ies, I really think the
Russian virago an impertinent puss for meddling with us, and engaging
half a score kittens of her acquaintance to scratch the poor old lion,
who, if he has been insolent in his day, has probably acted no otherwise
than they themselves would have acted in his circumstances and with his
power to embolden them.

Though a Christian is not to be quarrelsome, he is not to be crushed.
Though he is but a worm before God, he is not such a worm as every
selfish and unprincipled wretch may tread on at his pleasure.

St. Paul seems to condemn the practice of going to law. "Why do ye not
suffer wrong, etc." But if we look again we shall find that a litigious
temper prevailed among the professors of that day. Surely he did not
mean, any more than his Master, that the most harmless members of
society should receive no advantage of its laws, or should be the only
persons in the world who should derive no benefit from those
institutions without which society cannot subsist.

Tobacco was not known in the Golden Age. So much the worse for the
Golden Age. This age of iron and lead would be insupportable without it;
and therefore we may reasonably suppose that the happiness of those
better days would have been much improved by the use of it.

No man was ever scolded out of his sins. The heart, corrupt as it is,
and because it is so, grows angry if it be not treated with some
management and good manners, and scolds again. A surly mastiff will bear
perhaps to be stroked, though he will growl even under that operation,
but, if you touch him roughly, he will bite.

Simplicity is become a very rare quality in a writer. In the decline of
great kingdoms, and where refinement in all the arts is carried to an
excess, I suppose it is always so. The later Roman writers are
remarkable for false ornament; they were without doubt greatly admired
by the readers of their own day; and with respect to authors of the
present era, the popular among them appear to me to be equally
censurable on the same account. Swift and Addison were simple.

* * * * *

THOMAS DE QUINCEY

Confessions of an English Opium-Eater

Thomas de Quincey, scholar, essayist, critic, opium-eater, was
born at Manchester on August 15, 1785. A singularly sensitive
and imaginative boy, De Quincey rapidly became a brilliant
scholar, and at fifteen years of age could speak Greek so
fluently as t