March 4) concluded the life and glories of Saladin. The orientals describe his edifying TABLE. death, which happened at Damascus; but they THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST seem ignorant of the equal distribution of his alms among the three religions, or of the display of a shroud instead of a standard, to admonish the East of the instability of human greatness. The unity of empire was dissolved by his death; his sons were oppressed by the stronger arm of their uncle Saphadin; the hostile interests of the sultans of Egypt, Damascus, and Aleppo were again revived; and the Franks or Latins stood, and breathed, and hoped in their fortresses along the Syrian coast. Where evening sips Sweet fragrance for her dews unseen, Couch'd on soft roses, o'er thy softer lips, With the sweet toil, and slumber on thy breast! Of morrow's weary strife and care: A moment's joy the moment's thought supplies; Calm Pleasure floating o'er our head, Rest even our waking, even our sleep all love. [Oliver Wendell Holmes, M.D., born at Cambridge, Massachusetts, 20th August, 1809. Professor of anatomy first in Dartmouth College, and afterwards in Harvard University. He has written a number of valuable works on medical subjects, but he is best known to the general public as a poet and humourist. Poetry, a Metrical Essay; Terpsichore; Urania, a Rhymed Lesson; and Astraca, the Balance of Illusions, are amongst his more important productions in verse: Elsie Venner, a novel; and The Guardian Angel have been also widely appreciated. The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table, a series of gossiping discourses supposed to be delivered at the breakfast table of a boardinghouse, by its humour, pathos, and epigrammatic expression of shrewd observation, has obtained great popu larity. It has been followed by two not less successful, although similar works: The Professor at the Breakfast Table, and The Port at the Breakfast Table.] CONVERSATION. This business of conversation is a very serious matter. There are men that it weakens one to talk with an hour more than a day's fasting would do. Mark this that I am going to say, for it is as good as a working professional man's advice, and costs you nothing: It is better to lose a pint of blood from your veins than to have a nerve tapped. Nobody measures your nervous force as it runs away, nor bandages your brain and marrow after the operation. There are men of esprit who are excessively exhausting to some people. They are the talkers who have what may be called jerky minds. Their thoughts do not run in the natural order of sequence. They say bright things on all possible subjects, but their zigzags rack you to death. After a jolting halfhour with one of these jerky companions, talking with a dull friend affords great relief. It is like taking the cat in your lap after holding a squirrel. What a comfort a dull but kindly person is, to be sure, at times! A ground-glass shade over a gas-lamp does not bring more solace to our dazzled eyes than such a one to our minds. CONCEITED PEOPLE. "So you admire conceited people, do you?" said the young lady who has come to the city to be finished off for the duties of life. I am afraid you do not study logic at your school, my dear. It does not follow that I wish to be pickled in brine because I like a salt-water plunge at Nahant. I say that Audacious self-esteem, with good ground for it, is always imposing. What resplendent beauty that must have been which could have authorized Phryne to "peel" in the way she did! What fine speeches are those two: "Non omnis moriar," and "I have taken all know ledge to be my province!" Even in common people, conceit has the virtue of making them cheerful; the man who thinks his wife, his baby, his house, his horse, his dog, and himself severally unequalled, is almost sure to be a good-humoured person, though liable to be tedious at times. SELF-MADE MEN. equal, in most relations of life I prefer a man of family. A PARADOX. It is not easy, at the best, for two persons talking together to make the most of each other's thoughts, there are so many of them. [The company looked as if they wanted an explanation.] When John and Thomas, for instance, are talking together, it is natural enough that among the six there should be more or less confusion and misapprehension. [Our landlady turned pale;-no doubt she thought there was a screw loose in my intellects, and that involved the probable loss of a boarder. A severe-looking person, who wears a Spanish cloak and a sad cheek, fluted by the passions of the melodrama, whom I understand to be the professional ruffian of the neighbouring theatre, alluded, with a certain lifting of the brow, drawing down of the corners of the mouth, and somewhat rasping voce di petto, to Falstaff's nine men in buckram. Everybody looked up. I believe the old gentleman opposite was afraid I should seize the carving-knife; at any rate, he slid it to one side, as it were carelessly.] I think, I said, I can make it plain to Benjamin Franklin here, that there are at least six personalities distinctly to be recognized as taking part in that dialogue