out for blood; "Solus magnopere contendit ne cui varce

retur.

CCCCLIII.

IT is an easy and a vulgar thing to please the mou, and not a very arduous task to astonish them; but essentially to benefit and to improve them, is a work fraught with difficulty, and teeming with danger.

CCCCLIV.

THE seeds of repentance are sown in youth by pleasure, but the harvest is reaped in age by pain.

CCCCLV

RICHES may enable us to confer favours; but to confer them with propriety, and with grace, requires a something that riches cannot give; even trifles may be so bestówed as to cease to be triflcs. The citizens of Megara offered the freedom of their city to Alexander; such an offer excited a smile in the countenance of him who had conquered the world; but he received this tribute of their respect with complacency, on being informed that they had never offered it to any but to Hercules and himself.

CCCCLVI.

THE worst thing that can be said of the most powerful is, that they can take your life; but the same thing can be said of the most weak.

CCCCLVII.

HE that is good will infallibly become better, and he that is bad will as certainly become worse; for vice, virtue, and time, are three things that never stand still.

Ο

CCCCLVIII.

WHEN the cruel fall into the hands of the cruel, we read their fate with horror, not with pity. Sylla commanded the bones of Marius to be broken, his eyes to be pulled out, his hands to be cut off, and his body to be torn -in pieces with pinchers, and Catiline was the executioner. "A piece of cruelty," says Seneca, "only fit for Marius to suffer, Catiline to execute, and Sylla to command."

CCCCLIX.

INJURIES accompanied with insults are never forgiven; all men, on these occasions, are good haters, and lay out their revenge at compound interest; they never threaten until they can strike, and smile when they cannot. Caligula told Valerius in public, what kind of a bedfellow his wife was; and when the Tribune Chereus, who had an effeminate voice, came to him for the watchword, he would always give him Venus or Priapus. The first of these men was the principal instrument in the conspiracy against him, and the second cleft him down with his sword, to convince him of his manhood.

CCCCLX.

LET those who would affect singularity with success, first determine to be very virtuous, and they will be sure to be very singular.

CCCCLXI.

WE should have all our communications with men, as in the presence of God; and with God, as in the presence of men.

CCCCLXII.

A power above all human responsibility, ought to be above all human attainment; he that is unwilling may do no harm, but he that is unable can not.

CCCCLXIII.

WE cannot think too highly of our nature, nor too -humbly of our ourselves. When we see the martyr to virtue, subject as he is to the infirmities of a man, yet suffering the tortures of a demon, and bearing them with the magnanimity of a god, do we not behold an heroism that angels may indeed surpass, but which they cannot imitate, and must admire.

CCCCLXIV.

IT is dangerous to take liberties with great men, unless we know them thoroughly; the keeper will hardly put his head into the lion's mouth, upon a short acquaintance.

CCCCLXV.

LOVE is an alliance of friendship and of lust; if the former predominate, it is a passion exalted and refined, but if the latter, gross and sensual.

CCCCLXVI.

THAT virtue which depends on opinion, looks to secrecy alone, and could not be trusted in a desert.

CCCCLXVII.

IF patrons were more disinterested, ingratitude would be more rare. A person, receiving a favour is apt to consider that he is, in some degree, discharged from the obligation, if he that confers it, derives from it some visible advantage, by which he may be said to repay himself. Ingratitude has, therefore, been termed a nice perception of the causes that induced the obligation; and Alexander made a shrewd distinction between his two friends, when he said that Hephæstion loved Alexander, but Craterus the king. Rochefacault has some ill-natured maxims on this subject;

J

he observes," that we are always much better pleased to see those whom we have obliged, than those who have obliged us; that we confer benefits more from compassion to ourselves than to others; that gratitude is only a nice calculation whereby we repay small favours, in the hope of receiving greater, and more of the like." By a certain mode of reasoning indeed, there are very few human actions which might not be resolved into self-love. It has been said that we assist a distressed object, to get rid of the unpleasant sympathy excited by misery unrelieved; and it might, with equal plausibility, be said that we repay a benefactor to get rid of the unpleasant burthen imposed by an obligation. Butler has well rallied this kind of reasoning, when he observes, "That he alone is ungrateful, who makes returns of obligations, because he does it merely to free himself from owing so much as thanks." In common natures, perhaps, an active gratitude may be traced to this; the pride that scorns to owe, has triumphed over that self-love that hates to pay

CCCCLXVIII.

DESPOTISM can no more exist in a nation, until the liberty of the press be destroyed, than the night can happen before the sun is set.

CCCCLXIX.

GOVERNMENTS connive at many things which they ought to correct, and correct many things at which they ought to connive. But there is a mode of correcting so as to endear, and of conniving so as to reprove.

CCCCLXX.

HE that will believe only what he can fully comprehend, must have a very long head, or a very short creed. Many gain a false credit for liberality of sentiment in religious matters, not from any tenderness they may have to the

opinions or consciences of other men, but because they happen to have no opinion or conscience of their own.

CCCCLXXI.

AS all who frequent any place of public worship, however they may differ from the doctrines there delivered, are expected to comport themselves with seriousness and gravity, so in religious controversies, ridicule ought never to be resorted to on either side; whenever a jest is introduced on such a subject, it is indisputably out of its place, and ridicule thus employed, so far from being a test of truth, is the surest test of error, in those who, on such an occasion, can stoop to have recourse unto it.

CCCCLXXII.

IT is a doubt whether mankind are most indebted to those who, like Bacon and Butler, dig the gold from the mine of literature, or to those who, like Paley, purify it, stamp it, fix its real value, and give it currency and utility. For all the practical purposes of life, truth might as well be in a prison as in the folio of a schoolman, and those who release her from her cobwebbed shelf, and teach her to live with men, have the merit of liberating, if not of discovering her.

CCCCLXXIII.

MEN of strong minds, and who think for themselves, should not be discouraged on finding occasionally that some of their best ideas have been anticipated by former writers; they will neither anathematize others with a pereant qui ante nos nostra dixerint, nor despair themselves. They will rather go on in science, like John Hunter in physics, discovering things before discovered, until, like him, they are rewarded with a terra hitherto incognita in the sciences, an empire indisputably their own, both by right of conquest and of discovery.