Independency may be found in comparative, as well as absolute abundance: I mean, where a person contracts his desires within the limits of his fortune.

There are very few persons who do not lose something of their esteem for you, upon your approach to familiarity.

The silly excuse, that is often drawn from want of time to correspond, becomes no one beside a cobbler, with ten or a dozen children dependent on a tatching end.

One, perhaps, ought to make funerals as sumptuous as possible, or as private; either by obscurity to elude, or by splendour to employ, the attention, that it may not be engaged by the most shocking circumstance of our humanity.

It happens, a little unluckily, that the persons who have the most intimate contempt of money are the same that have the strongest appetites for the pleasures it procures.

We are apt to look for those virtues in the characters of noblemen, that are but rarely to be found any where, except in the preambles to their patents. Some shining exceptions may be made to this rule: in general we may consider their appearance with us in public, as one does our wearing apparel. "Which lord do you wear to-day?” "Why I did think to wear my lord **** ; but, as there will be little company in the Mall, I will e'en content, myself to wear the same noble peer I wore yesterday."

The worst inconvenience of a small fortune is, that it will not admit of inadvertency. Inadvert

ency, however, ought to be placed at the head of most men's yearly accounts, and a sum as regularly allotted to it as to any other article.

It is with our judgments as with our eyes: some can see objects at a greater distance more distinctly, at the same time less distinctly than others the objects that are near them.

Notwithstanding the airs men give themselves, I believe no one sees family to more advantage than the persons that have no share in it.

How important is the eye to the appearance of a human face; the chief index of temper, understanding, health, and love! What prodigious influence must the same misfortunes have on some persons beyond others! as the loss of an eye to a mere insolent beauty, without the least philosophy to support herself!

The person least reserved in his censure of another's excess in equipage, is commonly the person who would exhibit the same if it had been within his power; the source of both being a disregard to decorum. Likewise, he that violently arraigns, or fondly indulges it, agree in considering it a little too seriously.

Amid the most mercenary ages, it is but a secondary sort of admiration that is bestowed upon magnificence.

An order of beauties, as of knights, with a style appropriated to them (as for instance, To the right beautiful lady Such-a-one) would have as good a foundation as any other class, but would, at the same time, be the most invidious of any order that was ever instituted.

The first maxim a child is taught is, that

"Learning is better than house and land;"

but how little is its influence as he grows up to maturity!

There is somewhat very astonishing in the record of our most celebrated victories: I mean, the small number of the conquerors killed in proportion to the conquered. At Agincourt, it is said, were ten thousand, and fourteen thousand massacred. Livy's accounts of this sort are so astonishing, that one is apt to disbelieve the historian: all the explanation one can find is, that the gross slaughter is made when one side takes to flight.

A person that is disposed to throw off all reserve before an inferior, should reflect, that he has also his inferiors, to whom he may be equally communicative.

It is impossible for a man of sense to guard against the mortification that may be given him by fools, or heteroclite characters, because he cannot foresee them. A wit-would cannot afford to discard a frivolous conceit, though it tends to affront you : an old maid, a country put, or a college pedant, will ignorantly or wilfully blunder upon such hints as must discompose you.

A man that is solicitous about his health, or apprehensive of some acute disorder, should write a journal of his constitution, for the better instruction of his physician.

Ghosts have no more connection with darkness than the mystery of a barber with that of a sur

geon; yet we find they go together: perhaps Nox and Chaos were their mythological parents.

He makes a lady but a poor recompense, who marries her, because he has kept her company long after his affection is estranged. Does he not rather increase the injury?

Second thoughts oftentimes are the very worst of all thoughts: first and third very often coincide. Indeed, second thoughts are too frequently formed by the love of novelty, of showing penetration, of distinguishing ourselves from the mob, and have consequently less of simplicity and more of affectation: this, however, regards principally objects of taste and fancy. Third thoughts, at least, are here very proper mediators.

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"Set a beggar on horse-back, and he'll ride," is a common proverb, and a real truth. The novus homo" is an "inexpertus homo," and consequently must purchase finery, before he knows the emptiness of it experimentally. The established gentleman disregards it, through habit and familiarity.

The foppery of love-verses, when a person is ill and indisposed, is perfect ipecacuanha.

Antiquity of family, and distinctions of gentry, have, perhaps, less weight in this age, than they had ever heretofore; the bent dexter or sinister; the chief, the canton, or the cheveron, are greatly out of date. The heralds are, at length, discovered to have no legal authority. Spain, indeed, continues to preserve the distinction, and is poor. France (by their dispute about trading nobility) seems inclined to shake it off. Who now looks with veneration on the antediluvian pedigree of a Welshman? Property either is, or is sure to pur

chase distinction, let the king at arms, or the old maiden aunt, preach as long as either pleases. It is so; perhaps it ought to be so. All honours should lie open; all encouragement be allowed to the members of trade in a trading nation; and as the nobility find it very expedient to partake of their profits, so they, in return, should obtain a share in the other's honours: one would, however, wish the acquisition of learning was as sure a road to dignity, as that of riches.

XXIX. ON BOOKS AND WRITERS.

It is often asserted, by pretenders to singular penetration, that the assistance fancy is supposed to draw from wine, is merely imaginary and chimerical; that all which the poets have urged on this head, is absolute rant and enthusiasm, and has no foundation in truth and nature. I am inclined to think otherwise. Judgment, I readily allow, derives no benefit from the noblest cordial: but persons of a phlegmatic constitution have those excellences often suppressed, of which their imagination is truly capable, by reason of a lentor, which wine may naturally remove it raises low spirits to a pitch necessary for the exertion of fancy: it confutes the "Non est tanti," so frequently a maxim with speculative persons : it quickens that ambition, or that social bias, which makes a person wish to shine or to please. Ask what tradition says of Mr. Addison's conversation? But instances, in point of conversation, come within every one's observance; why then may