between John and Thomas. Johns. Three Self-made men? Well, yes. Of course everybody likes and respects self-made men. It is a great deal better to be made in that way than not to be made at all. Are any of you younger people old enough to remember that Irishman's house on the marsh at Cambridgeport, which house he built from drain to chimney-top with his own hands? It took Three him a good many years to build it, and one could see that it was a little out of plumb, and a little wavy in outline, and a little queer and uncertain in general aspect. A regular hand could certainly have built a better house; Thomases. but it was a very good house for a "self-made" carpenter's house, and people praised it, and said how remarkably well the Irishman had succeeded. They never thought of praising the fine blocks of houses a little farther on. Your self-made man, whittled into shape with his own jack-knife, deserves more credit, if that is all, than the regular engine-turned article, shaped by the most approved pattern, and French-polished by society and travel. But as to saying that one is every way the equal of the other, that is another matter. The right of strict social discrimination of all things and persons, according to their merits, native or acquired, is one of the most precious republican privileges. I take the liberty to exercise it when I say that, other things being 1. The real John; known only to his Maker. 2. John's ideal John; never the real one, and often very unlike him. 3. Thomas's ideal John; never the real John, nor John's John, but often very unlike either. (1. The real Thomas. 2. Thomas's ideal Thomas. 3. John's ideal Thomas. Only one of the three Johns is taxed; only one can be weighed on a platform-balance; but the other two are just as important in the conversation. Let us suppose the real John to be old, dull, and ill-looking. But as the Higher Powers have not conferred on men the gift of seeing themselves in the true light, John very possibly conceives himself to be youthful, witty, and fascinating, and talks from the point of view of this ideal. Thomas, again, believes him to be an artful rogue, we will say; therefore he is, so far as Thomas's attitude in the conversation is concerned, an artful rogue, though really simple and stupid. The same conditions apply to the three Thomases. It follows, that, until a man can be found who knows himself as his Maker knows, viction all at once came over him that he had him, or who sees himself as others see him, there must be at least six persons engaged in every dialogue between two. Of these, the least important, philosophically speaking, is the one that we have called the real person. No wonder two disputants often get angry, when there are six of them talking and listening all at the same time. [A very unphilosophical application of the above remarks was made by a young fellow, answering to the name of John, who sits near me at table. A certain basket of peaches-a rare vegetable, little known to boarding-houses -was on its way to me via this unlettered Johannes. He appropriated the three that remained in the basket, remarking that there was just one apiece for him. I convinced him that his practical inference was hasty and illogical, but in the mean time he had eaten the peaches.] CYCLES OF THOUGHT. Just as we find a mathematical rule at the bottom of many of the bodily movements, just so thought may be supposed to have its regular cycles. Such or such a thought comes round periodically, in its turn. Accidental suggestions, however, so far interfere with the regular cycles, that we may find them practically be- | yond our power of recognition. Take all this for what it is worth, but at any rate you will agree that there are certain particular thoughts that do not come up once a day, nor once a week, but that a year would hardly go round without your having them pass through your mind. Here is one which comes up at intervals in this way. Some one speaks of it, and there is an instant and eager smile of assent in the listener or listeners. Yes, indeed; they have often been struck by it. All at once a conviction flashes through us that we have been in the same precise circumstances as at the present instant, once or many times before. done just that same thing ever so many times before. I looked severely at him, and his countenance immediately fell-on the side toward me; I cannot answer for the other, for he can wink and laugh with either half of his face without the other half's knowing it. I have noticed-I went on to say--the following circumstances connected with these sudden impressions. First, that the condition which seems to be the duplicate of a former one is often very trivial-one that might have presented itself a hundred times. Secondly, that the impression is very evanescent, and that it is rarely, if ever, recalled by any voluntary effort, at least after any time has elapsed. Thirdly, that there is a disinclination to record the circumstances, and a sense of incapacity to reproduce the state of mind in words. Fourthly, I have often felt that the duplicate condition had not only occurred once before, but