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Liberality consists less in giving much than in giving appropriately.

If it is true that pity and compassion are drawn from us by a kind of selfish fear lest we should ever be in the same circumstances, how does it happen that the unfortunate extract so little help from us in their misery?

However unpleasant it may be to feel ourselves responsible for the maintenance of an indigent person, we seldom relish the better fortune which at last withdraws him from our patronage. In the same way, the pleasure which we feel in the exaltation of a friend is counterbalanced by the slight annoyance of seeing him become our equal or superior. He does not suit us so well thus, for we like to have dependents who do not cost us anything. We wish good fortune for our friends; but when it comes, our first feeling is not one of pure delight.

To live with our enemies as if they might one day be our friends, and with our friends as if they might be our enemies, is neither in accordance with the nature of hatred or the rules of friendship. It may be a good political maxim, but it is a bad moral one.

We ought not to make enemies of those who, if better known, might rank among our friends. We ought to choose as friends persons of such honor and probity that, should they ever cease to be our friends, they would never abuse our confidence, nor give us cause to fear them as enemies.

He who knows how to wait for what he desires will not despair if he happens to have to do without it. On the other hand, he who impatiently longs for a thing has been too much engrossed with the thought of it to feel that success rewards him for all his anxiety.

The things most wished for never happen; or if they do, they come at such a time or in such circumstances as spoil the enjoyment of them.

We must laugh before we are happy, for fear we should die before we have ever laughed at all.

It is hard for a proud man to forgive one who has found him out in some fault and who has good reason to complain of him his resentment is never healed till he has regained his advantage by putting the other in the wrong.

As we become more and more attached to those we oblige, so we cordially dislike those to whom we have given great offense.

It is as difficult to stifle the resentment of an injury at first, as it is to preserve the feeling after a certain length of time.

It is weakness which makes us hate an enemy and wish to be revenged, and it is laziness which pacifies us and makes us not pursue revenge.

A man will allow himself to be governed as much through indolence as from weakness.

There is no use attempting suddenly to control a man, and especially in matters of importance to him and his. It requires some address to prevent him feeling that you are trying to gain a moral power over him; shame or caprice would move him to resist the restraint. Let him first be guided in little things, and from thence the progress to greater things is certain. Even if at first your influence is only such as will persuade him to go to the country, or to return to town, it will end in your dictating the terms of the will by which his son is disinherited.

The best and most agreeable conversation is that in which the heart has more influence than the head.

There are certain sublime sentiments, certain grand and noble acts, which are called forth more by our moral strength than by innate goodness.

There is scarcely any excess in the world so commendable as an excess of gratitude.

He must be a dull person indeed whom neither love, hate, nor necessity can inspire with wit.

CHORUS OF ANGELS.

BY JOOST VAN DEN VONDEL.

(Translated by Sir John Bowring.)

[JOOST VAN DEN VONDEL, the great Dutch poet and dramatist, known as "the Dutch Shakespeare," was born at Cologne, November 17, 1587. His parents, who were Anabaptists, had fled to Cologne from Antwerp to avoid the

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persecution of the Spanish government, and removed to Amsterdam in 1597. The son carried on his father's business of hosier, to which, however, his wife chiefly attended, and thus secured him leisure for his literary work. In 1657 he became a bankrupt, owing to bad management of his affairs by his eldest son, and the next year was forced to accept a clerkship in the public loan office, retiring with a pension in 1668 on account of old age. Among his dramatic works are: Translations or imitations of classic plays; the original dramas "Palamedes,” "Gysbrecht van Aemstel," ""Mary Stuart," "Jephtha"; and the dramatic poem "Lucifer," his most powerful work. He also excelled as a lyric poet. He died at Amsterdam in 1679.]

WHO sits above heaven's heights sublime,
Yet fills the grave's profoundest place,
Beyond eternity or time

Or the vast round of viewless space:
Who on Himself alone depends,
Immortal, glorious, but unseen,
And in his mighty being blends
What rolls around or flows within.
Of all we know not, all we know,

Prime source and origin, a sea
Whose waters poured on earth below

Wake blessing's brightest radiancy.
His power, love, wisdom, first exalted
And wakened from oblivion's birth
Yon starry arch, yon palace vaulted,

Yon heaven of heavens, to smile on earth.
From His resplendent majesty

We shade us, 'neath our sheltering wings,
While awe-inspired and tremblingly

We praise the glorious King of Kings,
With sight and sense confused and dim.
O name, describe the Lord of Lords!
The seraphs' praise shall hallow Him:-
Or is the theme too vast for words?

RESPONSE.

'Tis God! who pours the living glow
Of light, creation's fountain head:
Forgive the praise, too mean and low,
Or from the living or the dead!
No tongue Thy peerless name hath spoken,
No space can hold that awful Name;
The aspiring spirit's wing is broken;-
Thou wilt be, wert, and art the same.

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