he makes
use of the interval only to flatter his favourite infirmity again. Would
you wean a man from sensual excesses by the inevitable consequences to
which they lead?--What holds more antipathy to pleasure than pain? The
mind given up to self-indulgence revolts at suffering, and throws it
from it as an unaccountable anomaly, as a piece of injustice when it
comes. Much less will it acknowledge any affinity with or subjection to
it as a mere threat. If the prediction does not immediately come true,
we laugh at the prophet of ill: if it is verified, we hate our adviser
proportionably, hug our vices the closer, and hold them dearer and
more precious the more they cost us. We resent wholesome counsel as an
impertinence, and consider those who warn us of impending mischief as
if they had brought it on our heads. We cry out with the poetical
enthusiast--

And let us nurse the fond deceit;
And what if we must die in sorrow?
Who would not cherish dreams so sweet,
Though grief and pain should come to-morrow?

But oh thou! who didst lend me speech when I was dumb, to whom I owe
it that I have not crept on my belly all the days of my life like the
serpent, but sometimes lift my forked crest or tread the empyrean, wake
thou out of thy mid-day slumbers! Shake off the heavy honeydew of thy
soul, no longer lulled with that Circean cup, drinking thy own thoughts
with thy own ears, but start up in thy promised likeness, and shake the
pillared rottenness of the world! Leave not thy sounding words in air,
write them in marble, and teach the coming age heroic truths! Up, and
wake the echoes of Time! Rich in deepest lore, die not the bed-rid churl
of knowledge, leaving the survivors unblest! Set, set as thou didst rise
in pomp and gladness! Dart like the sunflower one broad, golden flash of
light; and ere thou ascendest thy native sky, show us the steps by which
thou didst scale the Heaven of philosophy, with Truth and Fancy for thy
equal guides, that we may catch thy mantle, rainbow-dipped, and still
read thy words dear to Memory, dearer to Fame!

There is another branch of this character, which is the trifling or
dilatory character. Such persons are always creating difficulties, and
unable or unwilling to remove them. They cannot brush aside a cobweb,
and are stopped by an insect's wing. Their character is imbecility,
rather than effeminacy. The want of energy and resolution in the persons
last described arises from the habitual