gross stupidity, or the most miserable cant. To plead the authority of the ancients, is to appeal from civilized and enlightened Christians, to fierce, unlettered Pagans; for no one has decided where this boasted wisdom begins or ends, though all agree that it is of great age. Every elderly man is an ancestor to his former self. Let him compare his boyish notions and feelings with his matured judgment, and he will form a pretty correct notion of the wisdom of our ancestors; for what the child is to the man, are the past generations to the present.

Let us learn to distinguish the uses from the abuses of antiquity. Not to know what happened before we were born, is always to remain a child: to know, and blindly to adopt that knowledge, as an implicit rule of life, is never to be a man.

APOLOGY—As great a peacemaker as the word "if." In all cases, it is an excuse rather than an exculpation, and if adroitly managed, may be made to confirm what it seems to recall, and to aggravate the offence which it pretends to extenuate. A man who had accused his neighbor of falsehood, was called on for an apology, which he gave in the following amphibological terms:-"I called you a liar,—it is true. You spoke truth: I have told a lie."

APPEARANCES-keeping up. A moral, or, rather, immoral uttering of counterfeit coin. It is astonishing how much human bad money is current in society, bearing the fair impress of ladies and gentlemen. The former, if carefully weighed, will always be found light, or you may presently detect if you ring them, though this is a somewhat perilous experiment. Both may be known by their assuming a more gaudy and showy appearance than their neighbors, as if their characters were brighter, their impressions more perfect, and their composition more pure, than all others.

APPETITE-a relish bestowed upon the poorer classes, that they may like what they eat, while it is seldom enjoyed by the rich, because they may eat what they like.

ARCHITECTURE-Why we should continue to enslave ourselves to the five orders of Vitruvius, I cannot well see. To the art of the statuary there is a conceivable limit, but that of the architect seems to admit a much wider range, and greater variety, than can be circumscribed within five orders. All structures should be adapted to the climate.

Is there any valid reason why the Doric capital should be peculiar to a pillar whose height is precisely eight diameters, the Ionic volute to one of nine, and the Corinthian foliage to one of ten? Custom has assigned these ornaments and proportions, but one can imagine others which would be equally, or, perhaps, more agreeable to an unprejudiced eye. The first columns were undoubtedly trees, which diminished as they ascended. The stems of the branches, where they were cut off, suggested the capital; the iron or other bandages at top and bottom, to prevent the splitting of the wood, were the origin of the fillets; the square tile which protected the lower end from the wet, gave rise to the plinth. But why should a stone pillar be made to imitate a tree, by lessening as it rises? Custom alone has reconciled us to an unmeaning deviation, which throws all the inter-columnar spaces out of the perpendicular, and presents us with a series of long inverted cones, the most ungraceful of all forms. As if sensible of this defect, the Egyptians made the outline of some of their temples conform to the diminution of the columns, rendering the whole structure slightly pyramidical, and thus preserving the consistency of its lines.

Observing some singular pilasters at Harrowgate, surmounted with the Cornua Ammonis, I ventured to ask the builder to what order they belonged. "Why, Sir," he replied, putting his hand to his head, "the horns are a little order of my own." Knowing him to be a married man, I concluded that he had good reason for appropriating that peculiar ornament to himself, and made no further objections to his architecture.

ARGUMENT-With fools, passion, vociferation, or violence; with ministers, a majority; with kings, the sword; with fanatics, denunciation; with men of sense, a sound reason.

ARISTOCRACY—In ancient Greece this word signified the government of the best; but in modern England the term seems to have fairly "turned its back upon itself," and to have become the antithesis to its original import; even as beldam, (or belle dame,) formerly expressive of female beauty, is now defined by Dr. Johnson as, "a term of contempt, marking the last degree of old age with all its faults and miseries."

If we have noblemen whose titles are their honor, we have others who are an honor to their titles. Happy he, who, deriving his patent from nature, as well as from his sovereign, may be dubbed, “inter doctos nobilissimus,—inter nobiles doctissimus,—inter utrosque optimus.”

