female friends; "who would have thought that he would have been carried off so suddenly ?-On the very morning of his death, he had played as usual with his parroquet and his monkey, he had said, give me my snuff-box, brush this arm chair, let me see my new court dress;-in fact, he possessed all his ideas and faculties with as much strength and vigor as ever he had done at the age of thirty." What an unintended satire in these tender compliments. Not more so, however, than in the naif remark of a lady, when a censorious and conceited neighbor, vaunting of her good figure, boasted that herself and her sister had always been remarkable for the beauty of their backs. "That is the reason, I suppose, that your friends are always so glad to see them." A sarcasm may often wear the garb of a compliment, and be taken for one by the simple-witted. The Abbé Voisenon once made a complaint that he was unduly charged with the absurd sayings of others. "Monsieur l'Abbé," replied D'Alembert, "on ne prête qu'aux riches."

Mr. Choate, wishing to compliment Chief Justice Shaw, exclaimed: "When I look upon the venerable Chief Justice Shaw, I am like a Hindoo before his idol-I know that he is ugly, but I feel that he is great."

Not altogether unworthy of being recorded is the compliment attributed to a butcher at Whitby. "This fillet of veal seems not quite so white as usual,” said a fair lady, laying her hand upon it."Put on your glove, Ma'am, and you will think otherwise," was the complaisant reply.

Wolcott (Peter Pindar) admired a Miss Dickenson, and has handed down her name in this very neat compliment :

"In ancient days, great Jove, to show

To gazing mortals here below
The loves, the virtues, and the graces,
Was forced to form three female faces.

But (so improved his art divine)
In one fair female now they shine.
Aloud I hear the reader cry,

"Heavens (to the poet)! what a lie!'
Now, as I hate the name of liar,
Sweet Dickenson, I do desire

You'll see this unbelieving Jew,

And prove that all I've said is true!"

CONCEIT-Taking ourselves at our own valuation, generally about fifty per cent. above the fair worth. Minerva threw away the flute, when she found that it puffed up her own cheeks; but if we cast away the flute nowadays, it is only that we may take a larger instrument of puffing, by becoming our own trumpeters. Empty minds are the most prone to soar above their proper sphere, like paper kites, which are kept aloft by their own lightness; while those that are better stored are prone to humility, like heavily laden vessels, of which we see the less the more richly and deeply they are freighted. The corn bends itself downward when its ears are filled, but when the heads of the conceited are filled with selfadulation, they only lift them up higher.

Perhaps it is a benevolent provision of Providence, that we should possess in fancy those good qualities which are withheld from us in reality; for if we did not occasionally think well of ourselves, we should be more apt to think ill of others. It must be confessed, that the conceited and the vain have a light and pleasant duty to perform, since they have but one to please, and in that object they seldom fail. Self-love, moreover, is the only love not liable to the pangs of jealousy. Pity! that a quick perception of our own deserts generally blinds us to the merits of others; that we should see more than all the world in the former instance, and less in the latter! In one respect, conceited people show a degree of discernment, for which they deserve credit,-they soon become tired of their own company. Especially fortunate are they in another respect; for while the really wise, witty, and beautiful, are subject to casualties of defect, age, and sickness, the imaginary possessor of those qualities wears a charmed life, and fears not the assaults of fate or time, since a nonentity is invulnerable. Even the really gifted, however, may sometimes become conceited. Northcote, the artist, whose intellectual powers were equal to his professional talent, and who thought it much easier for a man to be his superior than his equal, being once asked by Sir William Knighton what he thought of the Prince Regent, replied, "I am not acquainted with him."-"Why, his Royal Highness says he knows you." "Know me!-Pooh! that's all his brag."

CONDESCENSION-I have heard that when a goose passes under an arch, or through a doorway, of whatever altitude, it always stoops; and this, I suppose, is condescension. To say truth, wherever I have seen an ostentation of condescension, it has reminded me of geese.

CONGREGATION-A public assemblage in a spiritual theatre, where all the performers are professors, but where very few of the professors are performers.

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Taking them one with another,” said the Rev. S— S—, "I believe my congregation to be most exemplary observers of the religious ordinances; for the poor keep all the fasts, and the rich all the feasts." This fortunate flock might be matched with the crew of the A- frigate, whose commander, Capt. R—, told a friend that he had just left them the happiest set of fellows in the world. Knowing the captain's extreme severity, his friend expressed some surprise at this statement, and demanded an explanation. แ "Why," said the disciplinarian, "I have just had nineteen of the rascals flogged, and they are happy that it is over, while all the rest are happy that they have escaped."

