The Dorset County Express and Agricultural Gazette.
Dorchester, Dorset, England, 1858-02-23 00:00:00

Yaraties.

Blumenbaoh, the great physiologist, speaking of
phrenology, said, "There ie a great deal that is new and
true in this system ; but the new is not true, and the
true is not new."
. . . .

A crusty old bachelor says the girls wear so much
scarlet this winter that they look like boiled lobsters.
One in particular, he says, attracted his attention, for
she had vermilion slippers and red hair.
The following words, if spelt backwards or forwards,
are the lame: " Name no one man."

"Let the -to:;ast be—deer women!" u the hungry hus-
band said to his wife, who was in • hurry to dear off the
breakfast-table.

Old Sir James Herring was remonstrated with for not
rising earlier. "I can make up my, mind to it," said
he, "but I cannot make up my body. '
ASCENT AND DESOINT.—To an idle fellow who
was perpetually boasting of his ancestry, • successful
tradesman of humble origin observed, "You, my friend,
are proud of your deseest—l am proud of my ascent."
EXTRAVAGANCE IN Dense—Several of the popular
preachers in Paris have entered upon a crusade against
the lavish expenditure of their lady hearers upon dress,
the waste of material especially exciting their indig-
nation. One of them, a bishop, exclaimed in the height
of his zeal, in the midst of a late discourse, "Let wo-
men remember, while putting on their profuse and ex-
pensive attire, how narrow are the gates of Paradise !"
At an hotel at Hastings Jerrold was dining with two
friends one of whom, after dinner, ordered among other
pleasant things" a bottle of old port."—" Waiter,"
said Douglas, with that twinkle of the eye which was
always a promise of wit, "Mind, now; a bottle of your
old port, not your elder."—Doran's Court Fools.
JOTB.—Surely we deceive ourselves to think on earth
continued joys would please. It is a way that crosses
that which nature goes. Nothing would be more tedi-
ous than to be glutted with perpetual jollities. Were
the body tied to one dish always (though of the most
exquisite flavour that it could make choice of), yet,
after a small time, it would complain of loathing and
satiety; and so would the soul if it did ever epicure
itself in joy. Disoontents are sometimes the better part
of our life. I know not well which is the most useful:
joy I may choose for pleasure, but adversities are the
best for profit; and sometimes those do so far help me,
as I should without them want much of the jol, It have.
The Cynic is one who never sees a good quality in a man
and never fails to see a bad one. He is the human owl,
vigilant in darkness, and blind to light, mousing for
vermin, and never seeking nobler game. He holds that
no man does • good thing except for profit.—W. H.
Beecher.

ACTION.— The proper end of life ill action rather than
contemplation. The more we sit and think of the mys-
teries within us the greater is the oonsequent confusion
of head and paralysis of brain. True, from heaven des-
cended, as ancient sages write, the preoept "Know thy-
self ;" but • man may know himself in two ways—the
one way leading to healthy action; the other to the
reverse. Right self-knowledge implies the study of the
limits of human action, rather than of the limits of the
human mind; the study of what we might do rather than
of what we might think ; the heights life might climb
rather than of thedepths the mind might darkly, and as
through • glass, perceive. To what, in all ages, has the
religion of the mystics led but to the abnegation of
duty; the abandonment of effort; the absorption of the
soul in an adoration more delusive than really elevating?
The men who have exalted humanity, who have taught
the arts and charities of life, who have won freedom
for their kind, who have planted cities, and laid down
railways, and reared factories, and built ffeets, have
troubled themselves ve 7 little with subjective analysis,
have not wasted much time in listening to the throbbing
of their diseased hearts, mistaking indigestion for inspi-
ration. We are not the better for the morbid neces-
sity of over self-consciousness, which we carry into
everything, even into love. We cannot take by, as it
comes, and be thankful and happy. We must torture
our brains with it—we must subject it to all kinds of
tests—we must impose on it too often oonditions fats/
to its very existence. If a man has the induensa he
sends for his doctor, stops at home, and nurses him-
*ll—* Patient and resigned ; but if he is in love he is
. * rich he is loved for his
riatbier
CZ' sirlY 11'4:V6;00r, Al,or winbe tamed tor •

/rv.".lr.r

LABOUR.—Labour is confessedly a great part of the
crime; and, therefore, no wonder if men fly from it;
which they do with no great an aversion, that few men
know their own strength for want of trying it; and,
upon that acoount, think themselves really unable to do
many things, which experience would 0012V11101) them
they have more ability to effect, than they have will to
attempt. It is idleness that creates impossibilities; and,
where men care not to do a thing, they shelter them-
selves under a persuasion that it cannot be done. The
shortest and the surest way to prove a wprk possible, is
strenuously to set about It; and no wonddl: if that proves
it possible that, for the most part, makes it no. Dig,
says the unjust steward, I cannot. But why Dad
either his legs or his arms fail him I No; but day
labour was but a hard and a dry kind of livelihood to •
man that could get an estate with two or three strokes
of his pen; and find so great • treasure as he did, with-
out digging for it. But such excuses will not paw mus-
ter with God, who will allow no man's humour or idle-
ness to be the measure of possible or impossible. And
to manifest the wretched hypocrisy of such pretences,
those very things, which upon the bare obligation of
duty are declined by men as impossible, presently be-
come not only possible, but readily practicable too, in •
case of extreme necessity. As no doubt that fore-men-
tioned instance of fraud and laziness, the unjust steward,
who 'deeded that he °mild neither dig nor beg, would
quickly have been taught both to dig and to ln too,
rather than starve. And if so, what a reason can such
a one produce before God why he could not submit to
the same hardships; rather than cheat and lie? The
former being but destructive of the body, the latter of
the soul: and certainly the highest and dearest concerns
of a temporal life are infinitely less valuable than those
of an external, and consequently ought, without any de-
mur at all, to be sacrificed to them, whensoever they
come in competition with them. He who can digest any
labour, rather than die, must refuse no labour, rather
than sin—Beef/i.