less amusing, was involved in the postscript of the man who hoped his correspondent would excuse faults of spelling, if any, as he had no knife to mend his pens.

ANTINOMIANS-An antithesis to the Society for the Suppression of Vice. If we did not know that the best things perverted become the worst, we might wonder that the Christian religion should have ever generated a sect, whose doctrines are professedly antimoral. Many, however, are still to be found, who, maintaining that the moral law is nothing to man, and that he is not bound to obey it, avow an open contempt for good works, and affirm, that as God sees no sin in believers, they are neither obliged to confess it, nor to pray for its forgiveness. In this most perilous spirit many tracts have been published,

"Which, in the semblance of devotion,

Allure their victim to offence,

And then administer a potion,

To soothe and lull his conscience;
Teaching him that to break all ties,
May be a wholesome sacrifice ;-
That saints, like bowls, may go astray,
Better to win the proper way;

Indulge in every sin at times,

To prove that grace is never lacking;

And purify themselves by crimes,

As dirty shoes are clean'd by blacking."

ANTIPATHY.-As most men imagine themselves to have an abundance of good reasons for dislike of

their fellow-creatures, they should be careful not to indulge imaginary ones. And yet some people, forgetting the precept of "Fas est et ab hoste doceri,” have such a blind antipathy against a political opponent, that they will disclaim any opinion which he adopts, and adopt those that he disclaims, which, as Bacon pithily observes, "is to make another man's folly the master of your wisdom." Bentham, in his Book of Fallacies, has ably pointed out the absurdity of this indiscriminate oppugnancy." Allow this argument the effect of a conclusive one, you put it into the power of any man to draw you at pleasure from the support of every measure which, in your own eyes, is good; to force you to give your support to any and every measure which, in your own eyes, is bad. Is it good?—the bad man embraces it, and, by the supposition, you reject it. Is it bad?-he vituperates it, and that suffices for driving you into its embrace. You split upon the rocks, because has avoided them; you miss the harbour, because he has steered into it! Give yourself up to any such blind antipathy, you are no less in the power of your adversaries than if, by a correspondently irrational sympathy and obsequiousness, you put yourself into the power of your friends." -pp. 132, 133.

ANTIQUARY-Too often a collector of valuables that are worth nothing, and a recollector of all that

Time has been glad to forget. His choice specimens have become rarities, simply because they were never worth preserving; and he attaches present importance to them in exact proportion to their former insignificance. A worthy of this unworthy class was once edifying the French Academy with a most unmerciful detail of the comparative prices of commodities at various remote periods, when LA FONtaine observed, "Our friend knows the value of everything,-except time." We recommend this anecdote to the special consideration of the ci-devant members of the Roxburgh Club, as well as to the resuscitators of the dead lumber of antiquity.

ANTIQUITY-The stalking horse on which knaves and bigots invariably mount, when they want to ride over the timid and the credulous. Never do we hear so much solemn palaver about the time-hallowed institutions, and approved wisdom of our ancestors, as when attempts are made to remove some staring monument of their folly. Thus is the youth, nonage, ignorance, and inexperience of the world invested by a strange blunder, which Bacon was the first to indicate, with the reverence due to the present times, which are its true old age.

Antiquity is the young miscreant, the type of commingled ignorance and tyranny, who massacred prisoners taken in war, sacrificed human beings to idols,

burnt them in Smithfield as heretics or witches, believed in astrology, demonology, sorcery, the philosopher's stone, and every exploded folly and enormity; although his example is still gravely urged as a rule of conduct, and a standing argument against innovation, that is to say, improvement! If the seal of time were to be the signet of truth, there is no absurdity, oppression, or falsehood, that might not be received as gospel; while the Gospel itself would want the more ancient warrant of Paganism. Never was the world so old, and consequently so wise, as it is today; but it will be older, and, therefore, still wiser,

to-morrow.

In one generation, the most ancient individual has generally the most experience; but in a succession of generations, the youngest, or last of them, is the real Methuselah and Mentor. To this obvious distinction, nothing can blind us but gross stupidity, or the most miserable cant. To plead the authority of the ancients, is to appeal from civilized and enlightened Christians, to fierce, unlettered Pagans; for no one has decided where this boasted wisdom begins or ends, though all agree that it is of great age. Every elderly man is an ancestor to his former self. Let him compare his

boyish notions and feelings with his matured judgment, and he will form a pretty correct notion of the wisdom of our ancestors; for what the child is to the man, are the past generations to the present.

Let us learn to distinguish the uses from the abuses of antiquity. Not to know what happened before we were born, is always to remain a child: to know, and blindly to adopt that knowledge, as an implicit rule of life, is never to be a man.

APOLOGY—As great a peacemaker as the word "if." In all cases, it is an excuse rather than an exculpation, and if adroitly managed, may be made to confirm what it seems to recall, and to aggravate the offence which it pretends to extenuate. A man who had accused his neighbour of falsehood, was called on for an apology, which he gave in the following amphibological terms:-"I called you a liar,—it is true. You spoke truth: I have told a lie."

men.

APPEARANCES-keeping up. A moral, or, rather, immoral uttering of counterfeit coin. It is astonishing how much human bad money is current in society, bearing the fair impress of ladies and gentleThe former, if carefully weighed, will always be found light, or you may presently detect if you ring them, though this is a somewhat perilous experiment. Both may be known by their assuming a more gaudy, and showy appearance than their neighbours, as if their characters were brighter, their impressions more perfect, and their composition more pure, than all others.