Julius Cæsar did write a collection of apophthegms, as appears in an epistle of Cicero. It is a pity his book is lost, for I imagine they were collected with judgment and choice.

LORD BACON: Apophthegms.

We may magnify the apophthegms, or reputed replies of wisdom, whereof many are to be seen in Laertius and Lycosthenes.

SIR T. BROWNE: Vulgar Errors. Exclusively of the abstract sciences, the largest and worthiest portion of our knowledge consists of aphorisms, and the greatest and best of men is but an aphorism. COLERIDGE.

Every man who has seen the world knows that nothing is so useless as a general maxim. If it be very moral and very true, it may serve for a copy to a charity boy. If, like those of Rochefoucault, it be sparkling and whimsical, it may make an excellent motto for an essay. But few indeed of the many wise apophthegms which have been uttered, from the time of the Seven Sages of Greece to that of Poor Richard, have prevented a single foolish action.

APOTHECARY.

The ideal physician of Hippocrates is, in this country, the apothecary of the present day. Galen says that he had an apotheke in which his drugs were kept, and where his medicines were always made under his own eye, or by his hand. For one moment we pause on the word apotheké, whence apothecary is derived. It meant among the Greeks a place where anything is put by and preserved,-especially, in the first instance, wine. The Romans had no winecellars, but kept their wine-jars upon upper floors, where they believed that the contents would ripen faster. The small floors were called fumaria, the large ones apothecæ. The apotheca, being a dry, airy place, became, of course, the best possible store-room for drugs, and many apothecas became drug-stores, with then-if it be one-attached to the name of an apothecarius in charge. It is a misfortune apothecary that it has in it association with the shop. But, to say nothing of Podalirius and Machaon, Cullen and William Hunter dispensed their own medicines. Household Words.

In the year one thousand three hundred and forty-five, Coursus de Gangeland, called an apothecary of London, serving about the person of King Edward the Third, received a pension of sixpence a day as a reward for his attendance on the king during a serious illness which he had in Scotland. Henry the Eighth gave forty marks a year to John Soda, apothecary, as a medical attendant on the Princess Mary, who was a delicate, unhealthy young woman; so that we thus have the first indications of the position of an English apothecary, as one whose calling for two hundred years maintained itself, and continued to maintain itself till a few years after the establishment of the College of Physicians, as that of a man who might be engaged even by kings in practice of the healing art. But in the third year of Queen Mary's reign, thirtyseven years after the establishment of the ColThe word parable is sometimes used in Scrip-lege of Physicians, both surgeons and apotheture in a large and general sense, and applied caries were prohibited the practising of physic. to short, sententious sayings, maxims, or aphor- In Henry the Eighth's time it had been settled, on the other hand, that surgery was an especial lowship of physicians were allowed to engage part of physic, and any of the company or felin it.

LORD MACAULAY: Machiavelli, March, 1827. In a numerous collection of our Saviour's apophthegms there is not to be found one example of sophistry or of false subtilty, or of any thing approaching thereunto.

isms.

PALEY.

BISHOP PORTEUS.

It is astonishing the influence foolish apo thegms have upon the mass of mankind, though they are not unfrequently fallacies.

REV. SYDNEY SMITH.

Household Words.

About one hundred and fifty years ago, talking like an apothecary was a proverbial phrase for talking nonsense; and our early dramatists when they produced an apothecary on the stage always presented him as a garrulous and foolish

man. It was in what may be called the middle period of the history of the apothecary's calling in this country that it had thus fallen into grave contempt. At first it was honoured, and it is now, at last, honoured again. At first there were few of the fraternity. Dr. Freind mentions a time when there was only one apothecary in all London. Now [August, 1856] there are in England and Wales about seven thousand gentlemen who, when tyros, took their freedom out to kill (or cure)

Where stands a structure on a rising hill,

Nigh where Fleet Ditch descends in sable streams To wash his sooty Naiads in the Thames,namely, at the Hall of the Worshipful Society of Apothecaries in Blackfriars. Of course apothecaries do not monopolize the license to kill, or we never should have heard of that country in which it was a custom to confer upon the public executioner, after he had performed his office on a certain number of condemned people, the degree of doctor apothecary.

Household Words.

ARGUMENT.

Avoid disputes as much as possible. In order to appear easy and well-bred in conversation, you may assure yourself that it requires more than to contradict the notions of another: but wit, as well as more good humour, to improve if you are at any time obliged to enter on an argument, give your reasons with the utmost coolness and modesty, two things which scarce ever fail of making an impression on the hearers. Besides, if you are neither dogmatical, nor show either by your actions or words that you are full of yourself, all will the more heartily rejoice at your victory. Nay, should you be pinched in your argument, you may make your retreat with a very good grace. You were never positive, and are now glad to be better informed. This has made some approve the Socratic way of reasoning, where, while you scarce affirm anything, you can hardly be caught in an abSocrates introduced a catechetical method of surdity; and though possibly you are endeavourarguing. He would ask his adversary questioning to bring over another to your opinion, which upon question, till he had convinced him out is firmly fixed, you seem only to desire informaof his own mouth that his opinions were wrong. tion from him. BUDGELL: This way of debating drives an enemy up into Spectator, No. 197. a corner, seizes all the passes through which he can make an escape, and forces him to surrender at discretion.

