As Jupiter's all-seeing eye Survey'd the worlds beneath the sky; Jove calls his eagle. At the word (1) "The greatest portion of religious service which Heaven receives," says Swift, "and the sincerest act of our devotion is-complaint.". bird, obedient, from heaven's height,1 plains, and vales, and mountains go. When," says the Greyhound, "I pursue, blamed the partial hand of Fate. bad line, and forms an exception to Gay's usual accuracy. (1) The Bird of Heaven' then cried aloud, And proud ambition, of mankind." "Jovis ales."-VIRGIL. 2 (2) Perfect good being unattainable, each man's position would be rendered pleasant, or at least tolerable to him, were he to consider, (which he does not,) the infelicities, rather than the apparent enjoyments, of another. The rich envies the poor man's healthy relish of food, let him set against it the latter's constrained self-denial: the pauper craves wealth, instead of contemplating the cares it brings with it. There is a crook in each lot, a sore place in every man's heart; God hath set one thing against the other in all conditions, so that the hardest fate has never yet been found. Were there a window in every one's breast, how often would clouds appear in the lot we consider brightest! how few beggars would then be content to exchange their condition with the wealthiest, without a pause! "Sorte tuâ contentus abi," is a panacea for most ills. AGAINST an elm a sheep was tied, "All cowards should be served like you. (1) Your quarter'd sires, your bleeding dams, The heart that wants revenge is base."1 Yet think us not of soul so tame, Because we want thy tusks to kill. The two chief plagues that waste mankind. It wakes their slumbering sons to war; Since drums and parchment were invented."2 "Revenge, at first though sweet, Bitter ere long, back on itself recoils."-MILTON. (2) Patient forbearance under injury is a distinctive trait of true humility, and, it may be said, of wisdom also; since if we leave tyranny to work its way, the end shows that its greatest victim will be itself. Man is not so fearful in his cruelty to the brutes, as he is in his animosity to his fellow, and greater curses have never befallen the world, than litigious strife, under the plea of justice, and war and rapine under the name of glory. Can any intellect comprehend the vast amount of cruelty, lust, and malice, let loose in a campaign, or of injustice, perjury, and fraud, tied up in a piece of red tape? |