good-naturedly refrain from marking the aces and shuffling up the kings? I can well imagine the lofty smile with which the scorner of men must have read such frivolous recommendations to depart from the philosophical system adorned in vain by his genius if not enforced by his example. He who despised the opinions of sages and saints—he to be frightened into respecting the opinions of idlers at a club!—send to him an admonition from the world of honour, to respect the superstitions of card-players! as well send to Mr Faraday an admonition from the world of spirits to respect the superstitions of table-rappers! To either philosopher there would be the same reply—“I go by the laws of nature.” In short, strong in the conscience of his opinion, this consistent reasoner sublimely persevered in justifying his theories of misanthropy by his own resolute practice of knavery, inexcusable and unredeemed. “What Timon thought, this god-like Cato was!” But man, whatever his inferiority to the angels, is still not altogether a sheep. And even a sheep only submits to be sheared once a year; to be sheared every day would irritate the mildest of lambs. Some of the fellow-mortals whom my hero smiled on and plundered, took heart, and openly accused him of marking the aces and shuffling up the kings. At first his native genius suggested to him the wisdom of maintaining, in smiling silence, the contempt of opinion he had hitherto so superbly evinced. Unhappily for himself, he was induced by those who, persuaded that a man of so high a birth could never have stooped to so low a peccadillo, flattered him with the assurance of an easy triumph over his aspersers—unhappily, I say, he was induced into a departure from that system of action which he had hitherto maintained with so supreme a success. He condescended, for the first time in his life, to take other men into respect—to regard what might be thought of him by a world he despised. He brought an action for libel against his accusers. His counsel, doubtless by instruction, sought to redeem that solitary inconsistency in his client, by insinuating that my lord’s chosen associates were themselves the cheats, malignant conspirators against the affable hawk of quality in whom they had expected to find a facile pigeon. The cuttle-fish blackens the water to escape from his enemies, but he does not always escape; nay, in blackening the water he betrays himself to the watchful spectators. My hero failed in his action, and quitted the court leaving behind him the bubble reputation. If I am rightly informed, Adversity, that touchstone of lofty minds, found this grand philosopher as serene as if he had spent his life in studying Epictetus. He wrapt himself, if not in virtue, at least in his scorn of it,— “Et udo Spernit humi defugiente penno.”