ad: we abhor that old painful ploughing through axle-deep ruts: the
friend who will skate with us, is welcomer than he who holds us freezing
by the button; and the teacher, who suggestively bounds in his balloon
on the tops of a chain of arguments, is more popular in lecturing than
he of the old school, who must duteously and laboriously struggle up and
down those airy promontories.

I love an avenue, though, like Lord Ashburton's magnificent mile of
yew-trees, it may lead to nothing, and therefore have not expunged this
unnecessary preface: rather, will I bluntly come upon a next subject,
another work in my unseen circulating library,

THE SEVEN SAYINGS OF GRECIAN WISDOM,

ILLUSTRATED IN SEVEN TALES.

Cordially may this theme be commended to the more illuminating
booksellers: well would it be greeted by the picture-loving public. It
might come out from time to time as a periodical, in a classical
wrapper: might be decorated with the sages' physiognomies, copied from
antique gems, with the fancied passage in each one's life that provoked
the saying, and with specific illustrations of the exemplifying story.
There should be a brilliant preface, introducing the seven sages to each
other and the reader, after the ensample of Plutarch, and exhausting all
the antiquarianism, all the memoirism, and all the varia-lectionism of
the subject. The different tales should be of different countries and
ages of the world, to insure variety, and give an easier exit to
_ennui_. As thus: Solon's "Know thyself" might be fitted to an Eastern
favourite raised suddenly to power, or a poor and honest Glasgow weaver
all upon a day served as heir to a Scotch barony, when he forthwith
falls into fashionable vices. Chilo's "Note the end of life" might
concern the merriment of the drunkard's career, and its end--delirium
tremens, or spontaneous combustion: better, perhaps, as less vulgarian,
the grandeur and assassination of some Milanese ducal tyrant. The
"Watch your opportunity" of Pittacus could be shown in the fortunes of
some Whittington of trade, some Washington of peace, or some Napoleon of
war. Bias's uncharitable bias, believing the worst of the world, might
seem to some a truism, to others a falsehood, according as their fellows
have served them well or ill; but a brief history of some hypocrite's
life, some misanthrope's experience, or some Arabian Stylobatist's
resolve to be perched above this black earth on a column like a