his own character: the just man
dwells on the justice, the stern upon the wrath; the attributes that do
not please the worshipper he insensibly forgets. Wherefore, O my pupils,
you will not smile when you read in Barnes that the pygmies declared
Jove himself was a pygmy. The pious vanity of man makes him adore his
own qualities under the pretence of worshipping those of his God.

GLORIOUS CONSTITUTION.

A sentence is sometimes as good as a volume. If a man ask you to give
him some idea of the laws of England, the answer is short and easy: In
the laws of England there are somewhere about one hundred and fifty laws
by which a poor man may be hanged, but not one by which he can obtain
justice for nothing!

ANSWER TO THE POPULAR CANT THAT
GOODNESS IN A STATESMAN IS
BETTER THAN ABILITY.

As in the world we must look to actions, not motives, so a knave is the
man who injures you; and you do not inquire whether the injury be the
fruit of malice or necessity. Place, then, a fool in power, and he
becomes unconsciously the knave. Mr. Addington stumbled on the two very
worst and most villanous taxes human malice could have invented,--one on
medicines, the other on justice. What tyrant's fearful ingenuity could
afflict us more than by impeding at once redress for our wrongs, and
cure for our diseases? Mr. Addington was the fool _in se_, and therefore
the knave in office; but, bless you! he never meant it!

COMMON-SENSE.

Common-sense,--common-sense,--of all phrases, all catchwords, this is
often the most deceitful and the most dangerous. Look, in especial,
suspiciously upon common-sense whenever it is opposed to discovery.
Common-sense is the experience of every day. Discovery is something
against the experience of every day. No wonder, then, that when Galileo
proclaimed a great truth, the universal cry was, "Pshaw! common-sense
will tell you the reverse." Talk to a sensible man for the first time on
the theory of vision, and hear what his common-sense will say to it. In
a letter in the time of Bacon, the writer, of no mean intellect himself,
says: "It is a pity the chancellor should set his opinion against the
experience of so many centuries and the dictates of common-sense."
Common-sense, then, so useful in household matters, is less useful in
the legislative and in the scientific wo