are afflicted with evil spirits, with spectres and illusions of the night

He that is no fool, but can consider wisely, if he be in love with this world, we need not despair but that a witty man might reconcile him with tortures, and make him think charitably of the rack, and be brought to dwell with vipers and dragons, and entertain his guests with the shrieks of mandrakes, cats and screech-owls, with the filing of iron and the harshness of rending of silk, or to admire the har. mony that is made by a herd of evening wolves, when they miss their draught of blood in their midnight revels. The groans of a man in a fit of the stone are worse than all these; and the distractions of a troubled conscience are worse than those groans; and yet a merry careless sinner is worse than all that. But if we could, from one of the battlements of heaven, espy how many men and women at this time lie fainting and dying for want of bread; how many young men are hewn down by the sword of war; how many poor orphans are now weeping over the graves of their father, by whose life they were enabled to eat; if we could but hear how many mariners and passengers are at this present in a storm, and shriek out because their keel dashes against a rock or bulges under them; how many people there are who weep with want and are mad with oppression, or are desperate by a too quick sense of a constant infelicity; in all reason we should be glad to be out of the noise and the participation of so many evils. This is a place of sorrows and tears, of so great evils and a constant calamity; let us remove from hence at least in affections and preparation of mind.

REVENGE,

SAMUEL JOHNSON.

A wise man will make haste to forgive, because he knows the true value of time, and will not suffer it to pass away in unnecessary pain. He that willingly suffers the corrosions of inveterate hatred, and gives up his days and nights to the gloom and malice and perturbations of stratagem, cannot surely be said to consult his ease. Resentment is a union of sorrow with malignity; a combination of a passion which all endeavor to avoid, with a passion which all concur to detest. The man who retires to meditate mischief, and to exasperate his own rage - whose thoughts are employed only on means of distress and contrivances of ruin-whose mind never pauses from the remembrance of his own sufferings, but to indulge some hope of enjoying the calamities of another-may justly be numbered among the most miserable of human beings, among those who are guilty without reward, who have neither the gladness of prosperity nor the calm of innocence.

Whoever considers the weakness both of himself

and others, will not long want persuasives to for. giveness. We know not to what degree of malignity any injury is to be imputed; or how much its guilt, if we were to inspect the mind of him that committed it, would be extenuated by mistake, precipitance, or negligence; we cannot be certain how much more we feel than was intended to be inflicted, or how much we increase the mischief to ourselves by voluntary aggravations. We may charge to design the effects of accident; we may think the blow violent only because we have made ourselves delicate and tender; we are on every side in danger of error and of guilt, which we are certain to avoid only by speedy forgiveness.

From this pacific and harmless temper, thus propitious to others and ourselves, to domestic tranquil. ity and to social happiness, no man is withheld but by pride, by fear of being insulted by his adversary, or despised by the world. It may be laid down as an unfailing and universal axiom, that 'all pride is abject and mean.' It is always an ignorant, lazy, or cowardly acquiescence in a false appearance of excel lence, and proceeds not from consciousness of our attainments, but insensibility of our wants.

Nothing can be great which is not right. Nothing which reason condemns can be suitable to the dignity of the human mind. To be driven by external motives from the path which our own heart approves, to give way to anything but conviction, to suffer the opinion of others to rule our choice or overpower our resolves, is to submit tamely to the lowest and most ignominious slavery, and to resign the right of directing our own lives.

The utmost excellence at which humanity can arrive is a constant and determinate pursuit of virtue without regard to present dangers or advantages; a continual reference of every action to the divine will; a habitual appeal to everlasting justice; and an unvaried elevation of the intellectual eye to the reward which perseverance only can obtain. But that pride which many, who presume to boast of generous sentiments, allow to regulate their measures, has nothing nobler in view than the approbation of men; of beings whose superiority we are under no obligation to acknowledge, and who, when we have courted them with the utmost assiduity, can confer no valuable or permanent reward; of beings who ignorantly judge of what they do not understand, or partially determine what they have never examined; and whose sentence is therefore of no weight, till it has received the ratification of our own conscience.

