PREACHING AND PRACTISING.
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e who can take advice is sometimes superior to him who can give it," said a distinguished author. Change the "sometimes" to often and we tread one step nearer to the truth. It costs so little labor to give precepts and monitions; it is so natural to enact the task-master and apportion every man's duty; so pleasant to play the sign-post, and point out the road that others are bound to follow, while we travel upon the primrose-path ourselves!
There was never yet an honest counsellor, however wise or eloquent, who could not have exclaimed with Portia: "I can easier teach twenty what is good to be done, than be one of the twenty to follow mine own teaching!" Seneca found it agreeable to set forth the advantages of poverty, while he was writing upon a table of gold; Steele delighted to laud temperance with the fumes of the grape careering through his brain. Sterne vented his tender-heartedness by a touching lamentation over a donkey, and the same hand with which he inscribed his pathetic plaint, fell heavily upon the
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