Girls learn from such books to think coarsely and boldly about lovers and marrying; their early modesty is effaced by the craving for admiration; their warm affections are silenced by the desire for selfish triumph; they lose the fresh and honest feelings of youth while they are yet scarcely developed; they pass with sad rapidity from their early visions of Tancred and Orlando to notions of good connections, establishments, excellent matches, &c.; and yet they think, and their mammas think, that they are only advancing in "prudence" and knowledge of the world, that bad, contaminating knowledge of the world, which I sometimes imagine must have been the very apple that Eve plucked from the forbidden tree. Alas! when once tasted, the garden of life is an innocent and happy Paradise no Sala.

more.

It cannot but be injurious to the human mind never to be called into effort. The habit of receiving pleasure without any exertion of thought, by the mere excitement of curiosity and sensibility, may be justly ranked among the worst effects of habitual novel-reading. Like idle morning visitors, the brisk and breathless periods hurry in and hurry off in quick and profitless succession; each, indeed, for the moment of its stay, prevents the pain of vacancy, while it indulges the love of sloth; but altogether they leave the mistress of the house-the soul, I mean-flat and exhausted, incapable of attending to her own concerns, and unfitted for the conversation of more rational guests.

Coleridge.

Novels do not force their fair readers to sin, they only instruct them how to sin; the consequences of which are fully detailed, and not in a way calculated to seduce any but weak minds; few of their heroines are happily disposed of. Zimmerman.

Writers of novels and romances in general | bring a double loss on their readers, they rob them both of their time and money; representing men, manners, and things, that never have been, nor are likely to be; either confounding or perverting history and truth,

Novelty has charms that our minds can hardly withstand. The most valuable things, if they have for a long while appeared among us, do not make any impression as they are good, but give us a distaste as they are old. But when the influence of this fantastical humour is over, the same men or things will come to be admired again, by a happy return of our good taste. Thackeray.

NOVELTY-Love of.

Before I translated the New Testament out of the Greek, all longed after it; when it was done, their longing lasted scarce four weeks. Then they desired the books of Moses; when I had translated these, they had enough thereof in a short time. After that, they would have the Psalms; of these they were soon weary, and desired other books. So it will be with the book of Ecclesiastes, which they now long for, and about which I have taken great pains. All is acceptable until our giddy brains be satisfied; afterwards we let things lie, and seek after new. Luther.

NOW-Opinions about.

One of our poets (Cowley,) speaks of an "everlasting now." If such a condition of existence were offered to us in this world, and it were put to the vote whether we should accept the offer and fix all things immutably as they are, who are they whose voices would be given in the affirmative? Not those who are in pursuit of fortune, or of fame, or of knowledge, or of enjoyment, or of happiness; though with regard to all of these, as far as any of them are attainable, there is more pleasure in the pursuit than in the attainment. Not those who are at sea, or travelling in a stage coach. Not the man who is shaving himself. Not those who have the tooth-ache, or who are having a tooth drawn. The fashionable beauty might; and the fashionable singer, and the fashionable opera dancer, and the actor who is in the height of his power and reputation. So might the alderman at a city feast. So would the heir who is squandering a large fortune faster than it was accumulated for him. And the thief who is not taken. And the convict who is not hanged, and the

NOW.

scoffer at religion, whose heart belies his tongue. Not the wise and the good. Not those who are in sickness or in sorrow. Not I. But were I endowed with the power of suspending the effect of time upon things around me, methinks there are some of my flowers which should neither fall nor fade; decidedly my kitten should never attain to cathood; and I am afraid my little boy would continue to mis-speak half-uttered words; and never while I live, outgrow that epicene dress of French grey, half European, half Asiatic in its fashion. Southey.

The daughter was young and pretty; and a young and pretty nun, what is she but a flower worked in black crape-a silver crest on a funeral-pile? Hannay.

NUN-No Praise for becoming a.

I cannot praise a fugitive and cloistered virtue unexercised and unbreathed, that never sallies out and sees her adversary, but slinks' out of the race, where that immortal garland | is to be run for, not without dust and heat. Assuredly we bring not innocence into the world, we bring impurity much rather: that which purifies us is trial, and trial is by what is contrary. That virtue, therefore, which is but a youngling in the contemplation of evil, and knows not the utmost that vice promises to her followers, and rejects it, is but a blank virtue, not a pure. Milton.

NUN-Unnatural Sacrifice of a.

So young too young-consigned to cloistral shade,

Untimely wedded-wedded, yet a maid!
And hast thou left no thought, no wish behind,
No sweet employment for the wandering

wind,

Who would be proud to waft a sigh from thee, Sweeter than aught he steals in Araby?

Thou wert immured-poor maiden-as I guess,

In the blank childhood of thy simpleness; Too young to doubt, too pure to be ashamed, Thou gavest to God-what God had never

claimed,

And didst unweeting sign away thine all Of earthly good, a guiltless prodigal;

OATH.

The large reversion of thine unborn love
Was sold to purchase an estate above.

