long under the pressure of any thing, but elastically lifts itself up, and tosses the load away, would endure such losses as these with little dejection.

This constitutional capacity of bearing themselves above the waves of misfortune, nature has communicated to different men in different degrees. Upon being plunged into that sea of trouble, into which, when some are precipitated, they continue a considerable time, others emerge in a moment. One buoyant passion, however, which powerfully operates to prevent the waters from overwhelming him, and the stream from going over his soul, belongs to every human creature. While some, in the very moment of deprivation, are peculiarly susceptible of agreeable and consolatory impressions from objects of present existence, all are able to find comfort in the prospect of futurity. "Hope springs eternal in the human breast." Man, when most bereaved by adversity, is seldom deprived of hope. Whatever possessions fly from his hand, whatever friends desert his side, hope still stays behind, still sticks to his heart; his evercleaving good, not to be divided from him but by the violence that splits his reason, and separates him from himself; his ever-faithful friend, that never leaves him, nor forsakes him; the brother of all his adversity; the star of all his nights; the cordial of all his sickness; the casket of all his poverty; the angel of his prison, before whose luminous form he feels, in fancy, his fetters falling off! In vain adversity throws her weights upon this exhilarating passion; it cannot be oppressed for more than a moment. In spite of protracted delay, and of repeated disappointment, it continues to smile, and to promise a fair futurity. He whose days have long been dark, looks forward still to brighter. The prisoner who has numbered many days and nights of captivity, sometimes suspends his sighing, and says to himself, "I may one day yet be free." The sick man, who for many a year has sought for health in vain, sets out for some new spring, at which, as yet, he has not drunk; or some new air, the healing breath of which he has not yet inhaled; in

the fond hope, that there the fugitive may at length be found.-

O thou! advance, whose heav'nly light
Can make each scene of sadness please;
On future bliss can fix the sight,

And anguish change to ease.

'Tis thou, sweet Hope, of race divine,
Who bid'st the poet's thoughts aspire;
Thou breath'st thy influence o'er each line,
And add'st celestial fire.

Thou bid'st his anxious bosom glow,
To climb the steep ascent of fame;
To share that praise the just bestow,
And gain a deathless name.

The painter, fir'd by thee, can trace
Each genuine beauty Nature gives.
As on the canvass shines each grace,
Renown'd his mem❜ry lives.

'Tis thou, sweet Hope, whose magic pow'r
The griefs of absence best can calm;
While friendship chides each loit'ring hour,
Thou shed'st thy soothing balm.

Thou mak'st the captive's heart rejoice
In gloomy regions of despair,

In thought he hears fair Freedom's voice,
And breathes a purer air.

But oh! when thou forsak'st his breast,
What dismal horrors round him rise'
His mind, with weightier chains opprest,
Deep sunk in sorrow lies.

The sailor on the wat'ry waste,

While boist'rous waves terrific roar,
Thou bid'st ideal pleasures taste,

And tread his native shore.

The wretch whom keen remorse assails,
Or he who feels misfortune's dart,
His hapless fate no more bewails,
Such joy thy beams impart.

When life presents her closing scene,
Thy radiant sunshine clears the soul;
'Tis thou, bright Hope, with smile serene
Canst fear and dread control.

No mist obstructs thy piercing sight,
Thou bid'st the mind her greatness know;
Soaring, thou point'st to realms of light,
And scorn'st to rest below.

