*
To the best of my belief, Mr. Shandy is the first who
fairly pointed out the incalculable influence of
nomenclature upon the whole life--who seems first to have
recognised the one child, happy in an heroic appellation,
soaring upwards on the wings of fortune, and the other,
like the dead sailor in his shotted hammock, haled down by
sheer weight of name into the abysses of social failure.
*
It would be well if nations and races could communicate
their qualities; but in practice when they look upon each
other, they have an eye to nothing but defects.
*
Many a man's destiny has been settled by nothing apparently
more grave than a pretty face on the opposite side of the
street and a couple of bad companions round the corner.
*
So kindly is the world arranged, such great profit may
arise from a small degree of human reliance on oneself, and
such, in particular, is the happy star of this trade of
writing, that it should combine pleasure and profit to both
parties, and be at once agreeable, like fiddling, and
useful, like good preaching.
*
In all garrison towns, guard-calls, and reveilles, and such
like, make a fine, romantic interlude in civic business.
Bugles, and drums, and fifes are of themselves most
excellent things in nature, and when they carry the mind to
marching armies and the picturesque vicissitudes of war
they stir up something proud in the heart.
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