death. That facetious person being once summoned into the country, by the relatives of a respectable practitioner, to whom he had been appointed executor, was asked what directions should be given respecting the funeral? "What may be your practice in the country," said the wag, "I do not exactly know; but in London, when a lawyer dies, his body is disposed of in a very cheap and simple manner. We lock it up in a room over night, and by the next morning it has always totally disappeared. Whither it has been conveyed we cannot tell to a certainty; but there is invariably such a strong smell of brimstone in the chamber, that we can form a shrewd guess at the character of the conveyancer."

LEARNING-very often a knowledge of words, and an ignorance of things; a common act of memory, which be exercised without common may sense. A mere scholar is generally known by his unacquaintance with everything but languages, which have so filled his head, that they have left room for nothing else. He mistakes the steps for the temple of Minerva; the shrine for the goddess herself; and is as proud of his mind's empty purse, as if there were money in it! Pedantry's jargon will no more improve our understandings, than the importunate clink of a smoke-jack will fill our bellies.

The elaborate triflings of scholiasts and commentators, the jingling sophistries of logic, and what has been technically termed the learning of the schools, all of which were so many antidotes to sound sense and reflection, may well be thrown overboard, when many a member of our Mechanics' Institutes, possesses useful knowledge that might puzzle a whole convent of college monks.

No man

Of all learning the most difficult department is to unlearn. Drawing a mistake or prejudice out of the head, is as painful as drawing a tooth, and the patient never thanks the operator for the "demptus per vim mentis gratissimus error.” likes to admit that his favourite opinion (perhaps the only child of his mind, and cherished accordingly) is an illegitimate one. Sluggish intellects are ever the most obstinate, for that which it has cost us much to acquire, it costs us much to give up; and the older we get, the more tenaciously we cling to our errors, as those weeds are most difficult to eradicate that have had the longest time to root themselves. Harvey could find no physician, turned of forty, who would admit the circulation of the blood. Numbers of these quadragenarian owls are now to be found in every profession, while we have Jesuits enough of all ages, who sigh for the suppressed Inquisition, whenever a political or religious Galileo promulgates any

truth that threatens to interfere with established falsehoods. These buzzards have yet to acquire the most useful of all learning-that of unlearning.

LIARS-Verbal forgers-stiflers of truth, and murderers of fact. They will sometimes attempt to conceal their failing by affecting a scrupulous adherence to veracity. B-, who rarely shamed the Devil, once said of his friend, "Jack is a good fellow, but, it must be confessed, he has his failings. I am sorry to say so, but I will not tell a lie for Amicus Jack-sed magis amica veritas, my friend, but I love truth still more." dear B―," said a bystander, laying his hand upon his shoulder-"I never expected that you would have preferred a perfect stranger to an old acquaintance."

any man. I love

66

My

The ci-devant civic dandy, who, from his rising in the east and setting in the west, or, perhaps, from his want of personal beauty, quasi lucus à non lucendo, had acquired the nickname of Apollo, once received a visit from a peer, whose propensity to fibbing is well known." I find," said his lordship, who is apt to mistake impertinence for jocularity, "that you are going to the fancy-ball to-night, and I presume you will appear in the character of Apollo."-"I had some such idea,” replied "and I am glad your

,

lordship has called, because you can now accompany

me as my lyre."

Even

LIBEL-Law of a libel upon the law. under the tyranny of some of the Roman emperors, there seems to have been a greater latitude of speech and writing than is permitted by the laws of modern England. Adverting to the reigns of Trajan and Aurelius, Tacitus says-" Rara temporum felicitate, ubi sentire quæ velis, et quæ sentias dicere licet."-" By the rare happiness of those days you might think what you wished, and speak as you thought."

LIBELLERS-Literary bravos, supported by illiterate cowards. If the receiver of stolen goods be worse than the thief, so must the purchaser of libels be more culpable than their author. As the peruser of a slanderous journal would write what he reads, had he the talent, so the actual maligner would become a malefactor, had he the opportunity and the courage." Maledicus à malefico, nisi occasione, non differt," says Quintilian." He who stabs you in the dark, with a pen, would do the same with a pen-knife, were he equally safe from detection and the law."

A libeller's mouth has been compared to that of a volcano-the lighter portions of what it vomits forth are dissipated by the winds; the heavier ones fall

back into the throat whence they were disgorged. The aspersions of libellers may, perhaps, be better compared to fullers' earth, which, though it may seem to dirt you at first, only leaves you more pure and spotless, when it is rubbed off.

LIBRARY-A precious catacomb, wherein are embalmed and preserved imperishably, the great minds of the dead who will never die.

"In the library of the world," says Champfort, "men have hitherto been ranged according to the form, the size, and the binding. The time is coming when they will take rank and order according to their contents and intrinsic merits."

LIFE-A momentary convulsion between two tranquil eternities;-an avenue to death, as death is the gate that opens to a new and more enduring life. Our tables and bills of mortality, within the last hundred years, show a remarkable and unprecedented increase in the average duration of human life; while our capacities for taking advantage of this prolonged term have, at least, been doubled within the term mentioned. The existence of a rational and improvable creature, is not to be measured by years and months, but by ideas and sensations-by what we can see, enjoy, learn, and accomplish during our pilgrimage upon earth, in which point of view every educated indivi