FAITH and friendship are seldom truly tried, but in extremes. To find friends, when we have no need of them, and to want them, when we have, are both alike easy and common. In prosperity who will not profess to love a man? In adversity how few will shew that they do it indeed? When we are happy, in the spring-tide of abundance, and the rising flood of plenty, then the world will be our servant; then all men flock about us, with bared heads, with bended bodies, and protesting tongues. But when these pleasing waters fall to ebbing; when wealth but shifteth to another stand; then men look upon us at a distance: and stiffen themselves, as if they were in armour; lest (if they should comply us,) they should get a wound in the close.

FELTHAM.

I AM more afraid of my friends making themselves uncomfortable, who have only imaginary evils to indulge, than I am for the peace of those who, battling magnanimously with real inconvenience and danger, find a remedy in the very force of the exertions to which their lot compels them.

WALTER SCOTT.

FORTUNE'S wings are made of Time's feathers, which stay not whilst one may measure them.

LILLY.

AND is there care in Heaven? and is there love :
In Heavenly spirits to these créatures bace,
That may compassion of their evils move?

There is:

else much more wretched were the cace Of men than beasts: but O th' exceeding grace Of Highest God that loves his creatures so, And all his workes with mercy doth embrace, That blessed Angels he sends to and fro,

To serve to wicked man, to serve his wicked foe!

How oft do they their silver bowers leave
To come to succour us that succour want!
How oft do they with golden pineons cleave
The flitting skyes like flying pursuivant,
Against fowle feendes to ayd us militant!
They for us fight, they watch, and dewly ward,
And their bright squadrons round about us plant;
And all for love and nothing for reward:

O why should Hevenly God to men have such regard!

SPENSER.

WHO has not felt the painful memory of departed folly? Who has not at times found crowding on his recollection, thoughts, feelings, scenes, by all perhaps but himself forgotten, which force themselves involuntary on his attention ? Who has not reproached himself with the bitterest regret at the follies he has thought, or said, or acted? Time brings no alleviation to these periods of morbid memory the weaknesses of our youthful days, as well as those of later life, come equally unbidden

and unarranged, to mock our attention, and claim their condemnation from our severer judgment.

It is remarkable that those whom the world least accuses, accuse themselves the most; and that a foolish speech, which, at the time of its utterance, was unobserved as such by all who heard it, shall yet remain fixed in the memory of him who pronounced it, with a tenacity which he vainly seeks to communicate to more agreeable subjects of reflection. It is also remarkable, that whilst our own foibles, or our imagined exposure of them to others, furnish the most frequent subject of almost nightly regret, yet we rarely recall to recollection our acts of consideration for the feelings of others, or those of kindness and benevolence. These are not the familiar friends of our memory, ready at all times to enter the domicile of mind its unbidden but welcome guests. When they appear, they are usually summoned at the command of reason, from some unexpected ingratitude, or when the mind retires within its council chamber to nerve itself for the endurance or the resistance of injustice.

If such be the pain, the penalty of thoughtless folly, who shall describe the punishment of real guilt? Make but the offender better, and he is already severely punished. Memory, that treacherous friend, but faithful monitor, recalls the existence of the past, to a mind now imbued with finer feelings, with sterner notions of justice than when it enacted the deeds thus punished by their recollection.

BABBAGE.

NOTHING of good can come from such a source,
Nor would we aught with him, nor now, nor ever:
We leave him to himself, that lowest depth
Of human baseness. Pardon is for men,
And not for reptiles-we have none for Steno,
And no resentment; things like him must sting,
And higher beings suffer: 'tis the charter

Of life. The man who dies by the adder's fang
May have the crawler crush'd, but feels no anger:
"Twas the worm's nature; and some men are worms
In soul, more than the living things of tombs.

BYRON.

AN habitation, giddy and unsure,

Hath he that buildeth on the vulgar heart.

THE man in conscious virtue bold,

Who dares his secret purpose hold,

Unshaken hears the crowd's tumultuous cries,
And the impetuous tyrant's angry brow defies.

Let the wild winds that rule the seas,
Tempestuous all their horrors raise,

Let Jove's dread arm with thunder rend the spheres,
Beneath the crush of worlds undaunted he appears.

FRANCIS.

EVERY thing has its use; life, to teach us the contempt of death, and death, the contempt of life. Glory, which among all things between stands eminently the principal object, although it has been considered by some philosophers as mere vanity and deception, moves those great intellects which nothing else could have stirred, and places them where they can best and most advantageously serve the Commonwealth.

LANDOR.

He who is unable to receive, as well as to give, has learnt but the half of friendship.

OH! bright occasions of dispensing good,
How seldom used, how little understood!
To pour in virtue's lap her just reward;
Keep vice restrain'd behind a double guard :
To quell the faction, that affronts the throne
By silent magnanimity alone;

To nurse with tender care the thriving arts;
Watch every beam philosophy imparts;
To give religion her unbridled scope,
Nor judge by statute a believer's hope;
With close fidelity and love unfeign'd
To keep the matrimonial bond unstain'd;
Covetous only of a virtuous praise;
His life a lesson to the land he sways;