A man of the best parts, and the greatest learning, if he does not know the world by his own experience and observation, will be very absurd; and consequently very unwelcome in company. He may say very good things; but they will probably be so ill-timed, misplaced, or improperly addressed, that he had much better hold his tongue. Full of his own matter and uninformed of, or inattentive to, the particular circumstances and situations of the company, he vents it indiscriminately; he puts some people out of countenance; he shocks others; and frightens all, who dread what may come out next. The most general rule that I can give you for the world, and which your experience will convince you of the truth of is, never to give the tone to the company, but to take it from them; and labor more to put them in conceit with themselves, than to make them admire you. Those whom you can make like themselves better, will, I promise you, like you very well. A system-monger, who, without knowing any thing of the world by experience, has formed a system of it in his dusty cell, lays it down, for example, that (from the general nature of mankind) flattery is pleasing. He will therefore flatter. But how? Why, indiscriminately. And instead of repairing and heightening the piece judiciously, with soft colors and a delicate pencil; with a coarse brush, and a great deal of white-wash, he daubs and besmears the piece he means to adorn. His flattery offends even his patron; and is almost too gross for his mistress. A man of the world knows the force of flattery as well as he does; but then he knows how, when, and where to give it; he proportions his dose to the constitution of the patient. He flatters by application, by inference, by comparison, by hint; and seldom directly. In the course of the world there is the same difference, in everything, between system and practice. UNDER THE AUTUMN SKIES. By MRS. EMILY J. BUGBEE. The clouds hung loose and gray, Across the autumn sky, And at my feet in golden piles, The dead leaves, drifting lie. No voice of summer song, I hear from copse or tree, The perfume of no summer flower, Comes floating up to me. Death’s silence over all, Where music was, and bloom, Enfolded all the sun-kissed hills, In drapery of gloom. I walk as in a dream, Beneath the brooding sky, While faded, as these autumn leaves, Life’s hopes around me lie. The keen and cruel frost Has touched my world with blight, And dark on all its splendors lie, The shadows of the night. The memory of its joy, Like billows of the sea, Come surging up the silver strand, Then backward moaning flee.