to apply as a balm to your own now bleeding and neglected wounds!

VANITY AND FLATTERY.

1.

ALAS! We are all in such a mould cast, that with the too much love we bear ourselves, being first our own flatterers, we are easily hooked with others' flattery; we are easily persuaded of others' love.

2.

Every present occasion will catch the senses of the vain man; and with that bridle and saddle you may ride him.

3.

The most servile flattery is lodged most easily in the grossest capacity.

Remark.

How gross then must be the capacities of most men! for how few, how very few, are disgusted with its heaviest dose! High, low; rich, poor; the grave, the gay; the affable, the morose; all confess its absolute, but pleasing, dominion. One or two very delicate tastes may think that like poison, it requires of all things the finest infusion, being of all things the most nauseous to swallow : but the mob," the great vulgar and the small," who relish even that nasty weed, tobacco, for the sake of its intoxicating quality, greedily drink up flattery, from the same desire of forgetting their real selves. The flatterer easily insinuates himself into the closet, while honest merit stands shivering in the hall or anti-chamber.

4.

He that receives flattery, becomes a slave to that, which he who sued to be his servant, offered to give him.

5.

It is the conceit of young men to think then they speak wiseliest, when they cannot understand themselves.

Remark.

It were an invidious task, to collect examples of this remark, from the numerous metaphysical, sentimental, and marvellous novels, travels, and poems, with which the younger sons of Parnassus have lately obliged the world.

6.

Blasphemous words betrayeth the vainfoolishness of the speaker.

7.

Weak is the effect of fair discourses, not waited on by agreeable actions.

8.

Self-love is better than any gilding, to make that seem gorgeous, wherein ourselves be parties.

Remark.

To avoid this betrayer of our respectability and of ourselves, we must study to improve the lesson which Pythagoras took and taught, from the temple of Apollo at Delphos; that maxim which the wise Pontanus caused to be engraven on his tomb,-KNOW THYSELF.— The same injunction is enforced in different words by the sacred David: "Commune with thine own heart." He, who takes his character from what dependants say of him, (for all who use flattery depend on its success for some advantage ;) is as ignorant of his real self, as of the Emperor of China, whom he never saw; and by acting upon so false an estimate, is continually led into measures, which expose him to ridicule and contempt. There is as much difference between praise and flattery, as betwixt truth and error: the one is the sincere approval of virtue, and is only acceptable as it ratifies the previous approbation of our own hearts; it repcats but what they have already whispered. But flattery goes forth on

a voyage of discoveries, and brings home such surprising returns, that, intoxicated with her tales, we despise our old possessions, and resting our whole confidence on these new bottoms, sink all at once in a worse than South-Sea ruin. They who admit flattery, are seldom praised: the ingenuous mind, that would gladly pay such tribute to any merit they may display, retires from a place where its gold cannot be distinguished from base metal; and refrains from breathing sentiments which the sycophancy of others would render suspicious. The amiable Louis the Sixteenth (a sufferer, whom the heart would almost canonize!) observes upon this subject,—“ We must define flattery and praise: they are distinct. Trajan was encouraged to virtue by the panegyric of Pliny: Tiberius became obstinate in vice from the flattery of the senators."