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the word taste used in subjects of pure reasoning. We could not say, that he who discovered an error in a mathematical problem had a good taste for reasoning; that he who made the error had a bad taste;-to find that 12 times 12 is 144, is not a business of taste. Neither can we use the word taste with respect to very useful inventions. We could not say that Bolton and Watt exhibited a great deal of taste in the improvements they made upon the steam-engine; nor could we say that Archimedes exhibited a fine taste in the machines he invented for dashing to pieces the Roman galleys, and knocking out the brains of the Roman soldiers. Some of these things appear too important for the application of that word; others, too certain. It seems to have been intended that the metaphor should apply to feelings connected with pleasure and pain, not with duties and crimes; with the superfluous, the lighter, and more luxurious sensations of the mind, not with those which become the subjects of approbation and disapprobation.

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TASTE-NATURAL-The subject of taste has given rise to a very curious controversy;-whether every feeling of taste depends upon accidental association, or whether, by the original constitution of nature, it is connected with any particular object of sense, it is admitted on all hands that the feeling of beauty and sublimity very frequently, and even in a great majority of instances, depends upon mere association. For one instance in the estimation of Europeans, part of the beauty of a face is the color of the cheek; not that there is something in that particular position of red color, which, I believe, is of itself beautiful,—but habit has' connected it also with the idea of health. An Indian requires that his wife's face should be of the color of good marketable sea-coal; another tribe is enamored of deep orange; and a cheek of copper is irresistible to a fourth. Every color is agreeable, in each of these instances, which is connected with the idea of youth and beauty; the beauty is not in the color itself, but in the notions which the color summons up.

To prove, however, that there exists, in the human heart,

a natural and innate feeling which may be called taste, it is only necessary to cast one's eyes down the table at a public dinner or an aldermanic banquet; to look at men when (as Bishop Taylor says) they are "gathered round the eels of Syene, and the oysters of Lucrinus, and when the Lesbian and Chian wines descend through the limbec of the tongue and larynx; when they receive the juice of fishes, and the marrow of the laborious ox, and the tender lard of Apulian swine, and the condited stomach of the scarus."

TAVERN—A house kept for those who are not house

keepers.

TAXES-What a nation pays for glory; national glory being obtained in general under the Manifest-Destiny Dispensation. Sydney Smith has well enumerated the fruits of an insane desire for national aggrandizement, as including: "Taxes upon every article which enters into the mouth, or covers the back, or is placed under the foot-taxes upon every thing which it is pleasant to see, hear, feel, smell, or taste-taxes upon warmth, light, and locomotion-taxes on every thing on earth, and the waters under the earth-on every thing that comes from abroad, or is grown at home-taxes on the raw material -taxes on every fresh value that is added to it by the industry of man-taxes on the sauce which pampers man's appetite, and the drug that restores him to health-on the ermine which decorates the judge, and the rope which bangs the criminalon the poor man's salt, and the rich man's spice-on the brass nails of the coffin, and the ribbons of the bride—at bed or board, couchant or levant, we must pay. The schoolboy whips his taxed top-the beardless youth manages his taxed horse, with a taxed bridle, on a taxed road; and the dying Englishınan, pouring his medicine, which has paid 7 per cent., into a spoon that has paid 15 per cent., flings himself back upon his chintz bed, which has paid 22 per cent.,—and expires in the arms of an apothecary who has paid a license of a hundred pounds for the privilege of putting him to death. His whole property is then immediately taxed from 2 to 10 per cent. Besides the

probate, large fees are demanded for burying him in the chancel; his virtues are handed down to posterity on taxed marble; and he is then gathered to his fathers-to be taxed no more."

TEXT-SCRIPTURAL-A fertile source of delusion and bigotry to those particularly clear-sighted people, who prefer the letter which killeth, to the spirit which giveth life.

"From drugs intended to impart

Relief to sickness, care, and pain,
The chemist, with transmutive art,
Extracts a poison and a bane.
So does the bigot's art abuse

The sacred page of love and life;
And turn its sweet and hallowed use
To deadly bitterness and strife.

