The most hateful form of self-conceit is the callous form, when it boasts and swells up on the score of its own ignorance, as implying exemption from a folly. "We profess not to understand;"--"We are so unhappy as to be quite in the dark as to the meaning of this writer;"--"All this may be very fine, but we are not ashamed to confess that to us it is quite unintelligible:"--then quote a passage without the context, and appeal to the PUBLIC, whether they understand it or not!--Wretches! Such books were not written for your public. If it be a work on inward religion, appeal to the inwardly religious, and ask them!--If it be of true love and its anguish and its yearnings, appeal to the true lover! What have the public to do with this? A LIBRARIAN. He was like a cork, flexible, floating, full of pores and openings, and yet he could neither return nor transmit the waters of Helicon, much less the light of Apollo. The poet, by his side, was like a diamond, transmitting to all around, yet retaining for himself alone, the rays of the god of day. TRIMMING. An upright shoe may fit both feet; but never saw I a glove that would fit both hands. It is a man for a mean or mechanic office, that can be employed equally well under either of two opposite parties. DEATH. Death but supplies the oil for the inextinguishable lamp of life. LOVE AN ACT OF THE WILL. Love, however sudden, as when we fall in love at first sight, (which is, perhaps, always the case of love in its highest sense,) is yet an act of the will, and that too one of its primary, and therefore ineffable acts. This is most important; for if it be not true, either love itself is all a romantic 'hum', a mere connection of desire with a form appropriated to excite and gratify it, or the mere repetition of a daydream;--or if it be granted that love has a real, distinct, and excellent being, I know not how we could attach blame and immorality to inconstancy, when confined to the affections and a sense of preference. Either, therefore, we must brutalize our notions with Pope:-- Lust, thro' some certain strainers well refin'd, Is gentle love and charms all woman-kind: or we must dissolve and thaw away all bonds of morality by the irresistible shocks of an irresistible sensibility with Sterne. WEDDED UNION. The well-spring of all sensible communion is the natural delight and need, which undepraved man hath to transfuse from himself into others, and to receive from others into himself, those things, wherein the excellency of his kind doth most consist; and the eminence of love or marriage communion is, that this mutual transfusion can take place more perfectly and totally in this, than in any other mode. Prefer person before money, good-temper with good sense before person; and let all, wealth, easy temper, strong understanding and beauty, be as nothing to thee, unless accompanied by virtue in principle and in habit.