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nary conversation, and the same holds good of the founder of the Brunonian system, and of his great namesake Giordano Bruno. The more decorous manners of the present age have attached a disproportionate opprobrium to this foible, and many therefore abstain with cautious prudence from all displays of what they feel. Nay, some do actually flatter themselves, that they abhor all egotism, and never betray it either in their writings or discourse. But watch these men narrowly; and in the greater number of cases you will find their thoughts, feelings, and mode of expression, saturated with the passion of contempt, which is the concentrated vinegar of egotism.

Your very humble men in company, if they produce any thing, are in that thing of the most exquisite irritability and vanity.

When a man is attempting to describe another person's character, he may be right or he may be wrong; but in one thing he will always succeed, that is, in describing himself. If, for example, he expresses simple approbation, he praises from a consciousness of possessing similar qualities;-if he approves with admiration, it is from a consciousness of deficiency. A. " Ay! he is a sober man." B. "Ah! Sir, what a blessing is sobriety!" Here A. is a man conscious of sobriety, who egotizes in tuism;-B. is one who, feeling the ill effects of a contrary habit, contemplates sobriety with blameless envy. Again :-A. "Yes, he is a Again:—A.

warm man, a moneyed fellow; you may rely upon him." B. "Yes, yes, Sir, no wonder! he has the blessing of being well in the world." This reflection might be introduced in defence of plaintive egotism, and by way of preface to an examination of all the charges against it, and from what feelings they proceed. 1800.*

Contempt is egotism in ill humour. Appetite without moral affection, social sympathy, and even without passion and imagination— (in plain English, mere lust,)—is the basest form of egotism,--and being infra human, or below humanity, should be pronounced with the harsh breathing, as he-goat-ism. 1820.

CAP OF LIBERTY.

THOSE Who hoped proudly of human nature, and admitted no distinction between Christians and Frenchmen, regarded the first constitution as a colossal statue of Corinthian brass, formed by the fusion and commixture of all metals in the conflagration of the state. But there is a common fungus, which so exactly represents the pole and cap of liberty, that it seems offered by nature herself as the appropriate emblem of Gallic republicanism,—mushroom patriots, with a mushroom cap of liberty.

From Mr. Gutch's commonplace book. Ed.

BULLS.

Novi ego aliquem qui dormitabundus aliquando pulsari horam quartam audiverit, et sic numeravit, una, una, una, una; ac tum præ rei absurditate, quam anima concipiebat, exclamavit, Na! Næ! delirat horologium! Quater pulsavit horam

unam.

I knew a person, who, during imperfect sleep, or dozing, as we say, listened to the clock as it was striking four, and as it struck, he counted the four, one, one, one, one; and then exclaimed, "Why, the clock is out of its wits; it has struck one four times over!"

This is a good exemplification of the nature of Bulls, which will be found always to contain in them a confusion of what the schoolmen would have called-objectivity with subjectivity;—in plain English, the impression of a thing as it exists in itself, and extrinsically, with the image which the mind abstracts from the impression. Thus, number, or the total of a series, is a generalization of the mind, an ens rationis not an ens reale. I have read many attempts at a definition of a Bull, and lately in the Edinburgh Review; but it then appeared to me that the definers had fallen into the same fault with Miss Edgeworth, in her delightful essay on Bulls, and given the definition of the genus, Blunder, for that of the

particular species. I will venture, therefore, to propose the following: a Bull consists in a mental juxta-position of incongruous images or thoughts with the sensation, but without the sense, of connection. The psychological conditions of the possibility of a Bull, it would not be difficult to determine; but it would require a larger space than can be afforded here, at least more attention than my readers would be likely to afford.

There is a sort of spurious Bull which consists wholly in mistake of language, and which the closest thinker may make, if speaking in a language of which he is not master.

WISE IGNORANCE.

It is impossible to become either an eminently great, or truly pious man, without the courage to remain ignorant of many things. This important truth is most happily expressed by the elder Scaliger in prose, and by the younger in verse; the latter extract has an additional claim from the exquisite terseness of its diction, and the purity of its Latinity. I particularly recommend its perusal to the commentators on the Apocalypse.

Quare ulterior disquisitio morosi atque satagentis animi est; humanæ enim sapientiæ pars est, quædam æquo animo nescire velle.

J. C. Scalig. Ex. 307. s. 29.

Ne curiosus quære causas omnium,
Quæcunque libris vis prophetarum indidit,
Afflata cælo, plena veraci Deo;
Nec operta sacri supparo silentii
Irrumpere aude; sed prudenter præteri !
Nescire velle quæ magister optimus
Docere non vult, erudita inscitia est.

Josep. Scalig.

ROUGE.

TRIUMPHANT generals in Rome wore rouge. The ladies of France, and their fair sisters and imitators in Britain, conceive themselves always in the chair of triumph, and of course entitled to the same distinction. The custom originated, perhaps, in the humility of the conquerors, that they might seem to blush continually at their own praises. Mr. Gilpin frequently speaks of a " picturesque eye:" with something less of solecism, I may affirm that our fair ever blushing triumphants have secured to themselves the charm of picturesque cheeks, every face being its own portrait.

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I CRAVE mercy (at least of my contemporaries: for if these Omniana should outlive the present generation, the opinion will not need it) but I could not help writing in the blank page of a

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