ed ground, till your head
be uncovered, and your feet be bared in the awe of veneration) enter
with profit upon the following descriptions of character,--that Temple
of the Ten Statutes, wherein I have stored and consecrated the most
treasured relics of my travelled thoughts and my collected experience.

TEN CHARACTERS.

I.

The mild, irresolute, good-natured, and indolent man. These qualities
are accompanied with good feelings, but no principles. The want of
firmness evinces also the want of any peculiar or deeply rooted system
of thought. A man conning a single and favourite subject of meditation
grows wedded to one or the other of the opinions on which he revolves. A
man universally irresolute has generally led a desultory life, and never
given his attention long together to one thing. This is a man most easy
to cheat, my beloved friends; you cheat him even with his eyes open.
Indolence is dearer to him than all things; and if you get him alone and
put a question to him point blank, he cannot answer, No.

II.

The timid, suspicious, selfish, and cold man. Generally a character of
this description is an excellent man of business, and would at first
sight seem to baffle the most ingenious swindler. But you have
one hope,--I have rarely found it deceive me,--this man is usually
ostentatious. A cold, a fearful, yet a worldly person has ever an eye
upon others; he notes the effect certain things produce on them; he is
anxious to learn their opinions, that he may not transgress; he likes to
know what the world say of him; nay, his timidity makes him anxious
to repose his selfishness on their good report. Hence he grows
ostentatious, likes that effect which is favourably talked of, and that
show which wins consideration. At him on this point, my pupils!

III.

The melancholy, retired, sensitive, intellectual character. A very good
subject this for your knaveries, my young friends, though it requires
great discrimination and delicacy. This character has a considerable
portion of morbid suspicion and irritation belonging to it,--against
these you must guard; at the same time its prevailing feature is a
powerful but unacknowledged vanity. It is generally a good opinion of
himself, and a feeling that he is not appreciated by others, that make
a man reserved; he deems himse