Life is to the unhappy as a prison, from whose gloom they cannot escape: while to the happy, it resembles a vast palace filled with all that can delight. The prison may be rendered endurable by resignation; but the palace loses some of its bright colouring and gilding every day, until nought but faded remnants of its pristine beauty remain. FUTURITY. One of the best gifts of Providence is the veil that conceals futurity. DUST. No dust affects the eyes so much as gold dust. FALSE WIT. False wit, like false money, only passes current with those who have no means of comparison. POLITICS. Such is the tergiversation in politics at present, that politicians should say with regard to them, what Voltaire said of systems: “Il faut toujours se reserver le droit de rire le lendemain de ses idées de la veille.” FAME. Fame is like truth—still questioned and denied, The more ’tis obvious, yet survives its foes. LOVE AND JEALOUSY. Love often re-illumes his extinguished flame in the torch of jealousy. LUXURIES. Our luxuries and pleasures are the chains that civilization throws around us to attach us to earth. The coarse-minded submit to wear them, forgetting that man was formed for nobler ends, but the elevated and refined cast them off, and aspire to a purer existence. LOVE. Humboldt notices that the streams in America run languidly in the night, and await the rising of the sun to quicken their flight. Love is to the heart what the sun is to the American streams—it moves languidly in its absence. SHORT MEMORIES. There are no memories so short as those of the parvenu, and the ungrateful man; the first forgets himself, and the second his friends. DESPOTISM AND DEMOCRACY. Despotism subjects a nation to one tyrant; democracy, to many. DEMORALISATION. One of the most marked characteristics of our day is a reckless neglect of principles, and a rigid adherence to their semblance. SOCIETY. Society rarely pardons those who have discovered the emptiness of its pleasures, and who can live independent of it and them. ASSOCIATES. We herd with the gay in our days of happiness, but turn to the sympathising when misfortune overtakes us: as we seek the festive hall in our hours of mirth, and fly to the solitude of our chamber in those of sorrow. RESPECT. We are never so jealous of the respect of others as when we have forfeited our own. SATIRE.