out reflection those which alone exist. For the present generally gives us pain; we conceal it from our sight because it afflicts us, and if it be pleasant we regret to see it vanish away. We endeavor to sustain the present by the future, and think of arranging things not in our power, for a time at which we have no certainty of arriving.

If we examine our thoughts, we shall find them always occupied with the past or the future. We scarcely think of the present, and if we do so, it is only that we may borrow light from it to direct the future. The present is never our end; the past and the present are our means, the future alone is our end. Thus we never live, but hope to live, and while we always lay ourselves out to be happy, it is inevitable that we can never be so.

We are so unhappy that we cannot take pleasure in a thing save on condition of being troubled if it turn out ill, as a thousand things may do, and do every hour. He who should find the secret of rejoicing in good without being troubled at its contrary evil, would have hit the mark. It is perpetual motion. Our nature exists by motion; perfect rest is death.

When we are well we wonder how we should get on if we were sick, but when sickness comes we take our medicine cheerfully into that the evil resolves itself. We have no longer those passions, and that desire for amusement and gadding abroad, which were ours in health but are now incompatible with the necessities of our disease. So then nature gives us passions and desires in accordance with the immediate situation. Nothing troubles us but fears, which we, and not nature, make for ourselves, because fear adds to the condition in which we are the passions of the condition in which we are not.

Since nature makes us always unhappy in every condition, our desires paint for us a happy condition, joining to that in which we are the pleasures of the condition in which we are not; and were we to gain these pleasures we should not therefore be happy, because we should have other desires conformable to this new estate.

The example of Alexander's chastity has not made so many continent as that of his drunkenness has made intemperate. It is not shameful to be less virtuous than he, and it seems excusable to be no more vicious. We do not think ourselves

wholly partakers in the vices of ordinary men, when we see that we share those of the great, not considering that in such matters the great are but ordinary men. We hold on to them by the same end by which they hold on to the people, for at whatsoever height they be, they are yet united at some point to the lowest of mankind. They are not suspended in the air, abstracted from our society. No, doubly no; if they are greater than we, it is because their heads are higher; but their feet are as low as ours. There all are on the same level, resting on the same earth, and by the lower extremity are as low as we are, as the meanest men, as children, and the brutes.

Great men and little have the same accidents, the same tempers, the same passions, but one is on the felloe of the wheel, the other near the axle, and so less agitated by the same revolutions.

Man is full of wants, and cares only for those who can satisfy them all. "Such an one is a good mathematician," it is said. But I have nothing to do with mathematics, he would take me for a proposition. "This other is a good soldier." He would treat me as a besieged city. I need then an honorable man who can lend himself generally to all my wants.

We are fools if we rest content with the society of those like ourselves; miserable as we are, powerless as we are, they will not aid us, we shall die alone. We ought therefore to act as though we were alone, and should we in that case build superb mansions, etc.? We should search for truth unhesitatingly, and if we refuse it, we show that we value the esteem of men more than the search for truth.

The last act is tragic, how pleasantly soever the play may have run through the others. At the end a little earth is flung on our head, and all is over forever.

I feel that I might not have been, for the "I" consists in my thought; therefore I, who think, had not been had my mother been killed before I had life. So I am not a necessary being. Neither am I eternal nor infinite, but I see plainly there is in nature a necessary being, eternal and infinite.

Excessive or deficient mental powers are alike accused of madness. Nothing is good but mediocrity. The majority has settled that, and assails whoever escapes it, no matter by which

extreme.

I make no objection, would willingly consent to be in the mean, and I refuse to be placed at the lower end, not because it is low, but because it is an extreme, for I would equally refuse to be placed at the top. To leave the mean is to leave humanity. The greatness of the human soul consists in knowing how to keep the mean. So little is it the case that greatness consists in leaving it, that it lies in not leaving it.

Discourses on humility give occasion for pride to the boastful, and for humility to the humble. Those on skepticism give occasion for believers to affirm. Few men speak humbly of humility, chastely of chastity, few of skepticism doubtingly. We are but falsehood, duplicity, and contradiction, using even to ourselves concealment and guile.

The intellect believes naturally, and the will loves naturally, so that for lack of true objects, they must needs attach themselves to the false.

