this and
pity that--this should have been attired, that omitted? Yea, with his
wiry fiddle-string will he creak out his accursed variations. But let
him sit down and compose himself. He sees no improvements in variations
_then_.'"

The fault of which the censorious talker is guilty has been defined as a
"compound of many of the worst passions; latent pride, which discovers
the mote in a brother's eye, but hides the beam in our own; malignant
envy, which, wounded at the noble talents and superior prosperity of
others, transforms them into the objects and food of its malice, if
possible obscuring the splendour it is too base to emulate; disguised
hatred, which diffuses in its perpetual mutterings the irritable venom
of the heart; servile duplicity, which fulsomely praises to the face,
and blackens behind the back; shameless levity, which sacrifices the
peace and reputation of the absent, merely to give barbarous stings to a
jocular conversation: all together forming an aggregate the most
desolating on earth, and nearest in character to the malice of hell."

The censorious talker, with all his criticisms and censures, never does
any good, as none heed him but those who do not know him. His criticisms
have no influence with the wise and judicious. Though he may swim
against the stream of general opinion, he can never turn the stream of
general opinion to run with him. Though he may talk contrary to others,
he cannot persuade or constrain others to talk as he does. He may
dissent in judgment from them, but he cannot bring them over to coincide
with him; and it is a good thing for society that it is so. As he talks
without wisdom and charity, so he talks to no purpose, excepting to
prejudice weak and unwary minds, and degrade himself in the sober
judgment of the intelligent and thoughtful.

"Voltaire said that the 'character of the Frenchman is made up of the
tiger and the ape;' but even such a composition may be turned to some
useful account, while the inveterate fault-finder neutralizes, as far as
possible, every attempt made by others to do good. To perform any task
perfectly to his liking, would be as impossible as to 'make a portrait
of Proteus, or fix the figure of the fleeting air.' To speak favourably
of anybody or anything is a trait of generosity entirely foreign to his
nature; from temperament and confirmed habit, he 'must be cruel only to
be kind.' The only benefit he occasions is achieved contrary to his
inten