If there were no fire, there could be no smoke. Common fame is seldom to blame. All that we have heard may not be true, but so much could not have been said, if there were no foundation. We should avoid the first approach to vice, or danger; though small at first, it may increase to an alarming magnitude. The smoke may soon be succeeded by flame. He who would keep his morals untainted, must not associate familiarly with the debauched and wicked.

«Vice is a monster of such frightful mien,
As to be hated needs but to be seen;
But seen too oft, familiar with her face,
We first admire, next pity, then embrace».

The fox, when he first saw a lion, ran from him in great terror but meeting one a second, and then a third time, he had courage enough to approach, and salute him. The Spaniards and the French use the proverb somewhat differently. Cerca le anda el humo, tras la llama, and Il n'y a point de feu sans fumée, where there is fire, there will be some smoke; that is, where any foul action has been committed, it will by some outlet or other escape, and become known, Murder will out, we say.

The conquered lament their hard fate, and the conqueror is undone: a no uncommon consequence of war, in which, though the conqueror may not be reduced to the low state of his opponent, yet he usually finds his country so weakened by the conte'st, so drained of men and money, that it scarcely recovers itself in an age. The same often happens, on the termination of a suit at law. The adage took its rise from the result of the battle at Cheronæa, in which the Athenians and Thebans were destroyed; and Philip, of Macedon, who conquered them, was soon after assassinated, by a young man of the name of Pausanias.