Yet by thy hands upon thy bosom prest
I think indeed thou art not quite at rest;
That Christ that hangs upon the sculptured

cross

Is not the Jesus to redeem thy loss;-
Nor will that book, whate'er its page contain,
Convince thee that the world is false and vain,

Even now there is a something at thy heart That would be off, -but may not, dare not

start.

Yes, yes, - thy face, thine eyes, thy closed lips prove

Thou wert created to be loved, and love.
Poor maiden, victim of the vilest craft
At which e'er Moloch grinned or Belial laught,
May all thine aimless wishes be forgiven,

May all thy sighs be registered in Heaven,
And God his mercy and his love impart
To what thou shouldst have been-and what
thou art!
Coleridge.

NUN-Unhappy State of a.

For aye to be in shady cloister mew'd,
To live a barren sister all your life,
Chanting faint hymns to the cold fruitless

OATH.

OATH-Sanctity of an.

OBLIGATION.

To wring the widow from her custom'd right;
And have no other reason for this wrong,
But that he was bound by a solemn oath?

I hear much of "obedience," -how that the kindred virtues are prescribed and exemplified by Jesuitism; the truth of which, and the merit of which, far be it from me to deny. Obedience, a virtue universally forgotten in these days, will have to become universally known again. Obedience is good and indispensable; but if it be obedience to what is wrong and false, there is no name for such a depth of buman cowardice and calamity, spurned everlastingly by the gods. Loyalty! Will you be loyal to Beelzebub? Will you make "a covenant with death and hell"? I will not be loyal to Beelzebub; I will become a nomadic Chactau rather, a barricading Sans culotte, a Conciliation-hall repealer; anything and everything is venial to that.

OBSERVATION-Correctness of.

To behold, is not necessarily to observe, and the power of comparing and combining is only to be obtained by education. It is much to be regretted that habits of exact observation are not cultivated in our schools: to this deficiency may be traced much of the fallacious reasoning, the false philosophy, which prevails. Humboldt.

OBSERVATION-Definition of.
An old man's memory.

OBSTINACY-Causes of

Swift.

OBSTINACY-Slavishness of.

An obstinate man does not hold opinions, but they hold him.

Pope.

OBSTINACY-Wrong-neadedness of. Stiff in opinion, always in the wrong. Dryden.

OCCUPATION-A Base.

Every base occupation makes one sharp in its practice, and dull in every other.

Sir Philip Sidney.

OCCUPATION-Happiness of.

Occupation was one of the pleasures of Paradise, and we cannot be happy without it.

Mrs. James.

OFFENCE-Denunciation against.

Woe unto the world because of offences! for it must needs be that offences come; but woe to that man by whom the offence cometh' St. Matther.

OFFENCE-where not Intended.

Nothing is more unpleasing than to find that offence has been received where none was intended, and that pain has been given. to those who were not guilty of any provoca tion. As the great end of society is mutual beneficence, a good man is always uneasy when he finds himself acting in opposition to the purposes of life; because, though his conscience may easily acquit him of malic prepense, of settled hatred, or contrivances of mischief, yet he seldom can be certain that he has not failed by negligence or indolence, that he has not been hindered from consulting the common interest by too much regard to his own ease, or too much indifference to the happiness of others. Johnson.

OFFENCES-to be Pardoned.

Offences ought to be pardoned, for fex offend willingly, but as they are compelled by some affection. Hegesippus.

OMENS-of Evil.

periods of fatigue and rest, their sufferings and their cure; but obstinacy has no resource, and the first wound is mortal. Johnson,

Two mighty eagles fell, and there they perch'd, Gorging and feeding from our soldiers' hands. This morning are they fled away, and gone;

Three, and no more! What then? And why what then?

But just three drops! and why not just three drops.

As well as four or five, or five-and-twenty ?
Must I stumble too?

Away, ye dreams: what if it thunder'd now?
Or if a raven cross'd me in my way?

Or, now it comes, because last night I dream'd
The council-hall was hung with crimson round,
And all the ceiling plaster'd o'er with black?
No more blue fires, and ye dull rolling lakes,
Fathomless caves, ye dungeons of the night, -
Phantoms, begone; if I must die, I'll fall
True politician, and defy you all.

Dryden and Lee.

OPINION.

Dissolved to yellow puddle, which anon
A flash of thirsty lightning quite lick'd up.

Lee.

Ill omens may the guilty tremble at,
Make every accident a prodigy,
And monsters frame, where nature never
err'd;

May the scared conscience start at blazing meteors,

And call the scream of every hooting owl,
Or croaking raven, fate's most dreadful voice :
For me, I laugh at them. Should now the
heavens

Flame with a thousand fires, ne'er seen before,
And thunder beat the winds from ev'ry corner;
Not for the calm of all the universe,
Would I put off my joys a moment longer.

OMISSIONS-Sin of.

Ibid.

No liberal man would impute a charge of unsteadiness to another for having changed his opinion. Cicero.

The history of a cause seems much less interesting than that of one great man, or of a people; but could the historian really tell it, it would be the story of all stories, and would enchant a listening world. It seems to abide in dates, and public documents, and resolutions of public assemblies; in short, in the material husk of events, and forms a narrative which even serious and dutiful readers are