range. According to this latter supposition, how inconceivably eccentric and illimitable may be its flight, when it is released from its earthy tegument, and revels in the boundless wilds of imagination, as a liberated balloon soars into the invisible empyreum! To illustrate total absence of judgment in all these phantasms, Dr. Johnson used to relate the following dream. He imagined himself to be engaged in a contest of wit, before a large literary party, with an adversary whose superior talents compelled him to retreat, filled with shame and mortification. "Had my judgment," argued the Doctor, "been as clear and active as my other mental powers, I should have recollected that my own head had furnished all the repartees of my supposed antagonist, and that I could not fail to be the victor, however the battle might terminate.” An exceedingly corpulent man, who had suffered much from the intense heat of summer, dreamt, one sultry night, that for the sake of cooling himself, he got out of his flesh, and sat in his skeleton, suffering the air to blow through his ribs; a mode of refrigeration which he found so delicious, that on awaking he could almost have cried, like Caliban, to fall asleep again. DRESS-External gentility, frequently used to disguise internal vulgarity. Wise men will neither be the first to adopt a new fashion, nor the last to abandon an old one; for an affectation of singularity is only the desire to set, instead of following, the mode. Eccentricity of appearance is the contemptible ambition of being personally known to those who do not know you by name. We may hold it slavish to dress according to the judgment of fools, and the caprice of coxcombs; but are not we ourselves both, when we are singular in our attire? Mean, indeed, though, doubtless, very just, must be the self-opinion of that man who can only hope to achieve distinction by the cut of his garments. The proverb tells us, to cut our coat according to our cloth; but we are nowhere enjoined to cut out a character by a coat. Malvezzi says--“ i vestimenti negli animali sono molto se curi segni della loro natura; negli uomini del lor cervello." This may be illustrated by rags as well as finery. Socrates told Antisthenes, who affected shabbiness, that he saw his pride through the holes in his coat; and the gay attire of the coxcomb only serves to prove the more clearly that he is “a leaden rapier in a golden sheath "-a cork leg in a silken stocking. DRUNKENNESS-A beastly, detestable, and often punished vice, in the ignorant lower orders, whose ebriety is thrust upon the public eye as they reel along the streets,—but softened into "a glass too much," or being "a little elevated," when a well-educated gentleman is driven home in his own carriage, in a state of insensibility, and put to bed by his own servants. Droll, though not very logical or conclusive, was the reply of the tipsy Irishman, who, as he supported himself by the iron railings of Merrion-square, was advised by a passenger to betake himself home. "Ah, now, be aisy; I live in the square; isn't it going round and round, and when I see my own door come up, won't I pop into it in a jiffey?" DUELS-Revenging yourself upon one who has injured you, by giving him a chance to take your life. Oftentimes, too, the injury is as fanciful as the so-called satisfaction is silly. The occasions of duels are as various as the follies of the human head. In the eleventh century, two knights, clad in complete armor, fought on horseback to determine the proper form of public worship. The great founder of the Company of Jesus, Ignatius Loyola, fought a duel with a Moor whom he had vainly attempted to convert by argument. Barrington records a laughable duel fought by a Mr. Frank Shelton with an exciseman, for running the butt end of a horsewhip down his throat the night before, while he lay drunk and sleeping with his mouth open. He notes that, during the preliminary negotiations, the exciseman insisted that snoring at a dinner-table was a personal offence to every gentleman in company, and refused to apologize. The duello was once a very prevalent and favorite mode of administering justice in Ireland; and not being considered so brutal as bull-fights, or other beastly amusements of that nature, it was authorized by law, and frequently performed before the high authorities and their ladies; bishops, judges, and other persons high in office generally honoring the spectacle with their presence. Thus an old chronicler relates, how two Irish gentlemen, Connor MacCormac O'Connor, and Teige MacKilpatrick O'Connor, fought with broadswords and skeans (large knives) in the Castle of Dublin, in the presence of the archbishop and all the chief authorities and ladies of rank. They had hewed at each other for a full hour, when Mr. MacKilpatrick O'Connor happening to miss his footing, Mr. Cormac O'Connor began to cut his head off very