concealed, a process which is reversed by a close inspection. This is the reason, to say nothing of envious motives, why we generally undervalue our contemporaries, and overrate the ancients. MINORITIES-It would be an entertaining change in human affairs to determine every thing by minorities. They are almost always in the right. MIRROR-John Taylor relates in his records, that having restored sight to a boy who had been born blind, the lad was perpetually amusing himself with a hand-glass, calling his own reflection his little man, and inquiring why he could make it do every thing that he did, except shut its eyes. A French lover, making a present of a mirror to his mistress, sent with it a poetical quatrain, which may be thus paraphrased :— "This mirror my object of love will unfold, Whensoe'er your regard it allures: Oh! would, when I'm gazing, that I might behold On its surface the object of yours!" But the following old epigram, on the same subject, is in a much finer strain : "When I revolve this evanescent state, How fleeting is its form, how short its date; My being and my stay dependent still, Which is the real shadow of the two." MISADVENTURE-as well as mischance and misfortune, are all the daughters of misconduct, and sometimes the mothers of Goodluck, Prosperity, and Advancement. To be thrown upon one's own resources, is to be cast into the very lap of fortune; for our faculties then undergo a development, and display an energy of which they were previously unsusceptible. Our minds are like certain drugs and perfumes, which must be crushed before they evince their vigor, and put forth their virtues. Lundy Foot, the celebrated snuff manufacturer, originally kept a small tobacconist's shop at Limerick. One night, his house, which was uninsured, was burnt to the ground. As he contemplated the smoking ruins on the following morning, in a state bordering on despair, some of the poor neighbors, groping among the embers for what they could find, stumbled upon several canisters of unconsumed, but half-baked snuff, which they tried, and found it so grateful to their noses, that they loaded their waistcoat pockets with the spoil. Lundy Foot, roused from his stupor, at length imitated their example, and took a pinch of his own property, when he was instantly struck by the superior pungency and flavor it had acquired from the great heat to which it had been exposed. Treasuring up this valuable hint, he took another house in a place called Black-yard, and preparing a large oven for the purpose, set diligently about the manufacture of that high-dried commodity, which soon became widely-known as Black Yard snuff; a term subsequently corrupted into the more familiar word-Blackguard. Lundy Foot, making his customers pay literally through the nose, raised the price of his production, took a larger house in Dublin, and ultimately made a handsome fortune by having been ruined. MISANTHROPE-Quite unworthy of Goethe's genial and penetrative mind is his misanthropical remark, that "each of us, the best as well as the worst, hides within him something, some feeling, some remembrance, which, if it were known, would make you hate him." More consonant would it have been to truth, as well as to an enlightened spirit of humanism, had he reversed the proposition, and exclaimed, in the words of Shakespeare— "There is some soul of goodness in things evil, Would men observingly distil it out!" Law's observation, "that every man knows something worse of himself than he is sure of in others," savors not of misanthrophy, but of that doubly-beneficial feeling which inculcates individual humility, and universal charity. Rochefoucauld, and misanthropical writers of the same class, cannot succeed in giving any man, of a generous and clear intellect, an unfavorable opinion of human nature. Like the workers of tapestry, who always behold the wrong side, they themselves may see nothing but unfinished outlines, coarse materials, crooked ends, and glaring defects, and yet produce a portrait which, to those who contemplate it in front, and from a proper point of view, shall be full of grace, beauty, harmony, and proportion. MISER-One who, though he loves himself better than all the world, uses himself worse; for he lives like a pauper, in order that he may enrich his heirs, whom he naturally hates, because he knows that they hate him, and sigh for his death. In this respect, misers have been compared to leeches, which, when they get sick and die, disgorge, in a minute, the blood they have been so long sucking up. La Bruyere tersely says -"Jeune on conserve pour la vieillesse: vieux on épargne pour la mort." Pithy enough was the reply of the avaricious old man, who, being asked by a nobleman of doubtful courage what pleasure he found in amassing riches which he never used, answered "Much the same that your Lordship has in wearing a sword." Perhaps the severest reproach ever made to a miser, was uttered by Voltaire. At a subscription of the French Academy for some charitable object, each contributor putting in a louis d'or, the collector, by mistake, made a second application to a member, noted for his penuriousness." I have already paid," exclaimed the latter, with some asperity.