for whoever shews it is no gentleMen crafty in counsel, and cunning in all manner of working, never affect to be what they are, but what they are not. The only man who really is what he seems to be, is a Christian gentleman. If our ethics are wrong, we appeal to the people, the only true tribunal to put us right. If pretension be discarded, let genius be preserved. Separate the dross from the gold. Says Rousseau-"If ever there was a man who did not derive more pain than pleasure from his vanity, that man was no other than a fool." The wing of time generally brushes away this infirmity. A true observer of the scenes that occur, will do it with the eye of a connoisseur or an artist. Every object is capable of suggesting to us a volume of reflections. Prejudices or extinguishers aside, we are all of us by turns the wise or the dull man. He whose faculties are the most obtuse, might, under proper management, from the hour of birth, have proved apt, adroit, intelligent, and acute in the walk for which his organisation especially fitted him. Is there, then, nothing new under the sun? Let Godwin on imitation and invention answer: with some little additions and modifications, he says-a wise man would look at the labours of his own species, in much the same spirit as he would view an ant-hill through a microscope. He would see him tugging a grain of corn up an acclivity; he would see the tracks that are made by those who go, and who return; their incessant activity; and would find one day the copy of that which went before, and their labours ending in nothing:-I mean, in nothing that shall carry forward the improvement of the head and heart, either in the individual or society; or shall add to the conveniences of life, or the better providing for the welfare of communities of men. He would smile at their earnestness and zeal, all spent in supplying the necessaries of the day, or, at the most, providing for the revolutions of the seasons, or for that ephemeral thing we call the life of man. On due reflection on these matters, a true philosopher would exclaim interjectively— Who cares to be pelted by a fortuitous concourse of atoms? What are the mass of beings but the puppets of a party? The pronunciation, the dialect, are but a servile repetition. Our tempers are merely the work of the transcriber. We are angry, where we see that others were angry; and we are pleased, because it is the tone to be pleased. We pretend to have each of us a judgment of our own; but in truth we wait, with the most patient docility, till he whom we regard as the leader of the chorus, gives us the signal. Here you are to applaud, and here you are to condemn. Are not all nations imitators, fixing their eyes upon a model, and copying gesture by gesture? We are sheep running headlong through the gap, when the bell-weather shews us the way. We are choristers mechanically singing in a certain key, and giving breath to a certain tone. A church is a help, not a force. Our religion, our civil practices, our political creed, are all imitation. How many men are there who have examined the evidences of their religious belief, and can give a sound reason for the faith that is in them? We are taught there are four religions in the world-Popish, Protestant, Mahometan, Pagan. It is a phenomenon to find the man who has held the balance steadily, and rendered full and exact justice to the pretensions of each of these. No-tell me the longitude and latitude in which a man is born, and I will tell you his religion. What's the inference? We think according to our opinions; we act according to our habits. Mere prattle without practice is all soldiership. "By education most have been misled; So they believe, because they so were bred; And, if this happens where we are told our everlasting Truly, in this should only be CHAPTER XXI. MOLALISINGS ON LIFE AND LIVING-DIFFICULTIES OF ORIGINALITIES. MEDIOCRE TALENTS IN THE ASCENDANT.-A TENDER CONSCIENCE OFTEN A DISQUALIFICATION FOR SUCCESS. It is a maxim of the English constitution, that the king never dies; and the same may with equal propriety be observed of every private man, especially if he has children. Death, say the writers of natural history, is the generator of life: and what is thus true of natural corruption, may, with some variation, be affirmed of human mortality. I turn off my footman, and hire another, and he puts on the livery of his predecessor: he thinks himself somebody, but he is only a tenant. The same thing is true when a countryman, a noble, a bishop, or a king dies. He puts off his garments, and another puts them on. Every one knows the story of the Tartarean dervise, who mistook the royal palace for a caravansera; and who proved to his majesty by genealogical deduction, that he was only a lodger. In this sense the mutability which so eminently characterises everything sublunary, is immutability under another name. The human species is for ever engaged in laborious idleness. We put our shoulders to the wheel, and raise the vehicle out of the mire in which it was swallowed, and we say I have done something; but the same feat under the same circumstances, has been performed a thousand times before. We make what strikes us as a profound observation; and when fairly analysed, it turns out to be about as sagacious as if we had told what o'clock it is, or whether it is rain or sunshine. Nothing can be more delightfully-ludicrous than the important emphatical air with which the herd of mankind enunciate the most trifling observations. With much labour we are delivered of what is to us a new thought; and after a time we find the same in a musty volume thrown by in a corner, and covered with cobwebs and dust. This is pleasantly ridiculed in the well-known exclamation-"Plague on the old fellows who gave utterance to our wit, before we ever thought of it." The greatest part of the life of the mightiest genius that ever existed, is spent in doing nothing and saying nothing; to them, however, the moving of the straw is as the whirlwind, and the shaking of a reed as the greatest tempest. Pope has observed of Shakspeare's plays, that, "had all the speeches been printed without the names of the persons, we might have applied them with certainty to every speaker." To which another critic has rejoined, that that was impossible, since the greatest part of what every man says is unstamped with peculiarity. We have all more in us of what belongs to the common nature of man, than of what is peculiar to the individual. It is from the beaten turnpike-road that the favoured few of mankind are for ever exerting themselves to escape. The multitude grow up, and are carried away as grass ried away by the mower. The parish register tells when is car |