expertly with a knife; which, after a good deal of cutting, struggling, and hacking, he was at length so fortunate as to effect; and having got his head clear off the shoulders, he handed it to the lords-justices, (who were present,) and by whom the head and neck were most graciously received. DUELLING—how to avoid. This desirable immunity may be accomplished by a pleasanter method than by plagiarizing Mr. O'Connell's oath,-videlicet, by falling in love, when you may decline a challenge after the following fashion of one of our old amatory poets ""Tis not the fear of death or smart, Makes me averse to fight, But to preserve a tender heart, Not mine but Celia's right. "Then let your fury be supprest, Not me, but Celia, spare, Your sword is welcome to my breast, DUELLIST-A moral coward, seeking to hide the pusillanimity of his mind, by affecting a corporeal courage. Instead of discharging a pistol, the resort of bullies and bravoes, the really brave soul will dare to discharge its duty to God and man, by refusing to break the laws of both. He is the true hero who can exclaim in the language of a French writer, "Je crains Dieu, cher Abner, et je n'ai d'autre crainte”—“I fear God, my dear Abner, but I have no other fear." DULNESS-Do not see the present work. "I cannot exactly perceive the scope of your argument, and therefore I cannot adopt your opinion," said a gentleman with whom Dr. Parr had been arguing. "Then, sir," said the doctor, "I can only say that you have the dulness of lead without its malleability." Serjeant K― having made two or three mistakes, while conducting a cause, petulantly exclaimed, "I seem to be inoculated with dulness to-day." "Inoculated, brother?" said Erskine, "I thought you had it in the natural way." DUMBFOUNDER-A verbal checkmate which incapacitates your adversary from making another move of his jaws. "I do not write for fools," said a boastful and asinine pretender to literature: "I only wish to please those who have the same taste as myself, and to do this, every leaf that I produce must be full of point. Such being my feelings, what would you have me give to the world?" "Thistles!" replied a wag. Dr. Parr was celebrated for the unsparing severity with which he could deal out his dumbfounders, when the occasion justified their infliction. A flippant chatterer, after having spoken slightingly of the miracles, exclaimed, "Well but, Doctor, what think you of the mark of the cross upon the ass's back, which they say indicates the precise spot where the animal was smitten by Balaam?"-" Why, sir," replied the Doctor, "I say that if you had a little more of the cross, and a good deal less of the ass, it would be much better for you." Upon another occasion, a shallow smatterer tauntingly asked him why he did not write a book:-"Sir, I know a method by which I might soon write a very large one." "Ay, Doctor! how so?" "Why, sir, by putting in all that I know, and all that you do not know." DUTY--Financially a tax which we pay to the public excise and customs; morally, that which we are very apt to excise in our private customs. "Les hommes," says Voltaire, "se piquent toujours de remplir un devoir qui les distingue." If singularity be a distinction, they might easily attain it by a conscientious discharge of religious and moral duty. DUTY-PARENTAL-Sometimes consists in making our children a stalking-horse for our own failings and vices. Of all the virtuous disguises which self-love is made to assume, the most accommodating, the most sanctimonious, the most demure-looking, is the mask which gives to us the appearance of loving others. The avaricious man, the gambling speculator, the fraudulent dealer have all the same plausible excuse; they are making fortunes for their children, which, however, they never give to them, when acquired, until the hand of death wrenches the booty from their grasp. It is remarkable too, that many of the loving fathers who boast what great things they are thus doing for their offspring, are the last to do small things for them, refusing them the most trivial indulgence, ruling them with a rod of iron, and making them at one time the stalking-horse, and at another the scape-goat of their own humors and propensities. Oh! how pleasant is it when the affectionate parent can in this manner throw a garb of goodness over his evil passions, and sin with a safe conscience! DYSPEPSIA— Ah, me! what mischiefs from the stomach rise! Hath been prevented by a bad digestion! I ween the savory crust of filthy pies Hath made full many a man to quake and tremble, Filling his belly with dyspeptic sighs, Until a huge balloon it doth resemble. Thus do our lower parts impede the upper, And much the brain's good works molest and hinder; We gorge our cerebellum with hot supper, And burn, with drams, our viscera to a cinder, Choosing our arrows from Disease's quiver, Till man in misery lives to loathe his liver. |