CLXXXIX.

WHERE true religion has prevented one crime, false religions have afforded a pretext for a thousand.

CXC

WE ask advice, but we mean approbation.

CXCI.

BE very slow to believe that you are wiser than all others; it is a fatal but common error. Where one has been saved by a true estimation of another's weakness, thousands have been destroyed by a false appreciation of their own strength. Napoleon could calculate the former well, but to his miscalculations of the latter, he may ascribe his present degradation.

CXCII.

IN the present enlightened state of society, it is impossible for mankind to be thoroughly vitious; for wisdom and virtue are very often convertible terms, and they invariably assist and strengthen each other. A society composed of none but the wicked, could not exist; it contains within itself the seeds of its own destruction, and, without a flood, would be swept away from the earth, by the deluge of its own iniquity. The moral cement of all society, is virtue, it unites and preserves, while vice separates and destroys. The good may well be termed the salt of the earth. For where there is no integrity, there can be no confidence; and where there is no confidence, there can be no unanimity. The story of the three German robbers is applicable to our present purpose, from the pregnant brevity of its moral. Having acquired, by various atrocities, what amounted to a very valuable booty, they agreed to divide the spoil, and to retire from so dangerous a vocation. When the day, which they had appointed for this purpose, arrived, one of them was dispatched to a neighbouring town, to

purchase provisions for their last carousal. The other two secretly agreed to murder him on his return, that they might come in for one half of the plunder, instead of a third. They did so. But the murdered man was a closer calculator even than his assassins, for he had previously poisoned a part of the provisions, that he might appropriate unto himself the whole of the spoil. This precious triumvirate were found dead together,-a signal instance that nothing is so blind and suicidal, as the selfishness of vice.

CXCIII.

WHEN the million applaud you, seriously ask yourself what harm you have done; when they censure you, what good!

CXCIV.

AGAR said, "give me neither poverty nor riches; and this will ever be the prayer of the wise." Our incomes should be like our shoes, if too small, they will gall and pinch us, but, if too large, they will cause us to stumble, and to trip. But wealth, after all, is a relative thing, since he that has little, and wants less, is richer than he that has much, but wants more. True contentment depends not upón what we have, but upon what we would have; a tub was large enough for Diogenes, but a world was too little for Alexander.

CXCV.

WE should act with as much energy, as those who expect every thing from themselves; and we should pray with as much earnestness as those who expect every thing from God.

CXCVI.

THE ignorant have often given credit to the wise, for powers that are permitted to none, merely because the

wise have made a proper use of those powers that are permitted to all. The little Arabian tale of the dervise, shall be the comment of this proposition. A dervise was journeying alone in the desert, when two merchants suddenly met him; "You have lost a camel," said he, to the merchants; "indeed we have," they replied; "was he not blind in his right eye? and lame in his left leg?" said the dervise; "he was," replied the merchants; "had he not lost a front tooth ?" said the dervise; "he had," rejoined the merchants; " and was he not loaded with honey on one side, and wheat on the other ?" "most certainly he was," they replied, " and as you have seen him so lately, and marked him so particularly, you can, in all probability, conduct us unto him." "My friends," said the dervise, "I have never seen your camel, nor ever heard of him, but from you." "A pretty story, truly," said the merchants," but where are the jewels which formed a part of his cargo." "I have neither seen your camel, nor your jewels," repeated the dervise. On this they seized his person, and forthwith hurried him before the cadi, where, on the strictest search, nothing could be found upon him, nor could any evidence whatever be adduced to convict him, either of falsehood, or of theft. They were then about to proceed against him as a sorcerer, when the dervise, with great calmness, thus addressed the court: "I have been much amused with your surprise, and own that there has been some ground for your suspicions; but I have lived long, and alone; and I can find ample scope for observation, even in a desert. I knew that I had crossed the track of a camel that had strayed from its owner, because I saw no mark of any human footstep on the same route; I knew that the animal was blind in one eye, because it had cropped the herbage only on one side of its path; and I perceived that it was lame in one leg, from the faint impression which that particular foot had produced upon the sand; I concluded that the animal had lost one tooth, because wherever it had grazed, a small tuft of herbage was left uninjured, in the centre of its bite. As to that which formed the burthen of the beast, the busy ants informed me

that it was corn on the one side, and the clustering flies, that it was honey on the other."

CXCVII.

SOME philosophers would give a sex to revenge and appropriate it almost exclusively to the female mind. But, like most other vices, it is of both genders; yet, because wounded vanity, or slighted love, are the two most powerful excitements to revenge, it has been thought, perhaps, to rage with more violence in the female heart. But as the causes of this passion are not confined to the women, SO neither are the effects. History can produce many Syllas, for one Fulvia, or Christina. The fact, perhaps, is, that the human heart, in both sexes, will more readily pardon injuries than insults, particularly if they appear to arise, not from any wish in the offender to degrade us, but to aggrandise himself. Margaret Lambrun assumed a man's habit, and came to England, from the other side of the Tweed, determined to assassinate Queen Elizabeth. She was urged to this, from the double malice of revenge, excited by the loss of her mistress, Queen Mary, and that of her own husband. who died from grief, at the death of his queen. In attempting to get close to Elizabeth, she dropped one of her pistols; and on being seized, and brought before the queen, she boldly avowed her motives, and added, that she found herself necessitated, by experience, to prove the truth of that maxim, that neither force nor reason can hinder a woman from revenge, when she is impelled by love. The queen set an example, that few kings would have followed, for she magnanimously forgave the criminal; and thus took the noblest mode of convincing her that there were some injuries which even a woman could forgive.

CXCVIII.

ALL the poets are indebted more or less to those who have gone before them; even Homer's originality has

been questioned, and Virgil owes almost as much to Theocritus, in his Pastorals, as to Homer, in his Heroics; and if our own countryman, Milton, has soared above both Homer and Virgil, it is because he has stolen some feathers from their wings. But Shakespeare stands alone. His want of erudition was a most happy and productive ignorance; it forced him back upon his own resources, which were exhaustless; if his literary qualifications made it impossible for him to borrow from the antients, he was more than repaid by the powers of his invention, which made borrowing unnecessary. In all the ebbings and the flowings of his genius, in his storms, no less than in his calms, he is as completely separated from all other poets, as the Caspian from all other seas. But he abounds with so many axioms applicable to all the circumstances, situations, and varieties of life, that they are no longer the property of the poet, but of the world; all apply, but none dare appropriate them; and, like anchors, they are secure from thieves, by reason of their weight.

CXCIX.

THAT nations sympathize with their monarch's glory, that they are improved by his virtues, and that the tone of morals rises high, when he that leads the band is perfect, these are truths admitted with exultation, and felt with honest pride. But that a nation is equally degraded by a monarch's profligacy, that it is made, in some sort, contemptible by his meanness, and immoral, by his depravation, these are positions less flattering, but equally important and true. "Plus exemplo quam peccato nocent, quippe quod multi imitatores principum existunt.” ample, therefore, of a sovereign derives its powerful influence from that pride inherent in the constitution of our nature, which dictates to all, not to copy their inferiors, but which, at the same time, causes imitation to descend. A prince, therefore, can no more be obscured by vices, without demoralizing his people, than the sun can be eclipsed without darkening the land. In proof of these propositions, we

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