EYE me, blest Providence, and square my trial
To my proportion'd strength.

MILTON.

NOUGHT is there under Heaven's wide hollownmess,
That moves more dear compassion of mind,

Than Beauty brought t'unworthy wretchedness
Through envy's snares, or fortune's freaks unkind—
I, whether lately through her brightness blind,
Or through allegiance, and fast fealty
Which I do owe unto all womankind,

Feel my heart pierced with so great agony,
When such I see, that all for pity I could die.

SPENSER.

WE are bad judges, bad physicians, and bad divines in our own case; but, above all, we are seldom able, when injured or insulted, to judge of the degree of sympathy which the world will bear in our resentment and our retaliation. The instant that such degree of sympathy is exceeded, we hurt ourselves and not our adversary.

WALTER SCOTT.

VIRTUE is like precious odours, most fragrant when they are incensed or crushed; for prosperity doth best discover vice, but adversity doth best discover virtue.

BACON.

OH! what a treasure is a virtuous Wife,
Discreet and loving; not one gift on earth
Makes a man's life so highly bound to Heaven;
She gives him double forces, to endure

And to enjoy ; by being one with him,

Feeling his joys and griefs with equal sense.
.... A true Wife, both sense and soul delights,
And mixeth not her good with any ill;
Her virtues ruling hearts, all powers command;
All store without her leaves a man but poor;
And with her, poverty is exceeding store.

CHAPMAN.

How dangerous a gift is the power of ridicule! It is potent to unmask the pretender, and to brand the hypocrite, yet, how often has it dissipated those gay illusions which beguile the rough path of life-how often has it chilled the glow of genius and invention -how often at its dread presence, have the honest boasts of patriotism, the warm expressions of piety, the generous purpose of beneficence faltered on the lips and died away in the heart.

THE virtue of Prosperity is temperance, the virtue of Adversity is fortitude.

BACON.

-

TRUE RELIGION sprung from God above,
Is, like her fountain, full of charity;
Embracing all things with a tender love,
Full of good will and meek expectancy,
Full of true justice, and sure verity,

In heart and voice; free, large, even infinite,
Not wedg'd in strait particularity,

But grasping all in her vast active spright;

Bright lamp of God! that men would joy in thy pure

light!

DR. MORE.

THE morning pearls,

Dropt in the lily's spotless bosom, are
Less chastly cool, ere the meridian sun
Hath kist them into heat.

BARCKLEY.

WHILE every vice is hid by hypocrisy, every virtue is suspected to be hypocrisy. This excuses the bad from imitating virtue, the ungenerous from rewarding it, and the suspicious from trusting it. Because credulity is a folly, suspicion is looked upon as wisdom, as if it was not as necessary a part of wisdom to know what to believe, as what to reject.

MRS. MONTAGU.

THE first degree of corruption is, not to blush to oneself; the last degree, not to blush to others.

CALL it not vain :-they do not err,
Who say, that when the Poet dies,
Mute Nature mourns her worshipper,
And celebrates his obsequies.

WALTER SCOTT.

TRUE Dignity is his whose tranquil mind
Virtue has rais'd above the things below;
Who, every hope and fear to Heaven resign'd,
Shrinks not, though Fortune aim her deadliest blow.

BEATTIE.

THERE is no cheating like the felony of wit: he who thieves that, robs the owner, and cozens those that hear him.

FELTHAM.

ALL

Dispose to judgments temperate as we lay
On our past selves in life's declining day :
For as, by discipline of Time made wise,
We learn to tolerate the infirmities
And faults of others, gently as he may
Towards our own the mild Instructor deals,
Teaching us to forget them or forgive.

WORDSWORTH.

WISDOM teaches us

To live

The easiest way; nor, with perplexing thoughts,
To interrupt the sweets of life, from which
God hath bid dwell far off all anxious cares,
And not molest us; unless we ourselves

-Seek them with wandering thoughts and notions
vain.

NATURE bids me love myself, and hate all that hurt me; reason bids me love my friends, and hate those that envy me; religion bids me love all, and hate none. Nature sheweth care, reason wit, religion love. Nature may induce me, reason persuade me, but religion shall rule me. I will hearken to nature in much, to reason in more, to religion in all. Nature shall make me careful of myself, but hateful to none; reason shall make me wise for myself, but harmless to all; religion shall make me loving to all, but not careless of myself. I may hear the former, I will hearken only to the latter. I susscribe to some things in all, to all things in religion.

WARWICK.

HAST thou sounded the depth of yonder sea,

And counted the sands that under it be?

Hast thou measured the height of Heaven above? Then mayest thou mete out a mother's love.