positions could be maintained-" that marriages in general would be as happy, and often more so, if they were all made by the Lord Chancellor, upon a due consideration of character and circumstances, without the parties having any choice in the matter."

In the pressure that now weighs upon all persons of limited fortune, sisters, nieces and daughters, are the only commodities that our friends are willing to bestow upon us for nothing, and which we cannot afford to accept, even gratuitously. It seems to have been the same, at a former period, in France. Maitre Jean Picard tells us that, when he was returning from the funeral of his wife, doing his best to look disconsolate, such of the neighbours as had grown up daughters and cousins came to him, and kindly implored him not to be inconsolable, as they could give him a second wife." Six weeks after," says Maitre Jean, "I lost my cow, and, though I really grieved upon this occasion, not one of them offered to give me another."

It has been recorded by some anti-connubial wag, that when two widowers were once condoling together, on the recent bereavement of their wives, one of them exclaimed, with a sigh, "Well may I bewail my loss, for I had so few differences with the dear deceased, that the last day of my marriage was as happy as the first."-"There I surpass you," said his friend, "for the last day of mine was happier!"

MARTYR-That which all religions have furnished in about equal proportions, so much easier is it to die for religion than to live for it. Our high church conservatives cry out, with a lusty voice, "Touch not that which has been cemented by the blood of the holy martyrs!" Why, these very martyrs, whose devotedness proves nothing but their sincerity, died in the cause of reform; and yet their example is cited as a warning against it! If their blood appeal to us at all, it may rather be supposed to cry out against the monstrous abuses of that Christianity, for whose cause they became martyrs.

MASQUERADE.-A synonyme for life and civilised society. There are two sorts of masquerade, simulation, or pretending to be what you are not: and dissimulation, or concealing what you are, and we are all mummers under one or the other of these categories, excepting a few performers at the two extremes of life-those who are above, and those who are beneath all regard for appearances. a secret consciousness of their defects is always prompting hypocrites to disguise themselves in some assumed virtue, the only way to discover their real character, is to read them backwards, like a Hebrew book.

As

Many masqueraders on the stage of real life,

betray themselves by overacting their part. With religious pretenders this is more especially the case, and for an obvious reason, they increase the outward and visible sign, in proportion as they feel themselves deficient in the inward and spiritual grace. Can we wonder at their sanctimonious looks, and puritanical severity? Even when they flounder and fail in their hypocrisy, they would persuade us that their very blunders proceed from a heavenly impulse. They remind one of the fat friar, who being about to mount his mule, called upon his patron saint to assist him, and gave such a vigorous spring at the same time, that he fell over on the other side, when he exclaimed with an air of complacency, "Hallo! the good saint has helped me too much!"

So difficult is it to avoid overacting our part, that we cannot always escape this error, when we are agents and accessaries, instead of principals, in imposing upon the world. The Regent of France, intending to go to a masquerade in the character of a lackey, and expressing an anxious wish to remain undetected, the Abbé Dubois, suggested that this object might easily be attained, if he would allow him to go as his master, and to give him two or three kicks before the whole company. This was arranged accordingly, but the pretended master applied his foot so rudely and so often, that the

Regent was fain to exclaim, "Gently, gently, Monsieur l'Abbé! you are disguising me too much!"

MASTER.-Being our own master, means that we are at liberty to be the slave of our own follies, caprices, and passions. Generally speaking, a man cannot have a worse or more tyrannical master than himself. As our habits and luxuries domineer over us, the moment we are in a situation to indulge them, few people are in reality so dependent as the independent. Poverty and subjection debar us from many vices by the impossibility of giving way to them when we are rich and free from the domination of others, we are corrupted and oppressed by ourselves. There was some philosophy, therefore, in the hen-pecked husband, who being asked why he had placed himself so completely under the government of his wife, answered, "To avoid the worse slavery of being under my own."

MEDICAL-PRACTICE.-Guessing at Nature's intentions and wishes, and then endeavouring to substitute man's.

MELANCHOLY-Ingratitude to Heaven.—

O impious ingrates! cast your eyes

On the fair earth-the seas-the skies,

And if the vision fail to prove

A Maker of unbounded love ;

If in the treasures scattered wide,
To guests of earth, and air, and tide;
If in the charms, with various zest,
To every sense of man addressed,
Ye will not see the wish to bless
With universal happiness,

Nor judge that mortals best fulfil
A bountiful Creator's will,

When, with a cheerful gratitude,
They taste the pleasures He has strew'd,
What can avail the wit, the sage,

The love of man, the sacred page,

When, by such evidence assailed,

Your God and all His works have failed!

As a good antidote to gloomy anticipations, we should all of us do well to recollect the saying of Sir Thomas More,

"If evils come not-then our fears are vain,

And if they do-fear but augments the pain."

MEMORY.-Rochefoucauld says, "Every one complains of his memory, no one of his judgment.” And why? Because we consider the former as depending upon nature; and the latter upon ourselves. Alleged want of memory is a most convenient refuge for our self-love, since we can always throw it as a cloak over our ignorance. It is astonishing how much people are in the habit of forgetting what they never knew.

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Strange," says the same writer, " that we can always remember the smallest thing that has happened to ourselves, and yet not recollect how often we have repeated it to the same person."