Again, we have men who ride pick-a-back on their family reputation, or, if their family have none, identify themselves with some well-known statesman, use his opinions, and lend him their patronage on all occasions.

This is a dangerous plan, and serves oftener, I am afraid, to point a difference than to adorn a speech.
But alas! a striking failure may be reached without tempting Providence by any of these ambitious tricks.

Our own stature will be found high enough for shame.

The success of three simple sentences lures us into a fatal parenthesis in the fourth, from whose shut brackets we may never disentangle the thread of our discourse.

A momentary flush tempts us into a quotation; and we may be left helpless in the middle of one of Pope's couplets, a white film gathering before our eyes, and our kind friends charitably trying to cover our disgrace by a feeble round of applause.