ut your
paradoxes in solid column, with not the infirmity of a doubt. So at
least shall you get an adequate deliverance. The natural motions of the
soul are so much better than the voluntary ones that you will never do
yourself justice in dispute. The thought is not then taken hold of by
the right handle, does not show itself proportioned and in its true
bearings, but bears extorted, hoarse, and half witness. But assume a
consent and it shall presently be granted, since really and underneath
their external diversities, all men are of one heart and mind.

Wisdom will never let us stand with any man or men on an unfriendly
footing. We refuse sympathy and intimacy with people, as if we waited
for some better sympathy and intimacy to come. But whence and when?
To-morrow will be like to-day. Life wastes itself whilst we are
preparing to live. Our friends and fellow-workers die off from us.
Scarcely can we say we see new men, new women, approaching us. We are
too old to regard fashion, too old to expect patronage of any greater
or more powerful. Let us suck the sweetness of those affections and
consuetudes that grow near us. These old shoes are easy to the feet.
Undoubtedly we can easily pick faults in our company, can easily whisper
names prouder, and that tickle the fancy more. Every man's imagination
hath its friends; and life would be dearer with such companions. But if
you cannot have them on good mutual terms, you cannot have them. If
not the Deity but our ambition hews and shapes the new relations, their
virtue escapes, as strawberries lose their flavor in garden-beds.

Thus truth, frankness, courage, love, humility and all the virtues range
themselves on the side of prudence, or the art of securing a present
well-being. I do not know if all matter will be found to be made of one
element, as oxygen or hydrogen, at last, but the world of manners and
actions is wrought of one stuff, and begin where we will we are pretty
sure in a short space to be mumbling our ten commandments.

*****

HEROISM.

"Paradise is under the shadow of swords."
Mahomet.

RUBY wine is drunk by knaves,
Sugar spends to fatten slaves,
Rose and vine-leaf deck buffoons;
Thunderclouds are Jove's festoons,
Drooping oft in wreaths of dread
Lightning-knotted round his head;
The hero is not fed on sweets,
Daily his own heart he eats;
Chambers of the gre