Star.
London, England, 1822-11-14 00:00:00

OPINIONg OF MEV AND MATTERS.

FROM THE !MUSEUM ; OR, RECORD OF LITERATURE.
Putastmes.—The idlest of all butterfly chases is
the ru'n after pleasure. Pleasures that a man must
pait after till his breath is gone, are not worth the
enjoying ; they are not• really pleasures, but rather
pains made palatable, like the bitter pills that go
agreeably down the throat when disguised in sugar.
Those are the best and truest pleasures that we find
without seeking. We should laugh, and cry “fool!”
arr. a man who set ow with the determination .to
pick-iip a guinea hi his path, and not to rest till he
had found one; and so might we shout after the
pleasure-seeker; for what does he go to seek, but the
guinea he may never find ? It were not unwise in any
man to resolve, that, if he saw one at his feet, he
would pick it np, and enjoy the use of it ; and so
should we resolve 'only to take those pleasuie,, that
drop at our feet, but not to set out to seek them.—.
Those which are purchased, either at that dearest of
all prices, the price of conscience, or at that hardly
less dear one, the price of health—are not pleasures,
but bought pains. I always think those grapes the
sweetest which are given me. A bunch that I have
dearly purchased, if it prove sour, is very likely to
sous my temper as well as my taste; but if it is
gift, though I lose the sweet I expected, I lose nothing
more. To such tempers, those pleasures which are
the especial gifts of chance, or of the good intention's
of that PROVIDENCE which throws its pleasurable
gifts in every man's path at some time or other; are
always sweet : it is the far-sought and the dearly-
purchased ones which are sour, either in the enjoy-
ment, or in the after-relish.
There arc two classes of pleasure-hunters—the ef-
feminate and the coarse; and there is but this differ-
ence between them (if it is one), that the pleasures of
the one degenerate into beastliness, and those of the
other into brutality.
LIARS.—It is a common saying, that I liars should
have good memories :' it were, perhaps, better that
they should not, for then they would betray them-
selves; and rather, that those who believe in their
fictions as truths, should have the better memory to
detect their contradictions. The pro Verb should run
thus: g Those who listen to liars should have good

memories:

Fatzzens.—Never was a word conveying the idea
of attachment more abused.• The major part of the
beings who take on themselves that exalted title (for
no man is nobler than a true friend), or are foolishly
allowed to wear it, are a set of familiars—hangers.on
on your wine or your wit—human barracks, that
cling to the gallant ship of your fortunes as long as
it sails securely and rides through the tempest; but
drop from it the moment you are thi own on the
shores •of sorrow, or strike on the hidden rocks of
ruin. To be a true friend is to be one man in a mil-
lion.: there are such men, but they are in the quan-
tity of Gratiano's wit, " a grain of wheat in a bushel
of chaff." He knew them well, who exclaimed—
" Oh that mine enemies were my friends, rot then
should see their backs !"
GREAT MEN'S DEPUTIES.—It may be said of any
pompous and inflated deputy of a great Officer, that
like all shadows, he looks larger than the substance.
INCONSISTENCIES or
.ourt LAWS.—In Scotland
child-stealing is punished with death—in England,
with transportation beyond the seas. A rational child-
stealer should therefore prefer to steal them in the lat-
ter country; unless, indeed, he can satisfy himself
with a good and sufficing reason why he should pre-
fer a Scotch child and the gallows to an English
child and transportation.
SPACE.—I was never so much struck with the vast-
ness of the area within the dome of St: Paul's as when
I saw a little child running across the centre of it.
MANNERS.—Those even of the country, in Queen
Anne's Augustan age, must have been in a high de-
gree depraved by the modish French foppries im-
ported into our city, when the daughter of a country
squire, a pretty rustic girl of sixteen summers, who
had never seen London, is described in her affected
bashfulness at being gazed at even by the polite Spec-
tator himself), as dropping first her glove, then her
fan, and lastly her sne-box, in her well-affected con-
fusion. A snuff-box in the hands of a country girl
of sixteen!

OPTICAL TRAP.—To the curious it may not be un-
interesting to be informed that an ingenious sports.
man in this vicinity (Newport, R. I.) has lately in-
vented what appears to be entirely a novel mode of
trapping birds, animals, &c.• It is founded on the
principle of the fondness of many animals to associate
with each other—and is effected merely by placing a
mirror in a suitable trap, so situated that the animil,
in passing to and from its usual haunts, may see itself
reflected, and is somehow or other curiously impelled
to approach the glass, and consequently entrapped :
for instance, in older to take minks, &c. a
common box trap is made use of, with a mirror in the
extreme end (oi.posite the mouth); this being placed
on the margin of a river or pond of water frequented
by them, they will necessarily see themselves in it,
and, like Narcissus, fall in love with their shadows,
and are instantly taken. The inventor has not .only
been succe.sful in taking the above, animals, but he
assures me that•he has recently caught rabbits and
partridges in one of this construction, and that no
less' than two dozen mice were taken in one night,
ithout any other Wit.—American Paper.

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