"As purblind or short-sighted elves
Measure their glasses by themselves,
And deem those spectacles most true
Which suit their own distorted view,
So every weak, fanatic creature,
Makes of himself a Bible-meter;
Chooses those portions of the word
Which with his blindness best accord,
And closes up his darken'd soul
Against the spirit of the whole.

"Learn this, ye flounderers in the traps

Of insulated lines and scraps,

Though all the texts of Scripture shoot,

Like hairs within a horse's tail,

From one consolidated root,

Where beauty, strength, and use prevail,
Singly, they're fit, like single hairs,

Only for springes, nets, and snares."

Tertullian gives the best advice upon this subject when he says "We ought to interpret Scripture, not by the sound of words, but by the nature of things."-Malo te ad sensum rei, quam ad sonum vocabuli exerceas.

THOUGHT-is the spirit of which words are the embodiment. How a fine idea frets till it finds its own true word

bride! In the union of noble thoughts and fair phrases the sons of God still marry the daughters of men.

TIME-The vehicle that carries every thing into nothing. We talk of spending our time, as if it were so much interest of a perpetual annuity; whereas we are all living upon our capital, and he who wastes a single day, throws away that which can never be recalled or recovered.

TINDER-A thin rag—such for instance as the dresses of modern females, intended to catch the sparks, raise a flame, and light up a match.

TITHES-It is maintained by some, that in England the tithes are no hardship, or that they solely affect the landlord: nay, it is affirmed by one writer, that the agricultural interest in general desire their conservation. My friend T. H.-who will have his joke, however serious may be the subject, or pitiful the pun it elicits-asserts, that the burden of this impost falls upon the farmer, and that if he be really in favor of the tithe, it must be for the same reason that the Mahometan respects Mecca-because it is the burial-place of his prophet.

TITLES OF BOOKS-Decoys to catch purchasers. There can be no doubt that a happy name to a book is like an agreeable appearance to a man; but if in either case the final do not answer to the first impression, will not our disappointment add to the severity of our judgment? "Let me succeed with my first impression," the bibliopolist will cry, "and I ask no more. The public are welcome to end with condemning, if they will only begin with buying. Most readers, like the Tuft-hunters at college, are caught by titles." How inconsistent are our notions of morality! No man of honor would open a letter that was not addressed to him, though he will not scruple to open a book under the same circumstances. Colton's "Lacon" has gone through thirteen editions, and yet it is addressed ΤΟ THOSE WHO THINK." Had the author substituted for these

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words "those who think they are thinking," it might not have had so extensive a sale, although it would have been directed to a much larger class. He has shown address in his address.

TOLERATION-Being wise enough to have no difference with those who differ from us. The mutual rancor of conflicting sects is inversely as their distance from each other; no one hating a Jew or a Pagan half so much as a fellow-Christian, who agrees with him in all but one unimportant point.

If a Hindoo or Mahometan philosopher were to contemplate five hundred different sects of Christians, spitting fire and eternal perdition at each other, in flagrant defiance of the very Scriptures which they profess to teach and obey, would he not be tempted to exclaim-"Unhappy men! ye are all likely to be equally right in your denunciations, for when ye condemn each other, ye condemn yourselves!"

"Fain would the bard on all impress

The hatred of intolerance,

Teach them their fellow-men to bless,
Whatever doctrines they advance,
Bid every fierce, contending sect
Humble its passions, and reflect,

That real Christians love the souls

Of those by whom their own are doom'd,

As frankincense perfumes the coals

By which it is itself consumed."

TOMB-A house built for a skeleton: a dwelling of sculptured marble, provided for dust and corruption: a monument set up to perpetuate the memory of the forgotten.

TONGUE-The mysterious membrane that turns thought into sound. Drink is its oil-eating its drag chain.

TRAVELLERS-The mass of travellers are asses. A little knowledge is a dangerous thing; and especially the very little knowledge of a country and people attainable by a few months' residence. Dickens spent two months in a journey through sixteen of the United States, and left our shores with the impression that all American men chew tobacco and talk through

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