CONSCIENCE Something to swear by. Conscience being regulated by the opinion of the world, has no very determined standard of morality. Among the ancient Greeks and Romans, suicide was a magnanimous virtue, with us it is a cowardly crime. The Spartans taught their children to steal; we whip and imprison ours for the same act. No man's conscience stings him for killing a single adversary in a duel, or scores in war, because these deeds are in accordance with the usages of society; but he may, nevertheless, be arraigned, perchance, for murder, at the bar of the Almighty. Terror of conscience, therefore, would seem to be the fear of infamy, detection, or punishment in this world, rather than in the next. Criminals, who voluntarily surrender themselves to justice, and confess their misdeeds, are, doubtless, driven to that act of desperation by their conscience; but it is from a dread of Jack Ketch, and the intolerableness of suspense. They

would rather be hanged once in reality than every day in imagination. Pass a law that shall legalize their offences, or let them be tried and acquitted, from some flaw in the indictment, and their minds will be wonderfully tranquillized. How much safer a guide and monitor would our conscience become, if we adapted it to the immutable laws of God, instead of the fluctuating opinions of man, and were penetrated with the great truth that, whatever may be our present feelings, there is an inevitable ultimate connection between happiness and virtue, misery and vice.

There is a Greek epigram to the effect that it would be a good thing if the headache came before the drinking bowl, instead of after it. Suppose it were so ordered, that the twinges of conscience should be palpable and physical instead of mental, we should find the morals of mankind wonderfully improved; I mean, if retribution were but simultaneous with transgression; if, for example, that thing we call conscience were attached to one of the vertebræ, and, at the same time that it warned us, began to tug away at some exquisitely sensitive nerve. What alderman would gloat on venison, if, after having taken as much as was good for him, Conscience, the moment he set up for a superfluous slice, admonished him of his folly by a sudden fit of the colic, instead of a sleepy, dozy intimation, that ten or twenty years hence, if he lived so long, he would repent it; or if a liar, the moment his tongue began to wag, found his face blushing with St. Anthony's fire, instead of the faint tints of shame; or if a thief detected the incipient feeling of covetousness by a desperate contemporaneous twinge of gout in his great toe; or if the hypocrite (as according to Swedenborg's notion of "spiritual correspondences" he is, or ought to be) were told of his fault by a swinging paroxysm of toothache!

CONSERVATIVES-Those "solid gentlemen" who go about treading upon the coat-tails of Progress, and crying, whoa whoa!

CONSISTENCY-See INCONSISTENCY.

CONSOLATION--for unsuccessful authors. "Many works," says Chamfort, "succeed, because the mediocrity of the author's ideas exactly corresponds with the mediocrity of ideas on the part of the public." Writers who fail in hitting the present taste, are apt to appeal to posterity, which, even if it should ratify their fond anticipations, (a rare occurrence,) will only show that they have still failed, because they have gained an object which they did not seek, and missed that which they sought. Let him profess what he will, every man writes to be read by his contemporaries; otherwise why does he publish? It would be a poor compliment to a sportsman to say-"You have missed all the birds at which you took aim, but you fire so well that your shot will be sure to hit something before they fall to the ground." He who professes to do without the living, and yet wants the suffrages of the unborn, stands little chance of obtaining his election, and is sure that he cannot enjoy it, even if he succeed. Few will possess such claims to celebrity as Kepler, the German astronomer; and yet there was a sense of mortification, as well as an almost profane arrogance, when, on the failure of one of his works to excite attention, he exclaimed, "My book may well wait a hundred years for a reader, since God himself has been content to wait six thousand years for an observer like myself."

CONTENT-A mental Will-o'-the-wisp, which all are seeking, but which few attain. And yet every one might succeed, if he would think more of what he has, and less of what he wants. Daily experience may convince us that those who possess what we covet, are not a jot more happy than ourselves: why then should we labor and toil in chasing disappointment? How few feel gratitude for what they have, compared to those who pine for what they have not! Aut Cæsar aut nullus is the prevalent motto: not to have every thing, is to have nothing. Like the famous Duke of Buckingham, some are more impatient of successes, than others are of reverses; by basking in the sunshine of fortune, they become sour, and turn to vinegar.