make any difference, in fact whether they are paid out of the exchequer of the state, or by the fees of the suitors in their courts; they are equally paid by a tax on the people in either case.  Although the necessaries of life are cheap in America, and equally cheap in Canada, the luxuries of life are higher by several hundred per cent in the one country than the other.  Thus, wine in the United States is so highly taxed, that in a tavern at New York you pay more for a bottle of Madeira than in one at London, viz. five dollars,—­and fifteen shillings for port.”

* * * * *

THE GATHERER.

LACONICS.

(From the fourth edition of the work of that title.)

The southern wits are like cucumbers, which are commonly all good in their kind; but at best are an insipid fruit:  while the northern geniuses are like melons, of which not one in fifty is good; but when it is so, it is an exquisite relish.—­Berkeley.

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There is some help for all the defects of fortune; for if a man cannot attain to the length of his wishes, he may have his remedy by cutting of them shorter.—­Cowley.

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Fear sometimes adds wings to the heels, and sometimes nails them to the ground, and fetters them from moving.—­Montaigne.

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When I reflect, as I frequently do, upon the felicity I have enjoyed, I sometimes say to myself, that, were the offer made true, I would engage to run again, from beginning to end, the same career of life.  All I would ask, should be the privilege of an author, to correct in a second edition, certain errors of the first.—­Franklin’s Life.

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I do not call him a poet that writes for his own diversion, any more than that gentleman a fiddler who amuses himself with a violin.—­Swift.

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Pleasure of meat, drink, clothes, &c., are forbidden those that know not how to use them; just as nurses cry pah! when they see a knife in a child’s hand; they will never say any thing to a man.—­Selden.

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There be that can pack the cards, and yet cannot play well:  so there are some that are good in canvasses and factions, that are otherwise weak men.—­Lord Bacon.

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A poet hurts himself by writing prose; as a race-horse hurts his motions by condescending to draw in a team.—­Shenstone.

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I cannot imagine why we should be at the expense to furnish wit for succeeding ages, when the former have made no sort of provision for ours.—­Swift.

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