C 480 ] [Nov. 



BREVITIES. 



Fortune is painted blind, that she may not blush to behold the fools 

 who belong to her. 



Fine ladies who use excess of perfumes must think men like seals — 

 most assailable at the nose. 



Some men get on in the world on the same principle that a sweep 

 passes uninterruptedly through a crowd. 



People who affect a shortness of sight must think it the height of good 

 fortune to be born blind. 



He who loses, in the search of fame, that dignity which should adorn 

 human nature, is like the victim opera-singer who has exchanged man- 

 hood for sound. 



Lounging, unemployed people may be called of the tribe of Joshua ; 

 for with them the sun stands still. '-' 



Fanatics think men like bulls — they must be baited to madness ere 

 they are in a fit condition to die. 



There is an ancient saying — " Truth lies in a well." May not the 

 modem adage run — " The most certain charity is at a pump ?" 



Some connoisseurs would give a hundred pounds for the painted 

 head of a beggar, who would threaten the living mendicant with the 

 stocks. 



If you boast of a contempt for the world, avoid getting into debt. It 

 is giving to gnats the fangs of vipers. 



The heart of the great man, surrounded by poverty and tramelled by 

 dependence, is like an egg in a nest built among briars. It must either 

 curdle into bitterness, or, if it take life and mount, struggle through 

 tliorns for the ascent. 



Fame is represented bearing a trumpet. Would not the picture be 

 truer, were she to hold a handful of dust } 



Fishermen, in order to handle eels securely, first cover them with 

 dirt. In like manner does detraction strive to grasp excellence. 



The friendship of some men is quite Briarean. They have a hundred 

 hands. . 



The easy and temperate man is not he who is most valued by the 

 world ; the virtue of his abstemiousness makes him an object of indif. 

 ference. One of the gravest charges against the ass, is — he can live on 

 thistles. 



The wounds of the dead are the furrows in which living heroes grow 

 their laurels. 



Were we determined resolutely to avoid vices, the world would foist 

 them on us — as thieves put off their plunder on the guiltless. 



When we look at the hide of a tiger in a furrier's shop, exposed to the 

 gaze of every malapert, and then think of the ferocity of the living beast 

 in its native jungle, we see a beadle before a magistrate — a magistrate 

 before a minister : there is the skin of office — the sleekness without its 

 claws. 



With some people political vacillation heightens a man's celebrity — 

 just as the galleries applaud when an actor enters in a new dress. 



If we judge from history, of what is the book of glory composed? 

 Are not its leaves dead men's skin — its letters stamped in human blood 

 — its golden clasps, the pillage of nations } It is illuminated with tears 

 and broken hearts. ' • J. 



