he himself should be patient, sweet-tempered, and fair-spoken-should believe in a moral sense, and be a staunch optimist. There is good matter for speculation, too, in your barber's brain— His mind is a dainty piece of Mosaic-a tesselated pavement, inlaid with fragments of various forms and colors. Here a bit of politics, there a bit of poetry; here a little law, there a little physic; here a piece of black stone, and there a piece of white.” He cuts out his speech so as to fit every one who comes in. He can discourse to a farmer, of bullocks; to a merchant, of ships; to a broker, of stocks, and to a fine gentleman, of himself. His conversation, for the most part, consists of what Wordsworth calls " personal talk." He deals with men, not principles. Every flying bit of news, every anecdote, every good thing said by the leading wits of the day, seems to come right through his shop window, and to stick to him, like burs on a boy's jacket. He knows all the engagements, the failures, the deaths; who pays his tailor, and who does not; who wears false whiskers, and who real; he can tell you, in a whisper, the name of the young gentleman that was carried before the Police Court for riotous conduct, and of the lady of "respectable connexions," who was detected in walking out of a shop in Washington street, with a yard or two of lace more than she had paid for. He has a shrewd trick of observation, too. He speculates a good deal on that part of the head which lies above the nose. He sees a man's character as well as his person, in a state of undress. When a man is in an arm-chair, his head thrown back, his coat off, lathered up to the eyes, he is stripped of all those cumbrous folds, which a sense of dignity, affectation, or the duty of self-defence oblige him to wear about him, in the daily walks of life. The barber learns the way to his customers' weak side. He knows just how much flattery each one will bear to swallow, without making a wry face. Observe how that fat, old fool, now under his hands, chuckles with delight, as he tells him, "he never saw a man of his age, with so few gray hairs upon his head." Talking seems to be essential to his very existence. And it is good that it is so. His mind, like his purse, is a constant recipient; observations and reflections are daily dropped into it, and did not he deal them out as liberally, it would soon be too full to hold any more. I have often wondered whether they talk in their sleep or not. I take it, it would be quite impossible for the profession to assemble together, and act in concert, as there would be nobody to listen. evil Notwithstanding the high respect I feel for him, melancholy reflections will come over me as I think upon him. He has fallen upon times. He is shorn of the honors that were once his. The world is changed to him. Gone are the days of full-bottomed wigs, and of head-dresses like battlements; when no gentleman was dressed, without thirty guineas worth of curled hair upon his head; and fine ladies would sit up all night in a chair, rather than derange the economy of the stately pile of silk, velvet, powder, pomatum, lace, and tiers of curls, with which they sailed through the ball-rooms of other days, towering far above their diminutive beaux. I can perceive in him, sometimes, a tender melancholy, as if he were recalling the high estate from which he had fallen-an expression, such as might sit upon the brow of a Moorish pilgrim, who stood gazing upon the ruined splendors of the Alhambra, where his race one dwelt in joy and in power. Would you like to be shaved, sir? With great pleasure, said I, and I have no doubt, my reader will be as glad of the interruption that dispelled my day-dream, as I was. LEAVES TORN OUT OF A SCRAP BOOK. NO. III. "Possessions vanish, and opinions change, But, by the storms of circumstance unshaken, THE truth conveyed in these lines seems obvious enough, but how few are aware of its solemnity and importance. How the aspect of life would be changed, if all mankind, when more than one course were presented to their choice, should stop to inquire, not which is the more for their interest, but which is it their duty to take? With what a harmonious simplicity the world would go on, if this Utopian dream could be realized. The paths of self-interest are tangled, mazy, and perpetually crossing each other, while those of duty are straight, plain, and never interfering one with another. If we act from self-interest, too, we are perpetually puzzled by degrees;—which is most advantageous to me? which of these speculations will bring me most money? and when we have adopted a plan, we are racked with apprehensions that we have not made the most judicious choice. But the votary of Duty has no such difficulties; it is not often that he doubts what he ought to do; and when he does, he hesitates only between one of two things, and when he has decided, he is tormented by no useless regrets, mocked by no voice, exaggerating the advantages of the course he has omitted to pursue. How consoling the doctrine is, too! Let every thing vanish, Duty must remain, though the wreck may be so total, that it can only be exercised by not repining and sighing for what is gone. Strip a man of his wealth, his friends, his good name, even; steep him to the eyes in affliction, make his body one disease, you cannot take from him the power of doing his duty, though it can be displayed only in the depths of his spirit, unseen by others, perhaps even by himself. GRACE is a more fascinating quality than Beauty; to say nothing of its being more lasting. [Since writing the above, I have found the same thought in a Greek epigram, expressed with the terseness and completeness both of the people and the kind of composition. "Beauty without Grace charms, but does not hold; it is like a bait floating without a hook."] JEALOUSY is no more essentially connected with Love, than Hatred with Rivalry. They are the vices of similar natures. They are both modifications of selfishness, that noxious element, which enters so largely into the composition of all that is weak and wicked in human nature. THE beautiful emblems with which the ancients represented DEATH, seem to me a proof of their reluctance to contemplate the idea itself in all its naked and shuddering reality. Unwilling to think soberly and steadily of the sudden snapping asunder of the countless ties that held them to Life, of exchanging the earth, the sky, the embraces of friends, for the dreamless sleep of the tomb, they called in Beauty to their aid, and carved a butterfly resting upon a skull, or a beautiful youth sinking to sleep with a reversed torch dropping from his hands. The love of beauty was the religion of the Greeks, and their mythology the result of the two principles. "The ancients," says a fine writer, "feared Death; but we, thanks to Christianity, fear only dying." ONE of