the price of his production, took a larger house in Dublin, and ultimately made a handsome fortune by having been ruined.

MISANTHROPE.-Quite unworthy of Goethe's genial and penetrative mind is his misanthropical remark, that "each of us, the best as well as the worst, hides within him something, some feeling, some remembrance, which, if it were known, would make you hate him." More consonant would it have been to truth, as well as to an enlightened spirit of humanism, had he reversed the proposition, and exclaimed, in the words of Shakspeare—

"There is some soul of goodness in things evil,
Would men observingly distil it out!"

Law's observation, "that every man knows something worse of himself than he is sure of in others,” savours not of misanthropy, but of that doubly-beneficial feeling which inculcates individual humility, and universal charity.

Rochefoucauld, and misanthropical writers of the same class, cannot succeed in giving any man, of a generous and clear intellect, an unfavourable opinion of human nature. Like the workers of tapestry, who always behold the wrong side, they themselves may see nothing but unfinished outlines, coarse materials, crooked ends, and glaring defects, and yet produce a

portrait which, to those who contemplate it in front, and from a proper point of view, shall be full of grace, beauty, harmony, and proportion.

MISER.-One who, though he loves himself better than all the world, uses himself worse; for he lives like a pauper, in order that he may enrich his heirs, whom he naturally hates, because he knows that they hate him, and sigh for his death. In this respect, misers have been compared to leeches, which, when they get sick and die, disgorge, in a minute, the blood they have been so long sucking up. La Bruyere tersely says " Jeune on conserve pour la vieillesse : vieux on épargne pour la mort.”

Pithy enough was the reply of the avaricious old man, who, being asked by a nobleman of doubtful courage what pleasure he found in amassing riches which he never used, answered-" Much the same that your Lordship has in wearing a sword."

Perhaps the severest reproach ever made to a miser, was uttered by Voltaire. At a subscription of the French Academy for some charitable object, each contributor putting in a louis d'or, the collector, by mistake, made a second application to a member, noted for his penuriousness.—“I have already paid,' exclaimed the latter, with some asperity." I beg your pardon," said the applicant: "I have no doubt you paid; I believe it, though I did not see it."

"And I saw it, and do not believe it," whispered Voltaire.

MISFORTUNE-Is but another. word for the follies, blunders, and vices, which, with a greater blindness, we attribute to the blind goddess, to the fates, to the stars, to any one, in short, but ourselves. Our own head and heart are the heaven and earth which we accuse, and make responsible for all. our calamities.

The prudent make the reverses by which they have been overthrown supply a basis for the restoration of their fallen fortunes, as the lava which has destroyed a house often furnishes the materials for rebuilding it. Fools and profligates, on the contrary, seek solace for their troubles, by plunging into sensual and gross pleasures, as the wounded buffalo rolls himself in the mud.

The misfortune of the mischievous and evil-minded, is the good fortune of the virtuous; the failure of the guilty, is the success of the innocent: to pity, therefore, the former, is, in some sort, to injure the latter, and to destroy the effect of the great moral lesson afforded by both. Let us keep our sympathies for the sufferings of the good.

All men might be better reconciled to their fate, if they would recollect that there are two species of misfortune, at which we ought never to repine;―viz.,

that which we can, and that which we cannot, remedy; -regret being, in the former case, unnecessary, in the latter, unavailing.

The same vanity which leads us to assign our misfortunes or misconduct to others, prompts us to attribute all our lucky chances to our own talent, prudence, and forethought. Not a word of the fates or stars when we are getting rich, and everything goes on prosperously. So deeply-rooted in our nature is the tendency to make others responsible for our own misdeeds, that we lapse into the process almost unconsciously. When the clergyman has committed a peccadillo, he is doubly severe towards his congregation, and does vicarious penance in the persons of his flock. Men scold their children, servants, and dependants, for their own errors; coachmen invariably punish their horses after they themselves have made any stupid blunder in driving them; and even children, when they have tumbled over a chair, revenge themselves for their awkwardness, by beating and kicking the impassive furniture. Wine, the discoverer of truth, sometimes brings out this universal failing in a manner equally signal and ludicrous. An infant being brought to christen to a country curate, at a time when he was somewhat overcome by early potations, he was unable to find the service of Baptism in the book; and, after fumbling for some time, peevishly exclaimed-"Confound the brat! what is the matter with it? I never,

in all my life, knew such a troublesome child to christen!"

MISSIONS-Religious.— An attempt to produce, in distant and unenlightened nations, an uniformity of opinion on subjects upon which the missionaries themselves are at fierce and utter variance; thus submitting an European controversy of 1800 years to the decision of a synod of savages. Where the missionary begins with civilising and reclaiming the people among whom he is cast, he cannot fail to improve their temporal condition, and he is likely to contribute to their spiritual welfare; neither of which objects can be attained by the hasty zealot, who commences by attempting to teach the five points of Calvinism to barbarians unable to count their five fingers.

There is no reason to suppose, that the rapid conversion of the whole world to Christianity forms any part of the scheme of Providence, since, in eighteen centuries, so little comparative progress has been made towards its accomplishment. Still less shall we be warranted in concluding, that all those who remain in spiritual darkness will be eternally shut out from the mercy of their Creator, if we duly perpend the spirit of the Scriptures-"The Gentiles which have not the law, do by nature the things contained in the law." Rom. ii. 14. God is no respecter of persons, but in every nation he that feareth him, and worketh right