perior to ourselves. Being defrauded would be nothing, were it not so galling to be outwitted. Crates, the Greek philosopher, left his money in the hands of a friend, with orders to pay it to his children in✓ case they should be fools; for, said he, if they are philosophers, they will not want it. Money is more indispensable now than it was then, but, still, a wise man will have it in his head rather than his heart.

MORALITY-Keeping up appearances in this world, or becoming suddenly devout when we imagine that we may be shortly summoned to appear in the

next.

MORAL CHOLERA." It is easier," says St. Gregory Nazianzen, "to contract the vices of others than to impart to them our own virtue; just as it is easier to catch their diseases than to communicate to them our own good health1." Our anxiety to avoid bodily infection can only be exceeded by our total indifference to that which is mental There is a moral, as well as a physical cholera, and yet, while we are frightened to death at the approach of the one, we voluntarily expose ourselves, during our whole life, to the attacks of the other. One of our jails was lately emptied because it contained a single case of

1 Facilius est vitium contrahere quam virtutem impertire; quemadmodum facilius est morbo alieno infici, quam sanitatem largiri.

Asiatic cholera; all the rest are kept crowded, until the patients, labouring under moral cholera, shall have corrupted the whole mass of their fellow prisoners. It seems to be the object of these institutions to propagate and disseminate the miasmata of vice, instead of preventing their circulation. Such of our malefactors as have the disease, in the natural way, are employed to inoculate the others, and then we wonder that there is a plague in the land. If an offender have broken one of the commandments, we guard against a repetition of the crime by sending him to a place where he not only learns to break the other nine, but to break prison also, when he presently begins to exercise his newly-acquired knowledge upon the community. We hang and transport rogues on a large scale, but we produce them on a still more extensive

one.

MOTHERS. Four good mothers have given birth to four bad daughters :-Truth has produced hatred; Success, pride; Security, danger; and Familiarity, contempt. And, on the contrary, four bad mothers have produced as many good daughters, for Astronomy is the offspring of astrology; Chymistry of alchemy; Freedom, of oppression; Patience, of long-suffering.

MOUNTAINEERS-are rarely conquered, not

so much on account of the facility for defence afforded by their craggy heights, as from their hardier habits and greater patriotism. In the rich lowlands, art becomes the principal pursuit; art leads to riches and luxury, and these to enervation and subjection. On the high and barren places, man's occupations render him more conversant with nature, an intercourse which inseparably attaches him to "the mountain nymph-sweet Liberty."-When in danger of being worsted, Highlanders are renovated, like Antæus, by a touch of their native earth; and so might we, when attacked by the cares and sickliness of money-getting and money-spending, if we would only quit our crowded cities, take a walk in the fields, and touch the earth. When the leafless and embittering metropolis turns our moral honey into gall, we may always reverse the process by straying amid the flowers of the country.

MOUTH-An useless instrument to some people, in its capacity, by the organs of speech, of rendering ideas audible; but of special service to them in its other capacity of rendering victuals invisible.

MUSES-the. Nine blue-stocking old maids, who seem to have understood all arts except that of getting husbands, unless their celibacy may be attributed to their want of marriage portions. These

venerable young ladies are loudly and frequently invoked by poetasters, writers in albums and annuals, and other scribblers; but, like Mungo in the farce, each of them replies, "Massa, massa!-the more you call, the more me wont come." One of our tourists, at Paris, observing that there were only statues of eight muses on the Opera House, which was then incomplete, inquired of a labouring mason what had become of the ninth. "Monsieur, je ne vous dirois pas," replied the man; - "mais probablement elle s'amuse avec Apollon !”—An English operative would hardly have given such an answer. A gentleman once expressed his surprise that, in so rich a literary country as England, the Muses should not attain their due honours." Impossible!" cried a whist-playing old lady- They are nine, and of course cannot

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reckon honours."

MUSIC.-" Music, like man himself, derives all its dignity from its subordination to a loftier and more spiritual power. When, divorcing itself from poetry, it first sought to be a principal instead of an accessory, to attach more importance to a sound than to a thought, to supersede sentiment by skill, to become, in short, man's play-fellow, rather than his assistant teacher, a sensual instead of an intellectual gratification, its corruption, or at least its application to less ennobling purposes, had already

commenced. As the art of music, strictly so called, was more assiduously cultivated, as it became more and more perplexed with complicated intricacies, only understood by a few, and less and less an exponent of the simple feelings and sentiments that are intelligible to all, it may be said to have lost in general utility and value, what it gained in science, and to have been gradually dissolving that union between sound and sense, which imparted to it its chief interest and influence."

So entirely do I agree with the writer from whom the above extract is taken, that I have often rode back after a morning concert, to my residence in the country, that I might enjoy the superior pleasures of natural music. It was upon such an occasion, while strolling in the fields, that my thoughts involuntarily arranged themselves, as the novelists say, into the following stanzas :

I.

There's a charm and zest when the singer thrills

The throbbing breast with his dulcet trills,

And a joy more rare than the sweetest air

Art ever combined,

When the poet enhances,

By beautiful fancies,

The strain, and entrances

Both ear and mind.

Thy triumph, O music! is ne'er complete,

Till the pleasures of sense and of intellect meet.