the most beautiful images in the whole circle of English Poetry is to be found in Webster's Dutchess of Malfy : "For, know an honest statesman to a prince, * The spring bathes the tree's root, the grateful tree THE disease called DYSPEPSIA is very common among us. Is there not a similar affection of the mind, much more so? can swallow a book which they cannot digest! How many men It is curious how little ORIGINALITY there is in the world,-how many of our best thoughts have been suggested by the writings or the conversation of another. How often does the same idea beget the most various trains of reflection in different minds, according to the nature of their intellectual organization? How often do the thoughts of another lie like seeds, in our own minds, unconsciously to ourselves, exerting a principle of increase, which shall give us rich harvests at some future day? And it is well that it is so. Minds of the same calibre must have certain points of resemblance. To think differently from all the great men that have lived before us, is to think incorrectly. Some persons have given much time and labor to the business of tracing the footmarks of a writer, over and among the domains of other proprietors― a most ill-natured and unsatisfactory office. Because we find the same thought in two writers, does it follow that the one has stolen from the other? Millions have seen the sun set with the same emotions and reflections; and he who first saw it, might as well claim the sunset for his, as to assert a peculiar and sole title to the images which it awakened. BOOK DIVINATION. AMONG ancient customs, and one which is not yet entirely disused, is that of consulting books to which superstition has attached an oracular character, with a view to determine the issues of events, or the destinies of human life and conduct. The earliest records of this usage are found in the histories of the Greeks and Romans, and of some of the ancient Pagan nations. Among the Greeks, the works of their great Homer were often viewed as a mystical book of fate, and many a passage, which the eye first and casually lighted upon, was considered prophetic. The same thing was true among the Romans, relative to their Virgil, whose works, from the time when they were first written, till the close of the Roman domination, and long after, were constituted a book of divination. Even the greatest and most enlightened of the Romans did not neglect to consult "the Virgilian Lots ;" and we read of a Severus, whose claims to the imperial purple were, in his own opinion, entirely established by his casually turning to the line, "Tu regere imperio populos, Romane, memento;" and of a Gordianus, who, having secured the throne under fearful circumstances, was so terrified by the line Ostendunt terris hunc tantum fata, nec ultra esse sinunt," which chance exposed to his trembling eye, that in less than three months after his elevation, he voluntarily strangled himself. Another striking proof of the importance attached to this custom among the Romans, appears from the religious care with which the Sybilline Books were preserved and consulted. These books were, as will be recollected, three in number, and were purchased by Tarquin the Second, from one of the Sybils, who scattered her leaves of prophecy from a solitary cave of ancient Italy. The king instituted a college of priests, for the express purpose of guarding these venerable relics, and ordained that, in all great exigences, they should be consulted by chance openings, as affording the only means of safety, and directions of the most awful and binding authority. During the middle ages, and down to the close of the seventeenth century, the Homeric and Virgilian Lots continued in use. In the period of religious subserviency and monkish elevation, a few lines translated by any, whose motives were to keep the people in subjection, and pronounced with pomp and solemnity in the ears of submiting ignorance, had immense effect. But, besides divination from these sources, it has drawn with much greater influence, upon the moral condition of men, from the Sacred Oracles. Among the primitive Christians there is abundant evidence that this practice was very common and of great authority. It was countenanced by many leaders in religion, as it was by Gregorius, bishop of Nyssa, a man of much learning, and great mystery. So late as the time of Charles the First, in England, consultation of the Virgilian Lots, was in extensive repute. Among a few instances to prove its influence with men of the first rank, and men of cultivated minds, we would cite the cases of the unfortunate monarch just VOL. III. 52 alluded to, of Lord Falkland, a distinguished nobleman during his reign, and of the poet Cowley, all of which may be found in the life of the latter. The first two, met with passages quite accurately descriptive of their circumstances and fate. The passage found by the king, is translated, as follows: "Yet let a race untamed, and haughty foes, And when at length the cruel war shall cease, The passage found by Lord Falkland, and applicable to himself, is the following: "O Pallas, thou hast failed thy plighted word, Vain vows to Heaven, and unavailing care!" That Cowley reposed great faith in the Virgilian Lots, is evident from a passage in one of his letters to the Earl of Arlington, written from Paris, where he went with the Queen, and as Secretary to Lord Jezmyn. It is quoted in Dr. Johnson's life of Cowley, who remarks that he has no doubt that the poet gave credit to the answer of the oracle. The following is the passage. Speaking of the Scotch Treaty, Cowley says, "The Scotch will moderate something of their demands; the mutual necessity of an accord is visible—the King is persuaded of it. And to tell you the truth, (which I take to be an argument above all the rest,) Virgil has told the same thing to that purpose." We will mention one other prominent instance of divination from books. When Hafiz, the sweetest and most beautiful of the Persian poets, died, in 1389, a fine monument was erected to him at Shiraz, the place of his burial, and on the top of it was placed a volume of his poems. Each person who visited his tomb, turned over the pages of the mystic Divan, as the collection is called, and drew from them some omen of his own good or evil fortune. This practice, it is understood, was religiously observed by the natives of Persia, until an earthquake in 1825 destroyed the monument. Probably it has been replaced, and the custom continued to the present day. But among enlightened nations, book divination is now no longer a serious custom. It exists, indeed, quite commonly as a pastime, but without the superstitious fear and sober recognition of authority, which formerly accompanied it. You may occasionally see a group of academic striplings, sportively testing their several fortunes over the |