He that can descend to bribe suffrages like these at the price of his innocence-he that can suffer the delight of such acclamations to withhold his attention from the commands of the universal sovereign-has little reason to congratulate himself upon the greatness of his mind; whenever he awakes to seriousness and reflection, he must become despicable in his own eyes, and shrink with shame from the remenbrance of his cowardice and folly.

Of him that hopes to be forgiven, it is indispensably required that he forgive. It is therefore superfluous to urge any other motive. On this great duty eternity is suspended; and to him that refuses to practice it, the throne of mercy is inaccessible, and the Savior of the world has been born in vain.

IMPUDENCE AND MODESTY.

DAVID HUME.

I have always been of opinion, that the complaints against Providence have been ill-grounded, and that the good or bad qualities of men are the causes of their good or bad fortune, more than what is gener ally imagined. There are, no doubt, instances to the contrary, and pretty numerous ones too; but few in comparison of the instances we have of a right distribution of prosperity and adversity; nor, indeed, could it be otherwise, from the common course of human affairs. To be endowed with a benevolent disposition, and to love others, will almost infallibly procure love and esteem; which is the chief circumstance in life, and facilitates every enterprise and every undertaking; besides the satisfaction that immediately results from it. The case is much the same with the other virtues. Prosperity is naturally, though not necessarily, attached to virtue and merit; and adversity, in like manner, to vice and folly.

I must, however, confess that this rule admits of an exception with regard to one moral quality, and that modesty has a natural tendency to conceal a man's talents, as impudence displays them to the utmost, and has been the only cause why many have risen in the world, under all the disadvantages of low · birth and little merit. Such indolence and incapacity is there in the bulk of mankind, that they are apt to receive a man for whatever he has a mind to put himself off for; and admit his overbearing airs as a proof of that merit which he assumes to himself. A decent assurance seems to be the natural attendant of virtue; and few men can distinguish impudence from it; as, on the other hand, diffidence being the natural result of vice and folly, has drawn disgrace upon modesty, which, in outward appearance, so nearly resembles it.

As impudence, though really a vice, has the same effects upon a man's fortunes as if it were a virtue; so we may observe, that it is almost as difficult to be attained, and is, in that respect, distinguished from all the other vices, which are acquired with little pains, and continually increase upon indulgence. Many a man, being sensible that modesty is extremely prejudicial to him in making his fortune, has resolved to be impudent and put a bold face upon the matter; but it is observable that such people have seldom succeeded in the attempt, but have been obliged to relapse into their primitive modesty. Nothing carries a man through the world like a true, genuine,

natural impudence. Its counterfeit is good for nothing, nor can ever support itself. In any other attempt, whatever faults a man commits, and is sensible of, he is so much nearer his end, but when he endeavors at impudence, if he ever failed in the attempt, the remembrance of it will make him blush, and will infallibly disconcert him; after which, every blush is a cause for new blushes, till he be found out to be an arrant cheat, and a vain pretender to impudence.

If anything can give a modest man more assurance, it must be some advantages of fortune, which chance procures to him. Riches naturally gain a man a favorable reception in the world, and give merit a double lustre, when a person is endowed with it; and supply its place, in a great measure, when it is absent. 'Tis wonderful to observe what airs of superiority fools and knaves with large possessions give themselves above men of the greatest merit in poverty. Nor do the men of merit make any strong opposition to these usurpations, or rather seem to favor them by the modesty of their behavior. Their good ser se and experience make them diffident of their adg ment, and cause them to examine everything with the greatest accuracy; as, on the other hand, the delicacy of their sentiments makes them timorous lest they commit faults, and lose, in the practice of the world, that integrity of virtue, so to speak, of which they are so jealous. To make wisdom agree with confidence is as difficult as to reconcile vice to modesty.

