To attain complex and difficult ends by simple means, whether in physics or politics, falls not to the lot of man. What should we think of the man who should insist on having a simple watch, which should answer every object of that machine, and yet possess the simplicity of a sun-dial? The artificer would naturally say to such a customer, "Sir, if you want a sun-dial, you can have a very cheap and a very simple one; but if you desire a watch, I shall be glad to learn how its operations are to be accomplished without complex mechanism."
THE SELECTOR;
AND
LITERARY NOTICES OF
NEW WORKS.
A RUSSIAN WEDDING.
(From Dr. Granville's Travels.)
Early one day in November, a kind young friend, the son of Mr. Anderson, the oldest English merchant in St. Petersburgh, whose attentions to me were unremitting, put a finely embossed card into my hands, on which was printed, in Russian characters, the following invitation, literally translated:—
"Ivan Ivanovitch and Prascovia Constantinova Ivanoff humbly request the favour of your attendance on the marriage ceremony of their daughter Anna Ivanowna with Nicholai Demetrivich Borissow, and to the dinner-table, this November the 13th day, in the year 1827, at two o'clock in the afternoon."