CALLOUS SELF-CONCEIT. 66 THE most hateful form of self-conceit is the callous form, when it boasts and swells up on the score of its own ignorance, as implying exemption from a folly. We profess not to understand;"-"We are so unhappy as to be quite in the dark as to the meaning of this writer;"-" All this may be very fine, but we are not ashamed to confess that to us it is quite unintelligible:"-then quote a passage without the context, and appeal to the PUBLIC, whether they understand it or not!-Wretches! Such books were not written for your public. If it be a work on inward religion, appeal to the inwardly religious, and ask them!—If it be of true love and its anguish and its yearnings, appeal to the true lover! What have the public to do with this? A LIBRARIAN. He was like a cork, flexible, floating, full of pores and openings, and yet he could neither return nor transmit the waters of Helicon, much less the light of Apollo. The poet, by his side, was like a diamond, transmitting to all around, yet retaining for himself alone, the rays of the god of day. TRIMMING. AN upright shoe may fit both feet; but never saw I a glove that would fit both hands. It is a man for a mean or mechanic office, that can be employed equally well under either of two opposite parties. DEATH. DEATH but supplies the oil for the inextinguishable lamp of life. LOVE AN ACT OF THE WILL. Love, however sudden, as when we fall in love at first sight, (which is, perhaps, always the case of love in its highest sense,) is yet an act of the will, and that too one of its primary, and therefore ineffable acts. This is most important; for if it be not true, either love itself is all a romantic hum, a mere connection of desire with a form appropriated to excite and gratify it, or the mere repetition of a daydream;—or if it be granted that love has a real, distinct, and excellent being, I know not how we could attach blame and immorality to inconstancy, when confined to the affections and a sense of preference. Either, therefore, we must brutalize our notions with Pope: Lust, thro' some certain strainers well refin'd, or we must dissolve and thaw away all bonds of morality by the irresistible shocks of an irresistible sensibility with Sterne. WEDDED UNION. THE well-spring of all sensible communion is the natural delight and need, which undepraved man hath to transfuse from himself into others, and to receive from others into himself, those things, wherein the excellency of his kind doth most consist; and the eminence of love or marriage communion is, that this mutual transfusion can take place more perfectly and totally in this, than in any other mode. Prefer person before money, good-temper with good sense before person; and let all, wealth, easy temper, strong understanding and beauty, be as nothing to thee, unless accompanied by virtue in principle and in habit. Suppose competence, health, and honesty; then a happy marriage depends on four things: -1. An understanding proportionate to thine, that is, a recipiency at least of thine :—2. na tural sensibility and lively sympathy in general:-3. steadiness in attaching and retaining sensibility to its proper objects in its proper proportions:-4. mutual liking; including person and all the thousand obscure sympathies that determine conjugal liking, that is, love and desire to A. rather than to B. This seems very obvious and almost trivial: and yet all unhappy marriages arise from the not honestly putting, and sincerely answering each of these four questions: any one of them negatived, marriage is imperfect, and in hazard of discontent. DIFFERENCE BETWEEN HOBBES AND SPINOSA. In the most similar and nearest points there is a difference, but for the most part there is an absolute contrast, between Hobbes and Spinosa. Thus Hobbes makes a state of war the natural state of man from the essential and ever continuing nature of man, as not a moral, but only a frightenable, being:-Spinosa makes the same state a necessity of man out of society, because he must then be an undeveloped man, and his moral being dormant; and so on through the whole. THE END MAY JUSTIFY THE MEANS. WHATEVER act is necessary to an end, and ascertained to be necessary and proportionate both to the end and the agent, takes its nature from that end. This premised, the proposition is innocent that ends may justify means. Remember, however, the important distinction :Unius facti diversi fines esse possunt: unius actionis non possunt. I have somewhere read this remark :-Omne meritum est voluntarium, aut voluntate originis, aut origine voluntatis. Quaintly as this is expressed, it is well worth consideration, and gives the true meaning of Baxter's famous saying," Hell is paved with good intentions." NEGATIVE THOUGHT. On this calm morning of the 13th of November, 1809, it occurs to me, that it is by a negation and voluntary act of no thinking that we think of earth, air, water, &c. as dead. It is necessary for our limited powers of consciousness, that we should be brought to this negative state, and that this state should pass into custom; but it is likewise necessary that at times we should awake and step forward; and this is effected by those extenders of our conscious |