voracious worms! my friends and my avengers! hasten in crowds to the feast of their crime-fattened carcasses! " He that would die sooner or later than he ought, is equally a coward. Cæsar, when he heard of any sudden death, used to wish-" sibi et suis euthanasiam similem,” and he was right; for the aspect, the threats, and the bark, of death, are worse than his bite. The author of the following stanzas seems to have been of Cæsar's opinion :— "Oh! come not, thou skeleton king, in the garb Of a lingering sickness to summon thy prize, To hover above me with menacing barb, And dangle its ominous glare in mine eyes- "Be the grass of the meadow my pillow of death, And the friends that surround it-the sea and the sky; To be borne to its Heavenly Giver on high! Be the spot where I fall unprofaned by a tear, Save the dews of the night that descend on my bier." Death is the only subject upon which everybody speaks and writes, without a possibility of having experienced what he undertakes to discuss. Contempt of it is seldom real; it is but the love of glory: many, besides Mirabeau, have dramatized their own exits. Most consolatory is the reflection, that if this great consummation puts an end to the enjoyments of some, it terminates the sufferings of all. Death is a silent, peaceful genius, who rocks our second childhood to sleep in the cradle of the coffin. It is the proud prerogative of noble natures, that they retain their influence after death. The lamps which guided us on earth become stars to light us from above, and the beneficent may still claim our aspirations as the blessed;—a species of apotheosis equally honorable to the living and the dead. DEBT-NATIONAL-Mortgaging the property of our posterity, that we may be better enabled to destroy our contemporaries. It may be questionable, whether any community has a moral right to discount the future for the purpose of tor menting or corrupting the present; to exhaust the resources of many ages, that it may render the pugnacity and ambition of its own more extensively mischievous. Speaking of the difference between laying out money in land, or investing it in the funds, it was said by Soame Jenyns, that one was principal without interest, and the other interest without principal. DECEPTION—A principal ingredient in happiness-Did we possess the spear of Ithuriel, or could we realize the suggestion of Momus, we should gain a fearful loss. An enemy to education, when told that the schoolmaster was abroad, replied, "I am very glad to hear it; I hope he will remain there!' A friend to his species will utter a similar aspiration respecting Truth, if he believes the popular saying, that she lies at the bottom of a well. Instead of regretting that we are sometimes deceived, we should rather lament that we are ever undeceived. But, alas! as Seneca says “ Nemo omnes, neminem omnes fefellerunt."-None deceives all, and none have all deceived. DEDICATION-Inscribing to an individual that which, if it be worth encouragement, will find its best patron in the public. Kopp, the German, prefixed the following short, but pithy dedication to his Palæographia Critica:-" Posteris hoc opus, ab æqualium meorum studiis fortè alienum, do, dico, atque dedico." Upon these occasions, one cannot help sharing the apprehension expressed by Voltaire, that the work may never reach the party to whom it is addressed! DESCRIPTION—A living critic has laid it down as a rule, that no author can succeed in describing what he has not seen, forgetting that Dante was never in hell, nor Milton in paradise; and that it is the highest praise of Shakspeare to have "exhausted worlds, and then imagined new." Inventive writers evince their talent by portraying the invisible and non-existent, snatching a grace, not only beyond the reach of art, but beyond the reach of nature. Little right had the critic in question to expect imagination in others, for it is manifest that he possessed none himself. DELPHINE-A novel of the blood-and-thunder school of fiction now in vogue, written by Madame de Staël at the beginning of the present century. It lives now only through the smashing criticism by which Sydney Smith handed it down to an immortality of contempt. He says of it: "This dismal trash which has nearly dislocated the jaws of every critic among us with gaping, has so alarmed Bonaparte, that he has seized the whole impression, sent Madame de Staël out of Paris, and, for aught we know, sleeps in a nightcap of steel and dagger-proof blankets. To us it appears rather an attack upon the Ten Commandments, than the government of Bonaparte, and calculated not so much to enforce the rights of the Bourbons, as the benefits of adultery, murder, and a great number of other vices, which have been somehow or other strangely neglected in this country, and too much so (according to the apparent opinion of Madame de Staël) even in France." To conclude: our general opinion of this book is, that it is calculated to shed a mild lustre over adultery; by gentle and convenient gradation, to destroy the modesty and the caution of women, to facilitate the acquisition of easy vices, and encumber the difficulty of virtue. What a wretched qualification of this censure to add, that the badness of the principles is alone corrected by the badness of the style, and that this celebrated lady would have been very guilty, if she had not been very dull! DESPONDENCY—Ingratitude to heaven, as cheerfulness is the best and most acceptable piety. H-, who is bilious, and hypochondriacal, may be termed a constitutional grumbler. "If my future life," he one day exclaimed, "be only an unexecuted copy, an unheard echo, an invisible reflection of the past, I wish it not to be prolonged. Running after happiness, is only chasing the horizon, or seeking the philosopher's stone, and I am already "Tired of toiling for the chymic gold, That fools us young, and beggars us when old.'" D- does not possess the talents of H—, but his bile is never deranged; he has a fortunate organization; he is a happier, and, so far, a wiser man. Like the bee, which extracts honey even from bitter flowers, he can derive cheerfulness from the most unpromising elements. Are his companions gloomy, disagreeable, silent,—he calls forth his own stores of pleasantness, and if he do not succeed in enlivening others, which is but rarely the case, for good-humor and good spirits are often catching, he finds cause for gratitude that he himself possesses a constant aptitude for the enjoyment of existence, while so many are enacting the part of Terence's Heautontimorumenos. Is the scenery picturesque, it exalts his admiration into rapture; is it flat and commonplace, it still possesses an interest for one who feels that every spot of ground, however unattractive, conduces to some benevolent purpose of utility or enjoyment. Does the sun shine, its jocund beams heighten his natural exhilaration, by lifting up his thoughts to the great Source of all light, solar as well as intellectual. Is it a rainy day, he sees the outstretched hand of the same beneficent Deity, guiding the clouds over the earth, that they may dispense fertility and gladness to the creatures whom He has called into existence, and around whom He is forever scattering blessings. I know not how H— may feel upon the occasion, but, for my own part, I would gladly give up whatever I may possess of talent and learning-(deem me not overweening, gentle reader! for, perchance, I may reckon them as Indians do rupees-by the lack)—I would give them all up, I repeat, to possess the happy disposition of D-. DESPOTISM-Allowing a whole people no other means of escape from oppression than by the assassination of their oppressor. If tyranny be an unjustifiable liberticide, may not tyrannicide be termed justifiable homicide? We moot the point, without presuming to decide it. Despotism, nevertheless, has its advantages in a barbarous and ignorant country, where its evils are little felt. Peter the Great, of Russia, could hardly have accomplished so much in civilizing his subjects, if he had not been an absolute monarch. Even among a comparatively enlightened people, such is the force of habit, that a longestablished despotism may continue unabated, without being |