find, then, an occasional silly expression escaping me, look at it as you would on an excrescence on the bark of a stately oak-tree, a cobweb on a beautiful painted window, or a small crack on a column of the Corinthian order. If you will ponder on, and practise, the good advice I offer, the few silly expressions I may utter will never Now mind what I say on the subject hurt you. of delay. We all of us form most excellent resolutions, and most noble designs; but then, our designs are seldom to be executed before to-morrow, or our good resolutions till the day after. Now give me the boy who will set about a thing directly; not next year, nor next month, nor next week, nor next day, but this very hour. Depend upon it that the same reason which prevents you this hour from setting about a thing on which you are resolved, will operate on you the next hour with equal force. There would be ten times as much knowledge acquired, and twenty times as much good done in the world, if people would but set about the one and the other directly. On the coast of Cornwall there was, some years ago, a strip of land very useful to the adjoining town, but as the tide made some encroachments on it, it was considered necessary to erect an embankment to prevent the land being washed away by the incessant trespasses of the returning tide. All agreed that it ought to be done; many that it must be done; and some few determined that it should be done; but not one soul among them decided that it should be done directly. Every day the tide washed away a portion of the land, and every day the necessity of erecting the embankment became more apparent, but still the work was not begun. Plans were formed about the best purposes to which the land could be applied, and many very excellent proposals were agreed to; but as the tide went to work directly, and as the good people did not go to work directly, so it happened that before the embankment was begun, the strip of land was washed every particle into the sea. I could give you three hundred other examples to prove the wisdom of the old copy, which every boy has written in his copy-book, "Delays are dangerous;" but if you cannot profit by one good example, neither would you profit by three hundred. DEATH. Oh! argument for truth divine, CRABBE. AND do you suppose that because I am a fast talker, that I have no object in my conversation, and that I care not a fig whether I do or do not afford you instruction? If you suppose this, your supposition is wrong. I have an object in most things which I say, and that object is your advantage. I like to be lively, but I can be grave when there is cause for gravity; and that you may be convinced of this, I will be grave now. Did you ever, in the course of your life, devote one single hour to the consideration of death? Every one can say, "Ah, well! we must all die!" and "We must not expect to live for ever!" with a hundred other such exclamations, which are forgotten again as soon as they are made; but did you ever reflect for one hour seriously, deeply, and devotedly, on the subject of death? If you have never done so, it is high time that you should; and I advise you to walk into a churchyard for that purpose the very first opportunity. I say, into a churchyard, because you are there most likely to be assisted by the objects around you. There you will be convinced of the vanity of all earthly things, and |