that it was familiar, and, as it seemed, habitual. Lastly, I have had the same convictions in my dreams. How do I account for it? Why, there are several ways that I can mention, and you may take your choice. The first is that which the young lady hinted at that these flashes are sudden recollections of a previous existence. I don't believe that; for I remember a poor student I used to know told me he had such a conviction one day when he was blacking his boots, and I can't think he had ever lived in another world where they use Day and Martin. │ Some think that Dr. Wigan's doctrine of the brain's being a double organ, its hemispheres working together like the two eyes, accounts for it. One of the hemispheres hangs fire, they suppose, and the small interval between the perceptions of the nimble and the sluggish half seems an indefinitely long period, and therefore the second perception appears to be the copy of another, ever so old. But even allowing the centre of perception to be double, I can see no good reason for supposing this indefinite lengthening of the time, nor any Oh, dear, yes!-said one of the company- analogy that bears it out. It seems to me everybody has had that feeling. The landlady didn't know anything about such notions; it was an idea in folks' heads, she expected. The schoolmistress said, in a hesitating sort of way, that she knew the feeling well, and didn't like to experience it; it made her think she was a ghost, sometimes. The young fellow whom they call John said he knew all about it; he had just lighted a cheroot the other day, when a tremendous con most likely that the coincidence of circumstances is very partial, but that we take this partial resemblance for identity, as we occasionally do resemblances of persons. A momentary posture of circumstances is so far like some preceding one that we accept it as exactly the same, just as we accost a stranger occasionally, mistaking him for a friend. The apparent similarity may be owing perhaps quite as much to the mental state at the time. as to the outward circumstances. THE RACE OF LIFE. Nothing strikes one more, in the race of life, than to see how many give out in the first half of the course. "Commencement day" always reminds me of the start for the “Derby,” when the beautiful high-bred threeyear-olds of the season are brought up for trial. That day is the start, and life is the Here we are at Cambridge, and a class is just "graduating." Poor Harry! he was to have been there too, but he has paid forfeit; step out here into the grass back of the church; ah! there it is: race. "HUNC LAPIDEM POSUERUNT But this is the start, and here they are,-coats bright as silk, and manes as smooth as eau lustrale can make them. Some of the best of the colts are pranced round, a few minutes each, to show their paces. What is that old gentleman crying about? and the old lady by him, and the three girls, what are they all covering their eyes for? Oh, that is their colt which has just been trotted upon the stage. Do they really think those little thin legs can do any thing in such a slashing sweepstakes as is coming off in these next forty years? Oh, this terrible gift of second-sight that comes to some of us when we begin to look through the silver rings of the arcus senilis! A Ten years gone. First turn in the race. few broken down; two or three bolted. Several show in advance of the ruck. Cassock, a black colt, seems to be ahead of the rest; those black colts commonly get the start, I have noticed, of the others, in the first quarter. Meteor has pulled up. Twenty years. Second corner turned. Cassock has dropped from the front, and Judex, an iron-gray, has the lead. But look! how they have thinned out! Down flat,-five, six,-how many? They lie still enough! they will not get up again in this race, be very sure! And the rest of them, what a "tailing off!" Anybody can see who is going to win, -perhaps. Thirty years. Third corner turned. Dives, bright sorrel, ridden by the fellow in a yellow jacket, begins to make play fast; is getting to be the favourite with many. But who is that other one that has been lengthening his stride from the first, and now shows close up to the front? Don't you remember the quiet brown colt Asteroid, with the star in his forehead? That is he he is one of the sort that lasts; 2D SERIES, VOL. I. look out for him! The black "colt," as we used to call him, is in the background, taking it easily in a gentle trot. There is one they used to call the Filly, on account of a certain feminine air he had; well up, you see; the Filly is not to be despised, my boy! Forty years. More dropping off,-but places much as before. Fifty years. Race over. All that are on the course are coming in at a walk; no more running. Who is ahead? Ahead? What! and the winning-post a slab of white or gray stone standing out from that turf where there is no more jockeying or straining for victory! Well, the world marks their places in its betting-book; but be sure that these matter very little, if they have run as well as they knew how! OLD AGE. As to giving up, because the Almanac or the Family Bible says that it is about