-"I beg your pardon," said the applicant: "I have no doubt you paid; I believe it, though I did not see it."-" And I saw it, and do not believe it," whispered Voltaire. MISFORTUNE-is but another word for the follies, blunders, and vices, which, with a greater blindness, we attribute to the blind goddess, to the fates, to the stars, to any one, in short, but ourselves. Our own head and heart are the heaven and earth which we accuse, and make responsible for all our calamities. The prudent make the reverses by which they have been overthrown supply a basis for the restoration of their fallen fortunes, as the lava which has destroyed a house often furnishes the materials for rebuilding it. Fools and profligates, on the contrary, seek solace for their troubles, by plunging into sensual and gross pleasures, as the wounded buffalo rolls himself in the mud. Let us keep our sympaAll men might be better The misfortune of the mischievous and evil-minded, is the good fortune of the virtuous; the failure of the guilty, is the success of the innocent: to pity, therefore, the former, is, in some sort, to injure the latter, and to destroy the effect of the great moral lesson afforded by both. thies for the sufferings of the good. reconciled to their fate, if they would recollect that there are two species of misfortune, at which we ought never to repine; -viz. that which we can, and that which we cannot, remedy;-regret being, in the former case, unnecessary, in the latter unavailing. The same vanity which leads us to assign our misfortunes or misconduct to others, prompts us to attribute all our lucky chances to our own talent, prudence, and forethought. Not a word of the fates or stars when we are getting rich, and every thing goes on prosperously. So deeply-rooted in our nature is the tendency to make others responsible for our own misdeeds, that we lapse into the process almost unconsciously. When the clergyman has committed a peccadillo, he is doubly severe towards his congregation, and does vicarious penance in the persons of his flock. Men scold their children, servants, and dependents, for their own errors; coachmen invariably punish their horses after they themselves have made any stupid blunder in driving them; and even children, when they have tumbled over a chair, revenge themselves for their awkwardness, by beating and kicking the impassive furniture. Wine, the discoverer of truth, sometimes brings out this universal failing in a manner equally signal and ludicrous. An infant being brought to christen to a country curate, at a time when he was somewhat overcome by early potations, he was unable to find the service of Baptism in the book; and, after fumbling for some time, peevishly exclaimed—“ Confound the brat! what is the matter with it? I never, in all my life, knew such a troublesome child to christen!" MONASTERY-A house of ill-fame, where men are seduced from their public duties, and fall naturally into guilt, from attempting to preserve an unnatural innocence. "It is as unreasonable for a man to go into a Carthusian convent for fear of being immoral, as for a man to cut off his hands for fear he should steal. When that is done, he has no longer any merit, for though it is out of his power to steal, he may all his life be a thief in his heart. All severity that does not tend to increase good or prevent evil, is idle." MONEY-A very good servant, but a bad master. It may be accused of injustice towards mankind, inasmuch as there are only a few who make false money, whereas money makes many men false. We hate to be cheated, not so much for the value of the commodity, as because it makes others superior to ourselves. Being defrauded would be nothing were it not so galling to be outwitted. Crates, the Greek philosopher, left his money in the hands of a friend, with orders to pay it to his children in case they should be fools; for, said he, if they are philosophers, they will not want it. Money is more indispensable now than it was then, but, still, a wise man will have it in his head rather than his heart. MORALITY-Keeping up appearances in this world, or becoming suddenly devout when we imagine that we may be shortly summoned to appear in the next. MORAL CHOLERA "It is easier," says St. Gregory Nazianzen, "to contract the vices of others than to impart to them our own virtues; just as it is easier to catch their diseases than to communicate to them our own good health." * Facilius est vitium contrahere quam virtutem impertire; quem-admodum facilius est morbo alieno infici, quam sanitatem largiri. |