To these causes, which lessen the pressure of adversity upon the heart of man, may be added, eminently virtuous character, accompanied with confirmed faith in the wisdom which governs the world. The afflictions which befall the amiable and excellent, are the seeming stains upon the conduct of Providence, which appear the darkest to our eyes, prior to our examination into the good ends that may be answered by them. Before, however, we enter upon that inquiry, it will be our wisdom to stop one moment to reflect, that those, who least deserve to suffer, do actually suffer less than others, from the same arrows of adversity, upon a supposition of the same natural sensibility in the point at which their aim is taken. He who believes all that the gospel declares, and who feels all that it inspires; who, in every incident that occurs, beholds a step in the harmonious and majestic march of all things to the greatest possible good,-and who possesses the public spirit, which can greatly console itself, under private sufferings, by the contemplation of general welfare,-is not to be overcome by the stroke of calamity, like one who is a stranger to this expectation, and to this spirit. He that is most disposed to "rejoice with them that do rejoice," and "to weep with them that weep," is best able to say, with honest generosity, to the mourners of his own misfortunes, what He that wept over Jerusalem addressed to her daughters, as they wept over him, "Weep not for me."

While we explore with reverence the ends of Providence in the afflictions of men, let us, as much as possible, facilitate the task, and lessen the effort, of faith in his infinite goodness, by habitually reflecting, that the sum of their affliction is less than at first sight it seems, and that it is less than the sum of their happiness.

Burton, in his Anatomy of Melancholy, one of the most amusing books in the English language, observes,

4

that "servitude, loss of liberty, and imprisonment, are not such miseries as they are, in general, conceived to be. Alexander was the slave of fear; Cæsar, of pride; Vespasian, of his money; and Heliogabalus, of his appetite. Lovers also are the slaves of beauty; and statesmen of ambition; and yet are so contented with their conditions, that they hug their chains with rapturous delight. To set them free, would render them discontented and miserable. A contented citizen of Milan, who had never passed beyond its walls during the course of sixty years, being ordered by the governor not to stir beyond its gates, became immediately miserable, and felt so powerful an inclination to do that which he had so long contentedly neglected, that, on his application for a release from this restraint being refused, he became quite melancholy, and at last died of grief. The pains of imprisonment also, like those of servitude, are more in conception than in reality. We are all prisoners. What is life, but the prison of the soul? To some men, the wide seas are but narrow ditches, and the world itself is too limited for their desires; to roam from east to west, from north to south, is their sole delight; and when they have put a girdle round the globe, they grow discontented, because they cannot travel to the moon. But Demosthenes was of a contrary temper: instead of indulging this vagrant disposition, he shaved his beard, to prevent the possibility of his being tempted to go abroad. It is the idea of being confined, that causes the misery of imprisonment; for it is sometimes accompanied by the highest advantages. It was a confinement, occasioned by sickness and disease, that first caused Ptolemy, the Egyptian king, to become the disciple of the celebrated Strabo, and induced him to give his mind wholly to the elegant delights of literature and rational contemplation; a confinement which, in its ultimate effects, produced that noble edifice, the Alexandrian library, and caused it to be furnished with forty thousand volumes. Boethius never wrote so elegantly, as while he was a prisoner; and many men have, in the privacy of im

prisonment, produced works that have immortalized their own characters, and transmitted their names with honourable renown to the latest posterity. The eloquent epistles of St. Paul were chiefly dictated while he was under constraint; and Joseph acquired greater credit during his imprisonment, than when he was the lord of Pharaoh's house, and master of the riches of Egypt. Neither can banishment, when properly considered, be called a grievance. It is no disparagement to be exiled. To sigh after home, to be discontented on being sent to a place to which many go for pleasure; to prefer, as the Icelanders and Norwegians do, their own ragged rocks to the fruitful plains of Greece and Italy, is equally childish and irrational. Happiness is not confined to any particular spot, but may be found by wisdom and virtue in every climate under heaven; for wherever a man deserves a friend, which is the highest happiness on earth, there he will find one. Those landleapers, Alexander, Cæsar, Trajan, and Adrian, who, continually banished themselves from one place to another, now in the east, now in the west, and never at home, with Columbus, Vasquez de Gama, Drake, Cavendish, and many others, got all their honours by voluntary expeditions. But if it be said, that banishment is compulsory, it must be recollected, that it may be highly advantageous; and that, as Tully, Aris-tides, Themistocles, Theseus, Codrus, and many other great and deserving men, have experienced this fate. it is not in itself really disgraceful.