In our youthful days, we all remember to have read a pithy string of Maxims by Dr. Franklin; and we are accustomed to admire the pertinence of their wit,--but here their influence too often terminates. Since Franklin's time, the practice of getting into debt has become more and more easy, notwithstanding men have become more wary. Goldsmith, too, gives us a true picture of this habit in his scene with Mr. Padusoy, the mercer, a mode which has been found to succeed so well since his time, that, with the exception of a few short-cuts by sharpers and other proscribed gentry, little amendment has been made. Profuseness on the part of the debtor will generally be found to beget confidence on that of the creditor; and, in like manner, diffidence will create mistrust, and mistrust an entire overthrow of the scheme. An unblushing front, and the gift of _non chalance_, are therefore the best qualifications for a debtor to obtain credit, while poor modesty will be starved in her own littleness. In vain has Juvenal protested--"_Fronti nulla fides;_" and have the world been amused with anecdotes of paupers dying with money sewed up in their clothes: appearance and assumed habits are still the handmaids to confidence; and so long as this system exists, the warfare of debtor and creditor will be continued. Procrastination will be found to be another furtherance of the system, inasmuch as it is too evident throughout life that men are more apt to take pleasure "by the forelock," than to calculate its consequence. In this manner, men of irregular habits anticipate and forestal every hour of their lives, and pleasure and pain alternate, till pain, like debt, accumulates, and sinks its patient below the level of the world. Economy and forecast do not enter into the composition of such men, nor are such lessons often felt or acknowledged, till custom has rendered the heart unfit for the reception of their counsels. It is too frequently that the neglect of these principles strikes at the root of social happiness, and produces those lamentable wrecks of men--those shadows of sovereignty, which people our prisons, poor-houses, and asylums. Genius, with all her book-knowledge, is not exempt from this failing; but, on the contrary, a sort of fatality seems to attend her sons and daughters, which tarnishes their fame, and often exposes them to the brutish attacks of the ignorant and vulgar. Wits, and even philosophers, are among this number; and we are bound to acknowledge, that, beyond the raciness of their writings, there is but little to admire or imitate in the lives of such men as Steele, Foote, or Sheridan. It is, however, fit that principle should be thus recognised and upheld, and that any dereliction from its rules should be placed against the account of such as enjoy other degrees of superiority, and allowed to form an item in the scale of their merits.