I have sometimes amused myself with considering the several methods of managing a debate which have obtained in the world.

The first races of mankind used to dispute, as our ordinary people do now-a-days, in a kind of wild logic, uncultivated by rules of art.

Aristotle changed this method of attack, and invented a great variety of little weapons, called syllogisms. As in the Socratic way of dispute you agree to everything your opponent advances, in the Aristotelic you are still denying and contradicting some part or other of what he says. Socrates conquers you by stratagem, Aristotle by force. The one takes the town by sap, the other sword in hand. ADDISON: Spectator, No. 239. When arguments press equally in matters indifferent, the safest method is to give up ourselves ADDISON.

to neither.

Lastly, if you propose to yourself the true end of argument, which is information, it may be a seasonable check to your passion; for if you search purely after truth, it will be almost indifferent to you where you find it. I cannot in this place omit an observation which I have often made, namely, That nothing procures a man more esteem and less envy from the whole company, than if he chooses the part of moderator, without engaging directly on either side in a dispute. BUDGELL:

ARGUMENT-ARISTOCRACY-ARISTOTLE.

in analysis and in combination, that great man was without a rival. No philosopher has ever possessed, in an equal degree, the talent either of separating established systems into their primary elements, or of connecting detached phenomena in harmonious systems. He was the great fashioner of the intellectual chaos; he changed its darkness into light, and its discord into order. He brought to literary researches the same vigour and amplitude of mind to which both physical and metaphysical science are so greatly indebted. His fundamental principles of criticism are excellent. To cite only a single instance: the doctrine which he established, that poetry is an imitative art, when justly understood, is to the critic what the compass is to the navigator. With it he may venture upon the most extensive excursions. Without it he must creep cautiously along the coast, or lose himself in a trackless expanse, and trust, at best, to the guidance of an occasional star. It is a discovery which changes a caprice into a science.

When war becomes the trade of a separate class, the least dangerous course left to a government is to form that class into a standing army. It is scarcely possible that men can pass their lives in the service of one state, without feeling some interest in its greatness. Its victories are their victories. Its defeats are their defeats. The contract loses something of its mercantile character. The services of the soldier are considered as the effects of patriotic zeal, his pay as the tribute of national gratitude. To betray the power which employs him, to be even remiss in its service, are in his eyes the most atrocious and degrading of crimes.

When the princes and commonwealths of Italy began to use hired troops, their wisest course would have been to form separate military establishments. Unhappily, this was not done. The mercenary warriors of the Peninsula, instead of being attached to the service of different powers, were regarded as the common property of all. The connection between the state and its defenders was reduced to the most simple and naked traffic. The adventurer brought his horse, his weapons, his strength, and his experience, into the market. Whether the King of Naples or the Duke of Milan, the Pope, or the Signory of Florence, struck the bargain, was to him a matter of perfect indifference. He was for the

The general propositions of Aristotle are val uable. But the merit of the superstructure bears no proportion to that of the foundation. This is partly to be ascribed to the character of the philosopher, who, though qualified to do all that could be done by the resolving and combining powers of the understanding, seems not to have possessed much of sensibility or imagination.highest wages and the longest term. When the Partly, also, it may be attributed to the deficiency of materials. The great works of genius which then existed were not either sufficiently numerous or sufficiently varied to enable any man to form a perfect code of literature. To require that a critic should conceive classes of composition which had never existed, and then investigate their principles, would be as unreasonable as the demand of Nebuchadnezzar, who expected his magicians first to tell him his dream and then to interpret it.

campaign for which he had contracted was finished, there was neither law nor punctilio to prevent him from instantly turning his arms against his late masters. The soldier was altogether disjoined from the citizen and the subject.

The natural consequences followed. Left to the conduct of men who neither loved those whom they defended, nor hated those whom they opposed, who were often bound by stronger ties to the army against which they fought than to the state which they served, who lost by the With all his deficiencies, Aristotle was the termination of the conflict, and gained by its most enlightened and profound critic of an- prolongation, war completely changed its chartiquity. Dionysius was far from possessing the acter. Every man came into the field of battle same exquisite subtilty, or the same vast compre- impressed with the knowledge that, in a few hension. But he had access to a much greater days, he might be taking the pay of the power number of specimens; and he had devoted him- against which he was then employed, and fightself, as it appears, more exclusively to the studying by the side of his enemies against his assoof elegant literature. His peculiar judgments are of more value than his general principles. He is only the historian of literature. Aristotle is its philosopher. LORD MACAULAY: On the Athenian Orators, Aug. 1824.

ciates. The strongest interests and the strongest feelings concurred to mitigate the hostility of those who had lately been brethren in arms, and who might soon be brethren in arms once more. Their common profession was a bond of union not to be forgotten even when they were engaged in the service of contending parties. Hence it was that operations, languid and indecisive beyond any recorded in history, marches blockades, bloodless capitulations and equally and counter-marches, pillaging expeditions and of Italy during the course of nearly two cenbloodless combats, make up the military history turies. Mighty armies fight from sunrise to sunset. A great victory is won. Thousands of prisoners are taken; and hardly a life is lost. A pitched battle seems to have been really less dangerous than an ordinary civil tumult. Courage was now no longer necessary even to the