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WHO that has lost an object dear to the affections, but has felt the self-reproach, the remorse with which we turn from the first indications of forgetfulness, as we ask ourselves, if it is thus we can forget all that was, and is most dear. Unstable must that mind be which views not life with an altered eye after death has snatched from our circle some individual who made its happiness. That confidence in the possibility of the duration of earthly enjoyment, which in itself is happiness, has fled for ever, when we have bent over the cold remains of one we loved; for then comes the reflection, that so may perish every tie that binds us to life; and the mysterious chain by which memory links us to the loved dead, awakening thoughts which they once shared, precludes our forgetting that the flowers of earth only shade the graves that yawn beneath them.

COUNTESS OF BLESSINGTON.

O wretched man! whose too, too busy thoughts
Ride swifter than the galloping Heav'n's round,
With an eternal hurry of the soul !

Nay, there's a time, when even the rolling year
Seems to stand still; dead calms are in the ocean,
When not a breath disturbs the drowsy waves:
But man! the very monster of the world,

Is ne'er at rest, his soul for ever wakes.

DRYDEN...

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IT is only in the company of the good that real enjoyment is to be found any other society is hollow and heartless. You may be excited by the play of wit, by the collision of ambitious spirits, and by the brilliant exhibition of self-confident power; but the satisfaction ends with the scene. Far unlike this is

the quiet confiding intercourse of sincere minds and friendly hearts-knowing and loving and esteeming each other.

DISSEMBLED love is like

The poison of perfumes, a killing sweetness.

SEWELL.

PROPERTY Communicates a charm to whatever is the object of it. It is the first of our abstract ideas; it cleaves to us the closest and the longest. It endears to the child its plaything, to the peasant his cottage, to the land-holder his estate. It supplies the place of prospect and scenery. Instead of coveting the beauty of distant situations, it teaches every man to find it in his own. It gives boldness and grandeur to plains and fens, tinge and colouring to clays and fallows.

PALEY.

THE brave man does maintain his painful post,
And cowards only fly to ease in death.

MOTTLEY,

SONG.

Go, lovely Rose!

Tell her that wastes her time and me,

That now she knows

When I resemble her to thee,

How sweet and fair she seems to be.

Tell her that's young,
And shuns to have her graces spied,
That hadst thou sprung

In desarts where no men abide,
Thou must have uncommended died.

Small is the worth

Of beauty from the light retired :
Bid her come forth,

Suffer herself to be desired,

And not blush so to be admired.

Then die! that she,

The common fate of all things rare,
May read in thee

How small a part of time they share,
That are so wond'rous sweet and fair!

WALLER.

THE three most difficult things are, to keep a secret, to forget an injury, and to make good use of one's leisure.

CHILO.

WITHOUT the reverence which the opinion of right inspires, and the scourge of general disapprobation inflicted on that which is accounted wicked, society could scarcely go on; and certainly the feelings and thoughts and characters of men could not be what they are. Those impulses of nature which involve no acknowledgment of responsibility, and the play and struggle of interfering wishes, might preserve the species in some shape of existence, as we see in the case of brutes. But a person must be strangely constituted, who, living amid the respect for law, the admiration for what is good, the order and virtues and graces of civilized nations, (all which have their origin in some degree in the feeling of responsibility,) can maintain that all these are casual and extraneous circumstances, no way contemplated in the formation of man; and that a condition in which there should be no obligation in law, no merit in selfrestraint, no beauty in virtue, is equally suited to the powers and the nature of man, and was equally contemplated when those powers were given him. It appears then, that man, intended, from his structure and properties, to be a discoursing, social being, acting under the influence of affections, desires and purposes, was also intended to act under the influence of a sense of duty; and that the acknowledgement of the obligation of a moral law is as much part of his nature as hunger or thirst, maternal love, or the desire of power; that, therefore, in conceiving man as the work of a Creator, we must imagine his

powers and character given him with an intention, on the Creator's part, that this sense of duty should occupy its place in his constitution as an active and thinking being; and that this directive and judiciary principle is a part of the work of the same Author who made the elements to minister to the material functions, and the arrangements of the world to occupy the individual and social affections of his living

creatures.

WHEWELL.

EPITAPH ON AN INFANT.

ERE sin could blight, or sorrow fade,
Death came with friendly care;
The opening bud to Heaven conveyed
And bade it blossom there.

THERE is a principle of disunion in unequal connexions. Active beneficence is a virtue of easier practice than forbearance after having conferred, or than thankfulness after having received a benefit. I know not indeed, whether it be a greater and more difficult exercise of magnanimity, for the one party to act as if he had forgotten, or for the other as if he constantly remembered the obligation.

CANNING.

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