ones. They show themselves, therefore, only during periods of hazard and convulsion.

'

'The fall of Napoleon,' said a friend, the other day, ' was a judgment upon him, and a righteous judgment.' 'And what was that which befel those he had con'quered?' 'A judgment likewise.' Both?' Aye, 'both!' 'Solomon says, a like event happeneth to 'both; the righteous as well as the unrighteous.' 'The 'devil, you know, can also quote scripture for his pur'pose.' 'All I mean to convey is, that we ought to 'leave judgments to the decision of a superior power.'

LXVII.

LOVERS OF LOW COMPANY.

SAND, having no particles capable of fermentation, cannot contain those mucilaginous juices, which rich soils do; therefore cannot detain water long, though it does heat. Hence the deficiency of nutritious particles in sandy soils. With the latitude allowed to long similes, we may apply this to persons, attached to low company. The nutritious particles dry up. Drunkenness is its never-failing attendant; and drunkenness renders men either stupid, as in the arctic regions; or furious, as between the tropics; and hence few hopes can be wisely entertained of drinking men; since they, As tinker-politicians do,

In stopping one hole up, make two.'

Bad company may be compared to a rivulet in Spain, called the Tinto. This stream poisons all plants, till other rivulets run into it, and ameliorate its nature.

As to virtues and vices, they grow most luxuriantly in each other's neighbourhood like ericas, wins, bilberries, grass, and other herbaceous plants: but we can never associate virtues with native silver; since native silver is found more frequently with arsenic than with any other metal.

There is an order of persons, who are never safe in respect to the knowledge they have of their friends, acquaintances, and neighbours. They have little discrimination themselves; and the little they possess is lost in the faith they give to the idle, sycophantic miscreants, by whom they are surrounded :-miscreants, who even remind us of a passage in Darwin's Loves of the Plants.'

'If rests the traveller his weary head,

Grim Mancinella haunts the mossy bed,
Brews her black hebenon; and stealing near,
Pours the curst venom in his tortured ear.'

To mix with these is fatal.

LXVIII.

WHO STUDY DEFORMITY THE BETTER TO JUDGE OF
BEAUTY.

'Whether it be a swan or goose,

They level at. So shepherds use
To set the same mark on the hip,

Both of their sound and rotten sheep.'

To write truly is to write strongly; nay severely. To write truly, we must examine closely; to gain the knowledge of man, we must look narrowly into his worst

points: but to suppose, that even bad men can be without good points is not only to calumniate them, but the whole of human nature.

It is necessary to study bad characters to have the power of valuing good ones; as Fletcher, Bishop of Arles, to acquire a beautiful style, and improve the purity of his taste, studied writers destitute of both. Attalus, king of Pergamus, cultivated aconite, hemlock, dorycnium, and other poisonous plants. Many of his subjects took umbrage at this. They called it an unnatural amusement. The wiser part, however, were sensible, that the king's object was merely addressed to the ascertainment of their properties and strength; that he might apply them afterwards as remedies.

By contemplating deformity, whether in art or in morals, we become more susceptible of the beauty of fine forms, and of just sentiments. Hence a wise man, rising from the investigation of error, becomes the more ardently a friend to truth, to liberty, and all the best affections of the heart. For, investigating the motives and actions of man is like untwisting a wreath, in which useful, beautiful, and poisonous flowers are fastened together by a leathern thong.

I have somewhere read a remark, I believe in Dr. Beattie's Essay on Poetry and Music,' implying, that it is to the crimes and vices of certain characters in the Iliad, Æneid, Paradise Lost, and many tragedies, that we are indebted for the greatest portion of the pleasure and profit, we derive from a perusal of those masterly performances.

Schiller has an excellent observation:

a quick and

intimate relish for the beauty of virtue is universally ' understood to indicate a talent for virtue. On the ' other hand, no one hesitates to mistrust the heart of a

man, whose head slowly and reluctantly comprehends 'moral beauty.' If this be truth;-and that it is, who shall have the hardihood to deny?-it is evident, that the best parts of education are those, which have for their subjects, fine sentiments, noble actions, and the varied phenomena of the universe. The thing I would ask of God,' wrote Lord Shaftesbury to Mr. Locke*, 'should be to make men live up to what they know ; ' and that they might be so wise as to desire to know no other things, than what belong to them; and to know 'those to the purpose.'

LXIX.

WHO JUDGE OTHERS BY THEMSELVES.

THIS most men do, whether for good or for evil. Indeed there is no small degree of truth in Dr. Hutcheson's remark, that men have commonly the good, or the bad qualities, which they ascribe to mankind. Count Struenseet, prime minister of Denmark (after Count Bernstorf), justified his voluptuous life, and his carelessness as to the morals of the people, on the ground, that it belonged to the clergy to attend to the latter; and that, judging the sentiments of the nation by his own, he imagined, that every one looked upon pleasure and an unrestrained life as the only happi

ness.

* St. Giles, Sep. 29, 1694. King, p. 187. 4to.

Hist. Conversion and Death of Count Struensee, p. 50.

Men are frequently more successful in disproving the assertions of an adversary, than they are in proving their own. In their estimates of virtue and vice, too, their candour, or their prejudice, mostly find echoes in their own bosoms. Let them, however, beware of applying microscopes to vices, or follies, or crimes; to talents, genius, knowledge, or virtue. Let every man, and every object, be judged of through the medium of a correct microscopic measurement; neither pointed too high, nor dipped too low; but equal. There must be no refraction of the atmosphere, as it were. For refraction is insensible only at the zenith. As the sun declines it increases; till arriving near the limit of the horizon,

Each lengthening shadow to a giant spreads.'

LXX.

WHO ARE UNABLE TO ESTIMATE THE TIMES IN WHICH

THEY LIVE.

The fullness and continuance of a blessing

Doth make us senseless of the good:
And, if it some time fly not our possessing,

The sweetness of it is not understood.'

Wither.-Emblems.

EVERY age has its peculiar pleasures and pains, spirit and customs, virtues and vices. In early youth manhood is the paradise of futurity; in manhood and age youth is the paradise of regret. Nothing valuable is present; and as we grow older, even Nature herself seems to degenerate.