arms and recall her
long-forgotten triumphs to the memory of the only person who could bear
witness to them? Was it to show the proud remains of herself to those
who remembered or had often heard what she was--her skin like shrivelled
alabaster, her emaciated features chiselled by Nature's finest hand, her
eyes that, when a smile lighted them up, still shone like diamonds,
the vermilion hues that still bloomed among wrinkles? Was it to talk
of bone-lace, of the flounces and brocades of the last century, of
race-balls in the year '62, and of the scores of lovers that had died at
her feet, and to set whole counties in a flame again, only with a dream
of faded beauty? Whether it was for this, or whether she meant to leave
her friend anything (as was indeed expected, all things considered, not
without reason), nobody knows--for she never breathed a syllable on the
subject herself, and died without a will. The accomplished coquette
of twenty, who had pampered hopes only to kill them, who had kindled
rapture with a look and extinguished it with a breath, could find no
better employment at seventy than to revive the fond recollections and
raise up the drooping hopes of her kinswoman only to let them fall--to
rise no more. Such is the delight we have in trifling with and
tantalising the feelings of others by the exquisite refinements, the
studied sleights of love or friendship!

Where a property is actually bequeathed, supposing the circumstances of
the case and the usages of society to leave a practical discretion to
the testator, it is most frequently in such portions as can be of the
least service. Where there is much already, much is given; where much is
wanted, little or nothing. Poverty invites a sort of pity, a miserable
dole of assistance; necessity, neglect and scorn; wealth attracts and
allures to itself more wealth by natural association of ideas or by that
innate love of inequality and injustice which is the favourite principle
of the imagination. Men like to collect money into large heaps in their
lifetime; they like to leave it in large heaps after they are dead. They
grasp it into their own hands, not to use it for their own good, but to
hoard, to lock it up, to make an object, an idol, and a wonder of it. Do
you expect them to distribute it so as to do others good; that they will
like those who come after them better than themselves; that if they
were willing to pinch and starve themselves, they will not delibera