THE LOVE OF READING.

SIR JOHN HERSCHEL.

"If I were to pray for a taste which should stand me in stead under every variety of circumstances, and be a source of happiness and cheerfulness to me through life, and a shield against its ills, however things might go amiss, and the world frown on me, it would be a taste for reading. I speak of it of course only as a worldly advantage, and not in the slightest degree as superseding or derogating from the higher office and surer and stronger panoply of religious principles-but as a taste, an instrument, and a mode of pleasurable gratification. Give a man this taste, and the means of gratifiying it, and you can hardly fail of making a happy man, unless, indeed, you put into his hands a most perverse selec tion of books. You place him in contact with the best society in every period of history-with the wisest, the wittiest-with the tenderest, the bravest, and the purest characters that have adorned humanity. You make him a denizen of all nationsa contemporary of all ages. The world has been created for him. It is hardly possible but the character should take a higher and better tone from the constant habit of associating in thought with a class

of thinkers, to say the least of it, above the average of humanity. It is morally impossible but that the manners should take a tinge of good breeding and civilization from having constantly before one's eyes the way in which the best bred and the best informed men have talked and conducted themselves in their intercourse with each other. There is a gentle but perfectly irresistable coercion in the habit of reading, well directed, over the whole tenor of a man's character and conduct, which is not the less effectual because it works insensibly, and because it is really the last thing he dreams of.

THE LOVE OF NATURE.

JAMES BEATTIE, LL. D.

It is strange to observe the callousness of some men, before whom all the glories of heaven and earth pass in daily succession, without touching their hearts, elevating their fancy, or leaving any durable remembrance. Even of those who pretend to sensibility, how many are there to whom the luster of the rising or setting sun, the sparkling concave of the midnight sky, the mountain forest tossing and roaring to the storm, or warbling with all the melodies of a summer evening; the sweet interchange of hill and dale, shade and sunshine, grove, lawn and water, which an extensive landscape offers to the view; the scenery of the ocean, so lovely, so majestic, and so tremendous, and the many pleasing varieties of the animal and vegetable kingdom, could never afford so much real satisfaction as the steams and noise of a ballroom, the insipid fiddling and squeaking of an opera, or the vexations and wranglings of a card table.

But some minds there are of a different make, who, even in the early part of life, receive from the contemplation of nature a species of delight which they would hardly exchange for any other; and who, as avarice and ambition are not infirmities of that period, would, with equal sincerity and rapture, exclaim:

"I care not, Fortune, what you may deny; You cannot rob me of free nature's grace; You cannot shut the windows of the sky, Through which Aurora shows her brightening face;

You cannot bar my constant feet to trace

The woods and lawns by living streams at eve." Such minds have always in them the seeds of true taste, and frequently of imitative genius. At least, though their enthusiastic or visionary turn of mind, as the man of the world would call it, should not always incline them to practice poetry or painting, we need not scruple to affirm that, without some portion of this enthusiasm, no person ever became a true poet or painter. For he who would imitate the

works of nature, must first accurately observe them and accurate observation is to be expected from those only who take great pleasure in it.

To a mind thus disposed, no part of creation is indifferent. In the crowded city and howling wilder. ness, in the cultivated province and solitary isle, in the flowery lawn and craggy mountain, in the mur. mur of the rivulet and in the uproar of the ocean, in the radiance of summer and gloom of winter, in the thunder of heaven and in the whisper of the breeze, he still finds something to rouse or to sooth his imagination, to draw forth his affections, or to employ his understanding. And from every mental energy that is not attended with pain, and even from some of those that are, as moderate terror and pity, a sound mind derives satisfaction; exercise being equally necessary to the body and the soul, and to both equally productive of health and pleasure.

THOUGHTS IN A GREAT LIBRARY.

BISHOP HALL.

