happy. Before dinner, he took me aside, and said, "I have invited a Captain Selby to meet you to-night; he has been very much abroad, and his information is boundless; but he has a singular disposition to contradict every thing that is advanced by any other of the company; and then, he is so dogmatical, that he will not yield his point on any consideration. If I could get him and Mr. Walker, your friend, pitted together, we should have some fine fun, and I should give them both a rebuke which they never would forget."

Accordingly, at dinner he placed Captain Selby and Mr. Walker right over against one another, as people do two cocks which they wish to fight. At a late hour, about the time when we should have retired to coffee, the two combatants had engaged in a most desperate dispute about the antiquity of an English family, compared with that of the other disputant's own. Our first moments of

enjoyment were scarcely interrupted by them, except by some looks of dissatisfaction and superiority at the trifling manner in which we were employed. At length, however, their peculiar temper broke out. Their violence bore down every attempt to change the subject, and prevented them from discovering the disconcerted looks of the company. This was the signal for the execution of Mr. H-t's project. On ringing of the bell gently and unperceived, a servant appeared to tell one of the combatants that a stranger in the next room requested to speak with him for a few minutes. The servant led him a long circular route; and in the mean time, another servant came in and asked the other disputant the same request. Consequently, they entered both at the same instant, at different doors, into the drawing-room; they bowed respectfully to one other. They both at once, however, perceived the whole force of the rebuke, and were going to sneak

off at their respective doors, when the whole party broke in on them, and by their raillery and merriment made them confess both the justice and pleasantry of Mr. H-t's device. I never saw two gentlemen more obliging and complimentary to one another than these two were during the remainder of the evening.

Above all things, avoid the tricks, grimaces, and sentiments, which disgust you in others. If you find that an imperious carriage, excessive talking, sly insinuations, and the thousand methods of dragging in the subjects dearest to themselves, displease us in our acquaintances, we may believe that the same propensities in us will be disagreeable to them. And if we were not blinded by self-love, our sufferings would teach us wisdom. In this article of social intercourse there seems to be a sort of commerce, or bartering of sentiment, in which we give away what pleases us, it being understood that we receive an equal quantity of what

pleases our neighbours. Generosity, too, is here inverted; for he is most amiable who, for the smallest compensation, is disposed to carry away the largest share.

You will often meet with friends who pretend to be intrusted with secrets and family affairs, and who set themselves up as a sort of general arbiters in all the concerns of their acquaintances: do not believe a word they say; it is all more from vanity, or perhaps malignity, than friendship; and always let subjects of a private nature be reserved for the ear of our friends, and never be introduced when we meet them in mixed companies; for such matters are not fitted for social and enlightened conversation.

The noblest distinction between man and the brutes is the power of forming ideas. We not only receive impressions from external objects, but we judge of the object from the impression. We treasure up our experience for future use. We combine and derive results of which

all the other animals on the face of the earth are incapable. The next to this in dignity and importance, is the power of communicating our ideas. Nothing has ever appeared more wonderful to me than that, by habit, the sounds of words, which have no relation to the sense, should give me an exact picture of another man's mind, and make me acquainted with subjects of which I had never thought before. We cannot easily believe that our ideas partake of material substance: it is unnatural and absurd to say, that thin and invisible coats are perpetually flying off from the bodies which impress and act on our minds. The images which we retain of mountains, and houses, and trees, when they are out of our sight, have as little connexion with these natural objects as our bodies have with our spirits; and yet it is true, that by a little modulation of air, and by the use of our organs in making a few sounds with letters and words, we can paint on the mind of our