We cannot think of Plato and Aristotle, save in professorial robes. They were honest men like others, laughing with their friends, and when they amused themselves with writing the "Laws" or the "Politics," they did it as a pastime. That part of their life was the least philosophic and the least serious; the most philosophic was to live simply and quietly. If they wrote on politics it was as though they were laying down rules for a madhouse, and if they made as though they were speaking of a great matter, it was because they knew that the madmen to whom they spoke fancied themselves kings and emperThey entered into their views in order to make their folly as little harmful as possible.

ors.

We never teach men to be gentlemen, but we teach them everything else, and they never pique themselves so much on all the rest as on knowing how to be gentlemen. They pique themselves only on knowing the one thing they have not learnt.

Time heals all pain and misunderstanding, because we change and are no longer the same persons. Neither the offender nor the offended are any more themselves. It is like a nation which we have angered and meet again after two generations. They are Frenchmen still, but not the same.

Malignity when it has reason on its side becomes proud, and displays reason in all its splendor.

If we would reprove with success, and show another his mistake, we must see from what side he views the matter, for on that side it is generally true; and admitting that truth, show him the side on which it is false. He will be satisfied, for he will see that he is not mistaken, only that he did not see all sides. Now, no one is vexed at not seeing everything. But we do not like to be mistaken, and that perhaps arises from the fact that man by nature cannot see everything, and that by nature he cannot be mistaken in the side he looks at, since what we apprehend by our senses is always true.

The knowledge of external things will not console me for my ignorance of ethics in time of affliction, but the science of morals will always console me for my ignorance of external knowledge.

To put our trust in forms and ceremonies is superstitious; but not to comply with them is pride.

We never do evil so cheerfully and effectually as when we do it upon a false principle of conscience.

I must not seek my dignity from space, but from ruling my thought. I should have no more if I possessed worlds. By space the universe incloses and swallows me, a mere atom : by thought, I inclose the universe.

Justice and truth are two such fine points that our instruments are too blunt to touch them with accuracy. If they hit on the point, they cover it so broadly that they rest oftener on the wrong than on the right.

Whence is it that a lame man does not offend us, and that a deficient mind does offend us? It is because the lame man acknowledges that we walk straight; whereas, the crippled in mind maintain that it is we who go lame. But for this we should feel more compassion for them than resentment.

Epictetus proposes a similar question: why we are not angry when a man tells us that we have the headache, and yet fall into a passion when he tells us we reason ill, or make a wrong choice? The reason is, that we can be very certain that we have not the headache or are not lame; but we cannot be

so certain that we make a right choice. For having no assurance that we do so, but because it appears so to us, with all the light we have, when another with all his light sees the contrary, this confounds us, and keeps us in suspense: especially if a thousand other persons laugh at our choice, for then we must prefer our own light to that of so many others, which is a perplexing and difficult matter. But men never contradict each other thus about the lameness of any one.

HUDIBRAS.

BY SAMUEL BUTLER.

[SAMUEL BUTLER, the well-known English author, was a native of Strensham, Worcestershire, where he was born in 1612. Educated at the Worcester grammar school and probably at Cambridge University, he became an attendant to Elizabeth, Countess of Kent, and later to the Presbyterian Sir Samuel Luke, who is supposed to be the prototype of Hudibras. After the Restoration he entered the service of the Earl of Carberry, Lord President of Wales, and was appointed steward of Ludlow Castle. His "Hudibras" (published in three parts, 1663-1678), a satirical poem directed against the Puritans, achieved immediate popularity, and a grant of three hundred pounds was bestowed on the author by Charles II. Butler died at Covent Garden, September 25, 1880, in great poverty, and was buried at the expense of his friend, William Longueville of the Temple.]

WHEN civil fury first grew high,

And men fell out, they knew not why;
When hard words, jealousies, and fears,
Set folks together by the ears,

And made them fight, like mad or drunk,
For Dame Religion, as for punk;
Whose honesty they all durst swear for,
Though not a man of them knew wherefore:

When Gospel Trumpeter, surrounded

With long-eared rout, to battle sounded,

And pulpit, drum ecclesiastic,

Was beat with fist, instead of a stick;
Then did Sir Knight abandon dwelling,

And out he rode a colonelling.

A wight he was, whose very sight would
Entitle him Mirror of Knighthood;

That never bent his stubborn knee

To anything but Chivalry;