tum pro magnifico est. We are satiated with those
objects which make a part of our business in every day, and are desirous
of trying something that is a stranger to us. Whatever we see through
a mist, or in the twilight, is apt to be apprehended by us as something
admirable, for the single reason that it is seen imperfectly. What we
are sure that we can easily and adequately effect, we despise. He that
goes into battle with an adversary of more powerful muscle or of greater
practice than himself, feels a tingling sensation, not unallied to
delight, very different from that which would occur to him, when his
victory was easy and secure.

Each man is conscious what it is that he can certainly effect. This does
not therefore present itself to him as an object of ambition. We have
many of us internally something of the spirit expressed by the apostle:
"Forgetting the things that are behind, we press forward to those that
remain." And, so long as this precept is soberly applied, no conduct can
be more worthy of praise. Improvement is the appropriate race of man. We
cannot stand still. If we do not go forward, we shall inevitably recede.
Shakespear, when he wrote his Hamlet, did not know that he could produce
Macbeth and Othello.

But the progress of a man of reflection will be, to a considerable
degree, in the path he has already entered. If he strikes into a new
career, it will not be without deep premeditation. He will attempt
nothing wantonly. He will carefully examine his powers, and see for what
they are adapted. Sudet multum. He will be like the man, who first in a
frail bark committed himself to the treachery of the waves. He will
keep near to the shore; he will tremble for the audaciousness of
his enterprise; he will feel that it calls for all his alertness and
vigilance. The man of reflection will not begin, till he feels his mind
swelling with his purposed theme, till his blood flows fitfully and
with full pulses through his veins, till his eyes sparkle with the
intenseness of his conceptions, and his "bosom labours with the God."

But the fool dashes in at once. He does not calculate the dangers of his
enterprise. He does not study the map of the country he has to traverse.
He does not measure the bias of the ground, the rising knolls and the
descending slopes that are before him. He obeys a blind and unreflecting
impulse.

His case bears a striking resemblance to what is related of Oliver
Goldsmith. Goldsmith