NOTES OF A READER.


LACONICS.

(_From Maxwell. By Theodore Hook_.)


_Professional People_.

None of our fellow-creatures enjoy life more than the successful
member of one of the learned professions. There is, it is true,
constant toil; but there are constant excitement, activity, and
enthusiasm; at least, where there is not enthusiasm in a profession,
success will never come--and as to the affairs of the world in
general, the divine, the lawyer, and the medical man, are more
conversant and mixed up with them, than any other human
beings--cabinet ministers themselves, not excepted.

The divine, by the sacred nature of his calling, and the higher
character of his duties, is, perhaps, farther removed from an
immediate contact with society; his labours are of a more exalted
order, and the results of those labours not open to ordinary
observation; but the lawyer in full practice knows the designs and
devices of half our acquaintance; it is true, professional decorum
seals his lips, but _he_ has them all before him in his "mind's
eye,"--all their litigations and littlenesses,--all their cuttings,
and carvings, and contrivings. He knows why a family, who hate the