If, indeed, the writer or writers were verily sportive,--if there were wit or amusement in this unbent condition of the bow, most readers might think there was very little reason to complain: there would be mirth, if not wisdom, to be had. But there is no such compensation. With few exceptions, nothing can be more heavy or cumbrous than their efforts at pleasantry. The illustrations, intended to be humorous and sprightly, have no gaiety in them; and the satirical observations have rarely any other characteristic of satire than their evident injustice. The manner in which these writers appear to have proceeded, in the excogitation of their detached remarks, is after this fashion,--on all occasions, trivial or important, to carp at any thing that assumes the shape of a commonplace truth, any thing that is generally said or admitted. By this means some merit of originality may surely be obtained, and a lofty character for independence secured. Open the book at the first page:-- "The heart has often been compared to the needle for its constancy: has it ever been so for its variations?" Why should it? Why should the magnetic needle, which is a popular illustration for constancy of purpose, be chosen as an emblem also for our mutability? Are there not the winds, and the clouds, and the feather blown in the air, and a thousand other similes for this phase of our nature? But "true as the needle to the pole" had been said so long that it was time to see whether the saying could not be reversed. We may as well quote the rest of the passage. "Yet were any man to keep minutes of his feelings from youth to age, what a table of variations would they present! how numerous! how diverse! how strange! This is just what we find in the writings of Horace. If we consider his occasional effusions--and such they almost all are--as merely expressing the piety or the passion, the seriousness or the levity of the moment, we shall have no difficulty in accounting for those discrepancies in their features which have so much puzzled professional commentators. Their very contradictions prove their truth. Or, could the face even of Ninon de l'Enclos at seventy be just what it was at seventeen? Nay, was Cleopatra before Augustus the same as Cleopatra with Antony? or Cleopatra with Antony the same as with the great Julius?"