ARITHMETIC-The science of figures cuts but a poor figure in its origin, the term calculation being derived from the calculus or pebble used as a counter by the Romans, whose numerals, stolen from the ancient Etruscans, and still to be traced on the monuments of that people, seem to have been suggested in the first instance by the five fingers. Indeed, the term digit or finger, applied to any single number, sufficiently indicates the primitive mode of counting. The Roman V is a rude outline of the five fingers, or of the outspread hand, narrowing to the wrist; while the X is a symbol of the two fives, or two hands crossed. In all probability the earliest numerals did not exceed five, which was repeated, with additions, for the higher numbers; and it is a remarkable coincidence that to express six, seven, eight, the North American Indians repeat the five, with the addition of one, two, three, on the same plan as the Roman VI., VII., VIII. Our term eleven is derived from the word ein or one, and the old verb liben, to leave; so that it signifies one, leave ten. Twelve means two, after reckoning or laying aside ten; and our termination of ty, in the words twenty, thirty, &c., comes from the Anglo-Saxon teg, to draw; so that twenty, or twainty, signifies two drawings, or that the fingers have been twice counted over, and the hands twice closed.

From the hands also, or other parts of the human body, were derived the original rude measurements. The uncia, or

inch, was the first joint of the thumb, which being repeated four times, gave the breadth of the hand; and this product trippled, furnished the measure of the foot. The passus, or pace, was the interval between two steps, reckoned at six feet; and a mile, as the word imports, consisted of a thousand paces. Other portions of the human body furnished secondary measures; the width of the hand gave the palm, reckoned at three inches:-the distances of the elbow from the tips of the fingers, the cubit; the entire length of the arm, the yard; and the extreme breadth of the extended arm, across the shoulders, the fathom, or six feet.

The Arabic numerals, derived, in all probability, from the Persians, and brought into Europe by the Moors, were a great improvement upon the clumsy system of the Romans; but it is to be regretted that we have not adopted the duodecimal in preference to the decimal scale, as it mounts faster, and being more often divisible in the desending series, would express fractions with a great simplicity.

ART-Man's nature. Of all cants defend me from that cant of Art which substitutes a blind and indiscriminate reverence of the painter, provided he be dead, for a judicious admiration of his paintings. Our connoisseurs reverse the old adage, and prefer a dead dog to a living lion. They are Antinomian in their critical creed; they susbstitute faith for good works, and will fall prostrate before any daub provided it be sanctified by a popular name.

It may be objected that no artist would have acquired a great name unless he had been a great painter; a position to which there are exceptions, although we will grant it for the sake of argument. But an artist who might command universal admiration in the olden times, is no necessary model for the present. Surely our protrait painters need not study Holbein. Many of the old masters, avowedly deficient in drawing and composition, were celebrated for their coloring, a merit which the mere effects of time, in the course of three or four centuries, must inevitably destroy; and yet Titian, the great colorist of his day, but whose pictures have mostly

faded into a cold dimness, is still held up to admiration, because his bright and blended hues delighted the good folks of the fifteenth century. The pictures of Rubens preserve the richness of their broad tints, which we can admire without being blind to the vulgarity of his taste and his bad drawing, for his females are little better than so many Dutch Vrowescoarse, flabby, and clownish. To a genuine connoisseur, however, every one of them is, doubtless, a Venus de Medici; not because she is handsome or well-proportioned, for she is neither, but because she is painted by Rubens.

This idolatry of the artist and indifference to art, has had a very mischievous effect in England, first, by withdrawing encouragement from our countrymen and contemporaries, and, secondly, by injuring their taste in holding up as models for imitation, not the paintings of nature, but old Continental pictures, which, even supposing them to be genuine, have often lost the sole distinction that once conferred a value upon them. But in many instances they are spurious, for the high prices which we so absurdly lavish upon them, has called into existence, in the chief Italian towns, manufactories of copies and counterfeits for the sole supply of England, in which happy and discerning country may be found ten times more pictures of each of the old masters than could have been painted in a long life. Neither the most experienced artist, nor knowing virtuoso, can guard against this species of imposition. It is well known that Sir Joshua Reynolds, even in that branch of the art with which he was most conversant, was perpetually deceived, his collections swarming with false Correggios, Titians, and Michael Angelos. What wonder, then, that an old picture, as often happens, shall sell to-day for a thousand pounds, and that to-morrow, stripped of its supposed authenticity, stat nominis umbra, and shall not fetch ten? and yet it is as good and as bad one day as it was the other, viewed as a work of art. So besotting is the magic of

a name.

To these pseudo-connoisseurs, who bring their own narrow professional feelings to the appreciation of a work of art, we recommend the following authentic anecdote :-A thriving