Perverse Conduct of Man.—Among the many properties of human nature which almost exceed comprehension, comes the parsimony of the rich and the extravagance of the poor. Some rich men spare to-day, as if they feared starving tomorrow, and the indigent often consume in an hour what they may feel the want of for a week. These properties are the more unaccountable, because parsimony is chiefly found to predominate in aged people, who may expect death every day, and extravagance chiefly in the young, who may reasonably hope to live many years; as if old people hoard money because they cannot want it, and young ones throw it away because it is necessary to their subsistence.
Friends and Enemies.—While we value the praise of our friends, we should not despise the censures of our enemies; as from the malice of the latter we frequently learn our faults, which the partiality of the former led them to overlook or conceal.
Ghosts Everywhere.—Could anything be more miraculous than an actual authentic ghost? The English Johnson longed, all his life, to see one, but could not, though he went to Cock-lane, and thence to the church-vaults, and tapped on coffins. Foolish doctor! Did he never, with the mind’s eye, as well as with the body’s, look round him into that full tide of human life he so loved? did he never so much as look into himself? The good doctor was a ghost, as actual and authentic as heart could wish; well nigh a million of ghosts were travelling the streets by his side. Sweep away the illusion of time; compress the three-score years into three minutes: what else was he—what else are we? Are we not spirits, shaped into a body, into an appearance, and that fade away again into air and invisibility? This is no metaphor; it is a simple scientific fact: we start out of nothingness, take figure, and are apparitions; round us, as round the veriest spectre, is eternity; and to eternity minutes are as years and æons. Where now is Alexander of Macedon?—does the steel host that yelled in fierce battle-shouts at Issus and Arbela remain behind him: or have they all vanished utterly, even as perturbed goblins must? Napoleon too, and his Moscow retreats and Austerlitz campaigns—was it all other than the veriest spectre-hunt, which has now, with its howling tumult that made night hideous, flitted away? Ghosts!—there are nigh a thousand millions walking the earth openly at noontide; some half-hundred have vanished from it, some half-hundred have arisen in it, ere thy watch ticks once. Generation after generation takes to itself the form of a body, and, forth issuing from Cimmerian night on heaven’s mission, APPEARS. What force and fire is in each he expends: one grinding in the mill of industry; one, hunter-like, climbing the giddy Alpine heights of science; one madly dashed in pieces on the rocks of strife, in war with his fellow; and then the heaven-sent is recalled; his earthly vesture falls away, and soon even to sense becomes a vanished shadow. Thus, like some wild-flaming, wild-thundering train of heaven’s artillery, does this mysterious mankind thunder and flame, in long-drawn, quick-succeeding grandeur, through the unknown deep. Thus, like a God-created, fire-breathing spirit-host, we emerge from the Inane, haste stormfully across the astonished earth, then plunge again into the Inane. But whence? Oh, heaven, whither? Sense knows not; faith knows not, only that it is through mystery to mystery, from God and to God.—Carlyle’s Essays.
The Metropolis.—London in length is nearly 8 miles, its breadth 3, and its circumference 26. It contains above 8,000 streets, lanes, alleys, and courts, and more than 65 different squares. It has 246 churches and chapels, 207 meeting houses for Dissenters, 43 chapels for foreigners, and 6 synagogues for Jews—making 502 places of public worship. The number of inhabitants during the sitting of Parliament is estimated at 1,250,000. In this vast city there are upwards of 4,000 seminaries for education, 10 institutions for promoting the arts and sciences, 122 asylums for the indigent, 17 for the sick and lame, 13 dispensaries, 704 charitable institutions, 58 courts of justice, 7,040 professional men connected with the various departments of the law. There are 13,300 vessels trading to the river Thames in the course of a year, and 40,000 waggons going and returning to the metropolis in the same period, including their repeated voyages. The amount of exports and imports to and from the Thames is estimated at £66,811,922 sterling annually, and the property floating in this vast city every year is £170,000,000 sterling. These circumstances may be sufficient to convince us of the amazing extent and importance of the capital of the British empire.
No person can be happy without friends. The heart is formed for love, and cannot be satisfied without the opportunity of giving and receiving affection. If we love others, they will love us; and in order to have friends, we must show ourselves friendly. Hence it is every one’s duty to cultivate a cheerful and obliging disposition. It is impossible to be happy without it.
He who would do justly to all men, must begin from knowing to be not unjust to himself.
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