ders my property takes from me that which can be repaired by time; but what period can repair a ruined reputation? He who maims my person, affects that which medicine may remedy; but what herb has sovereignty over the wounds of slander? He who ridicules my poverty, or reproaches my profession, upbraids me with that which industry may retrieve, and integrity may purify; but what riches shall redeem the bankrupt fame? What power shall blanch the sullied snow of character? There can be no injury more deadly. There can be no crime more cruel. It is without remedy. It is without antidote. It is without evasion. The reptile, calumny, is ever on the watch. From the fascinations of its eye no activity can escape; from the venom of its fang no sanity can recover. It has no enjoyment but crime; it has no prey but virtue; it has no interval from the restlessness of its malice, save when bloated with its victims, it grovels to disgorge them at the withered shrine where envy idolizes her own infirmities. Fame. Though fame is smoke, Its fumes are frankincense to human thoughts. -Byron. FAME, like money, should neither be despised or idolized. An honest fame, based on worth and merit, and gained, like large estates, by prudence and indus try, deservedly perpetuates the names of the great and good. No glory or fame is both consolatory and enduring, unless based on virtue, wisdom, and justice. That acquired by wild ambition, is tarnished by associ ation-time deepens the stain. We read the biography of Washington with calmness and delight; that of Bonaparte, with mingled feelings of admiration and abhorrence. We admire the gigantic powers of his intellect, the vastness of his designs, the boldness of their execution; but turn, with horror, from the slaughter-fields of his ambition, and his own dreadful end. His giddy height of power served to plunge him deeper in misery; his lofty ambition increased the burning tortures of his exile; his towering intellect added a duplicate force to the consuming pangs of his disappointment. His fatal end should cool the ardor of all who have an inordinate desire for earthly glory. The praises and commendations of intimates and friends, are the greatest and most impassable obstacles to real superiority. Better were it, that they should whip us with cords and drive us to work, than that they should extol and exaggerate our childish scintil lations and puerile achievements. False fame is the rushlight which we, or our attendants, kindle in our apartments. We witness its feeble burning, and its gradual but certain decline. It glimmers for a little while, when, with flickering and palpitating radiance, it soon expires. Egotism and vanity detract from fame as ostentation diminishes the merit of an action. He that is vain enough to cry up himself, ought to be punished with the silence of others. We soil the splendor of our most beautiful actions by our vain-glorious magnifying them. There is no vice or folly that requires so much nicety and skill to manage as fame, nor any which, by ill management, makes so contemptible a figure. The desire of being thought famous is often a hindrance to being so; for such an one is more solicitous to let the world see what knowledge he hath than to learn that which he wants. Men are found to be vainer on account of those qualities which they fondly believe they have, than of those which they really have. Some would be thought to do great things, who are but tools or instruments; like the fool who fancied he played upon the organ, when he only drew the bellows. Be not so greedy of popular applause, as to forget that the same breath which blows up a fire may blow it out again. True fame is the light of heaven. It cometh from afar, it shines powerfully and brightly, but not always without clouds and shadows, which interpose, but do not destroy; eclipse, but do not extinguish. Like the glorious sun, it will continue to diffuse its beams when we are no more; for other eyes will hail the light, when we are withdrawn from it. Great and decided talent is a tower of strength which cannot be subverted. Envy, detraction, and persecution are missiles hurled against it only to fall harmless at its base, and to strengthen what they cannot overthrow. It seeks not the applause of the present moment, in which folly or mediocrity often secure the preference; but it extends its bright and prophetic vision through the "dark obscure" of distant time, and bequeaths to remote generations the vindication of its honor and fame, and the clear comprehension of its truths. No virtues and learning are inherited, but rather ignorance and misdirected inclinations; and assiduous and persevering labor must correct these defects, and make a fruitful garden of that soil which is naturally encumbered with stones and thistles. All home-triumphs and initiatory efforts are nothing worth. That which is great, commanding, and lasting, must be won by stubborn energy, by patient industry, by unwearied application, and by indefatigable zeal. We must lie down and groan, and get up and toil. race, not a pleasant walk, and the prize or a bauble, but a chaplet or a crown. are not friends, but foes; and the contest is one in which thousands fall through weakness and want of real force and courage. It is a long is not a leaf The spectators We may add virtue to virtue, strength to strength, and knowledge to knowledge, and yet fail, and soon be lost and forgotten in that mighty and soul-testing struggle, in which few come off conquerors and win an enduring and imperishable name. If we embark on this course, we shall need stout hearts conjoined with invincible minds. We must bid adieu to vice, to sloth, to flatteries and ease, "And scorn delights and live laborious days." Ambition. He who ascends to mountain-tops, shall find The loftiest peaks most wrapt in clouds and snow; Must look down on the hate of those below. -Byron. SOME conceited wights, who study party politics more than philosophy or ethics, call all the laudable desires of the human heart ambition, aiming to strip the monster of its deformity, that they may use it as the livery of heaven to serve the devil in. The former are based on philanthropy, the latter on selfishness. Lexicographers define ambition to be an earnest desire of power, honor, preferment, pride. The honor that is awarded to power is of doubtful grandeur, and the power that is acquired by ambition is held by a slender tenure, a mere rope of sand. Its hero often receives the applause of the multitude one day, and its execrations the next. The summit of vain ambition is often the depth of misery. Based on a sandy foundation, it falls before the blasts of envy, and the tornado of faction. It is inflated by a gaseous thirst for power, like a balloon with hydrogen, and is in constant danger of being exploded by the very element that causes its elevation. It eschews charity, and deals largely in the corrosive sublimate of falsehood. Like the kite, it Cannot rise in a calm, and requires a constant wind to preserve its upward course. The fulcrum of ignorance, and the lever of party spirit, form its magic power. An astute writer has well observed, that |