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44 beautiful coquette and a match-making mother; that it was his castle that was more matter of conquest than himself; and that his family diamonds were his fair mistress's only idea of domestic felicity! Oh, Life!—the wearisome, the vexatious—whose pleasures are either placed beyond our reach, or within it when we no longer desire them—when youth toils for the riches, age may possess but not enjoy;—where we trust to friendship, one light word may destroy; or to love, that dies even of itself;—where we talk of glory, philosophical, literary, military, political—die, or, what is much more, live for it—and this coveted possession dwells in the consent of men of whom no two agree about it. First, let us take it in its philosophical point of view: the philosopher turns from his food by day, his sleep by night, to leave a theory of truth to the world, which the next age discovers to be a falsehood. Ptolemy perhaps bestowed as much thought on, and had as much pride in his solar system as Galileo.—Then in its literary, and truly this example is particularly encouraging: the poet feeds the fever in his veins—works himself up to the belief of imaginary sorrows, till they are even as his own—