* * * * *
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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