time to do it, I have no intention of doing any such thing. I grant you that I burn less carbon than some years ago. I see people of my standing really good for nothing,-decrepit, effete, la lèvre inférieure déjà pendante, with what little life they have left mainly concentrated in their epigastrium. But as the disease of old age is epidemic, endemic, and sporadic, and every body that lives long enough is sure to catch it, I am going to say, for the encouragement of such as need it, how I treat the malady in my own case. First. As I feel that, when I have any thing to do, there is less time for it than when I was younger, I find that I give my attention more thoroughly, and use my time more economically, than ever before; so that I can learn any thing twice as easily as in my earlier days. I am not, therefore, afraid to attack a new study. I took up a difficult language a very few years ago with good success, and think of mathematics and metaphysics by and by. Secondly. I have opened my eyes to a good many neglected privileges and pleasures within my reach, and requiring only a little courage to enjoy them. You may well suppose it pleased me to find that old Cato was thinking of learning to play the fiddle, when I had deliberately taken it up in my old age, and satisfied myself that I could get much comfort, if not much music, out of it. Thirdly. I have found that some of those active exercises, which are commonly thought to belong to young folks only, may be enjoyed at a much later period. 117 BRAINS. Our brains are seventy-year clocks. The Angel of Life winds them up once for all, then closes the case, and gives the key into the hand of the Angel of the Resurrection. Tic-tac! tic-tac! go the wheels of thought; our will cannot stop them; they cannot stop themselves; sleep cannot still them; madness only makes them go faster; death alone can break into the case, and, seizing the everswinging pendulum, which we call the heart, silence at last the clicking of the terrible escapement we have carried so long beneath our wrinkled foreheads. If we could only get at them, as we lie on our pillows and count the dead beats of thought after thought and image after image jarring through the over-tired organ! Will nobody block those wheels, uncouple that pinion, cut the string that holds those weights, blow up the infernal machine with gunpowder? What a passion comes over us sometimes for silence and rest!-that this dreadful mechanism, unwinding the endless tapestry of time, embroidered with spectral figures of life and death,, could have but one brief holiday! Who can wonder that men swing themselves off from beams in hempen lassos?-that they jump off from parapets into the swift and gurgling waters beneath?-that they take counsel of the grim friend who has but to utter his one peremptory monosyllable, and the restless machine is shivered as a vase that is dashed upon a marble floor? Under that building which we pass every day there are strong dungeons, where neither hook, nor bar, nor bed-cord, nor drinking vessel from which a sharp fragment may be shattered, shall by any chance be seen. There is nothing for it, when the brain is on fire with the whirling of its wheels, but to spring against the stone wall and silence them with one crash. Ah, they remembered that, the kind city fathers, -and the walls are nicely padded, so that one can take such exercise as he likes without damaging himself on the very plain but serviceable upholstery. If anybody would only contrive some kind of a lever that one could thrust in among the works of this horrid automaton and check them, or alter their rate of going, what would the world give for the discovery?—— said. Unless the will maintain a certain control over these movements, which it cannot stop, but can to some extent regulate, men are very apt to try to get at the machine by some indirect system of leverage or other. They clap on the brakes by means of opium; they change the maddening monotony of the rhythm by means of fermented liquors. It is because the brain is locked up, and we cannot touch its movement directly, that we thrust these coarse tools in through any crevice by which they may reach the interior, and so alter its rate of going for a while, and at last spoil the machine. SCOTTISH BALLAD.1 It was a' for our rightfu' king We left fair Scotland's strand; It was a' for our rightfu' king We e'er saw Irish land, my dear, Now all is done that man can do, And all is done in vain; My love and native land, fareweel, For I maun cross the main, my dear, I turn'd me right and round about An' ga'e my bridle-reins a shake, The sodger frae the war returns, The sailor frae the main; Never to meet again, my dear, When day is gane an' night is come, O think on him that's far awa', The lee-lang night, an' weep, my dear, A THOUGHT. From half a dime to a dime, according to the style of the place and the quality of the liquor, said the young fellow whom they call John. 1 The author of this ballad is said to be Captain Ogilvie of the house of Inverquharity, who accompanied You speak trivially, but not unwisely, the deposed James II. to Ireland and France |