double file of expedients, to bilk their consciences, and salve
their reputation. In short, you never know where to have them, any more
than if they were of a different species of animals; and in trusting to
them, you are sure to be betrayed and overreached. You have other
things to mind; they are thinking only of you, and how to turn you to
advantage. _Give and take_ is no maxim here. You can build nothing
on your own moderation or on their false delicacy. After a familiar
conversation with a waiter at a tavern, you overhear him calling you by
some provoking nickname. If you make a present to the daughter of the
house where you lodge, the mother is sure to recollect some addition to
her bill. It is a running fight. In fact, there is a principle in
human nature not willingly to endure the idea of a superior, a sour,
jacobinical disposition to wipe out the score of obligation, or efface
the tinsel of external advantages--and where others have the opportunity
of coming in contact with us, they generally find the means to establish
a sufficiently marked degree of degrading equality. No man is a hero
to his valet-de-chambre, is an old maxim. A new illustration of this
principle occurred the other day. While Mrs. Siddons was giving her
readings of Shakespear to a brilliant and admiring drawing-room, one of
the servants in the hall below was saying, 'What, I find the old lady is
making as much noise as ever!' So little is there in common between the
different classes of society, and so impossible is it ever to unite the
diversities of custom and knowledge which separate them.

Women, according to Mrs. Peachum, are 'bitter bad judges' of the
characters of men; and men are not much better of theirs, if we can form
any guess from their choice in marriage. Love is proverbially blind. The
whole is an affair of whim and fancy. Certain it is that the greatest
favourites with the other sex are not those who are most liked or
respected among their own. I never knew but one clever man who was
what is called a _lady's man;_ and he (unfortunately for the argument)
happened to be a considerable coxcomb. It was by this irresistible
quality, and not by the force of his genius, that he vanquished. Women
seem to doubt their own judgments in love, and to take the opinion which
a man entertains of his own prowess and accomplishments for granted. The
wives of poets are (for the most part) mere pieces of furniture in the
room. If you speak to the