172.

Indolence and timidity often keep us to our duty, while our virtue carries off all the credit of doing so.

173.

It is difficult to determine whether an open, sincere, and virtuous action is the result of probity or artfulness.

174.

The virtues are lost in interest, as rivers are lost in the sea.

175.

If we examine well the different effects of ennui, we shall find that it makes us neglect more duties than interest does.

176.

There are various sorts of curiosity: one is from interest, which makes us desire to know

172. "Quod segnitia erat sapientia vocaretur."-TACITUS, Hist. i. c. 49.

176. In the original edition this stood, "There are two sorts of curiosity," &c., upon which Bishop Butler (Preface to Sermons) observes, "The author of Réflexions Morales,

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what may be useful to us; another is from pride, and arises from a desire of knowing what others are ignorant of.

177.

It is better to employ our minds in supporting the misfortunes which actually happen, than in anticipating those which may happen

to us.

178.

It is never so difficult to speak as when we are ashamed of our silence.

dc., says curiosity proceeds from interest or pride, which pride also would doubtless have been explained to be selflove; as if there were no such passions in mankind as desire of esteem, or of being beloved, or of knowledge." Pascal will only allow one species, “La curiosité n'est que la vanité. Le plus souvent on ne veut sçavoir que pour en parler; on ne voyageroit pas sur la mer pour ne jamais en rien dire et pour le seul plaisir de voir sans espérance de s'en entretenir jamais avec personne."-Pensees, Vanité de l'Homme. It is to be feared, however, that there are some kinds of curiosity which have not even so good a motive as vanity.

177. This is the Scriptural maxim, "Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof."-St. Matthew, chap. vi. 34.

Rousseau observes, "La prévoyance qui nous porte sans cesse au-delà de nous, et souvent nous place où rous n'arriverons point, voilà la véritable source de toutes nos misères."-Emile, b. ii.

179.

Constancy in love is a perpetual inconstancy, which causes the heart to attach itself successively to all the qualities of the person we love, giving the preference sometimes to one, sometimes to another; so that this constancy is nothing but an inconstancy, limited and confined to one object.

180.

There are two sorts of constancy in love— one arises from continually discovering in the

178. "Our sensibilities are so acute,

The fear of being silent makes us mute."

COWPER, Conversation.

179. There appears to be an instance of this kind of inconstancy in SHAKSPEARE's Winter's Tale, Act iv. Scene 3: "What you do

Still betters what is done. When you speak, sweet,

I'd have you do it ever; when you sing

I'd have you buy and sell so; so give alms;

Pray so; and for the ordering your affairs,

To sing them too.

A wave of the sea,

When you do dance, I wish you

that you might ever do

Nothing but that; move still, still so, and own

No other function: each your doing,

So singular in each particular,

Crowns what you're doing in the present deeds,

That all your acts are queens.'

loved person new subjects for love, the other arises from our making a merit of being constant.

181.

There are very few people who, when their love is over, are not ashamed of having been in love.

182.

We can love nothing except with reference to ourselves; and we are merely following our own taste and pleasure when we prefer our friends to ourselves. It is, nevertheless, by this preference alone that friendship can be true and perfect.

183.

The first movement of joy which we experience at the good fortune of our friends does not always arise from the goodness of our nature, nor from the friendship we have for them. It is more often the result of self-love which flatters us with the hope of being fortunate in our turn, or of deriving some advantage from their good fortune.

184.

Men would not live long in society if they were not the dupes of each other.

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185.

Perseverance deserves neither blame nor praise, inasmuch as it is merely the duration of tastes and opinions, which we can neither give nor take away from ourselves.

186.

We sometimes make frivolous complaints of our friends to justify beforehand our own fickle

ness.

187.

Our repentance is not so much regret for the evil we have done, as fear of its consequences to us.

186. It is difficult to render in English the exact point of this maxim, from there being in the original an untranslateable play on the words "légèrement" and "légèreté."

As that the sin hath brought you to this shame,

Which sorrow is always toward ourselves, not heaven, Showing, we'd not spare heaven as we love it,

But as we stand in fear."

Measure for Measure, Act ii. Scene 3.

So Cassio, on recovering from his drunken fit, is not so much concerned for his fault as distressed at his loss of reputation:-"Reputation, reputation, reputation. Oh! I