What a world of wit is here packed up together. I know not whether this sight doth more dismay of comfort me; it dismays me to think, that here is so much that I cannot know; it comforts me to think that this variety yields so good helps to know wha I should. There is no truer word than that of Solo mon-there is no end of making many books; this sight verifies it-there is no end; indeed, it were pity there should. God hath given to man a busy soul, the agitation whereof cannot but through time and experience work out many hidden truths; to suppress these would be no other than injurious to mankind, whose minds, like unto so many candles, should be kindled by each other. The thoughts of our deliberation are most accurate; these we vent into our papers; what a happiness is it, that without all offence of necromancy, I may here call up any of the ancient worthies of learning, whether human or divine, and confer with them of all my doubts!— that I can at pleasure summon whole synods of rev. erend fathers, and acute doctors, from all the coasts of the earth, to give their well-studied judgments in all points of question which I propose! Neither can I cast my eye casually upon any of these silent masters, but I must learn somewhat; it is a wanton. ness to complain of choice.

No law binds me to read all; but the more we can take in and digest, the better liking must the mind's needs be Blessed be God that hath set up so many clear lamps in his church.

Now, none but the wilfully blind can plead dark. ness; and blessed be the memory of those his faithful servants, that have left their blood, their spirits, their lives, in these precious papers, and have willingly wasted themselves into these during monu ments, to give light unto others.

THE WINE CELLAR.

CHARLES LAMB.

Men have always attached a peculiar interest to that region of the earth which extends for a few yards beneath its surface. Below this depth the imagination, delighting to busy itself among the secrets of Time and Mortality, hath rarely cared to penetrate. A few feet of ground may suffice for the repose of the first dwellers of the earth until its frame shall grow old and perish. The little coin, silent picture of forgotten battles, lies among the roots of shrubs and vegetables for centuries, till it is turned into light by some careful husbandman, who ploughs an inch deeper than his fathers. The dead bones which, loosened from their urns, gave rise to Sir Thomas Browne's noblest essay; "had outlasted the living ones of Methusalem, and in a yard under ground, and thin walls of clay, outworn all the strong and spacious buildings above them, and quietly rested under the drums and tramplings of three conquests." Superstition chooses the subterranean space which borders on the abodes of the living, and ranges her vaults and mysterious caverns near to the scenes of revelry, passion, and joy; and within this narrow rind rest the mighty products of glorious vintages, the stores of that divine juice which, partaking of the rarest qualities of physical and intellectual nature, blends them in happier union within us. Here in this hallowed ground, the germs of inspiration and the memorials of decay lie side by side, and Bacchus holds divided empire with the King of Terrors.

As I sat indulging this serious vein of reflection some years ago, when my relish of philosophy and port was young, a friend called to remind me that we had agreed to dine together with rather more luxury than usual. I had made the appointment with ooyish eagerness, and now started gladly from my solitary reveries to keep it. The friend with whom I had planned our holiday, was one of those few persons whom you may challenge to a convivial evening with a mathematical certainty of enjoying it; -which is the rarest quality of friendship. Many who are equal to great exigencies, and would go through fire and water to serve you, want the delicate art to allay the petty irritations and heighten the ordinary enjoyments of life, and are quite unable to make themselves agreeable at a tete-a-tete dinner. Not so my companion; who, zealous, prompt, consoling in all seasons of trial, had good sense for every little difficulty, and a happy humor for every social moment; at all times a better and wiser self. Blessed with good but never boisterous spirits; endowed with the rare faculty not only of divining one's wishes, but instantly making them his own; skilful in sweetening good counsel with honest flattery; able to bear with enthusiasm in which he might not participate, and to avoid smiling at the follies he could not help discerning; ever ready to indulge the secret wish of his guest" for another bottle," with heart enough to

drink it with him, and head enough to take care of him when it was gone, he was (and yet is) the pleasantest of advisers, the most genial of listeners and the quietest of lively companions. On this memorable day he had, with his accustomed forethought, given particular orders for our entertainment, and I hastened to enjoy it with him, little thinking how deep and solemn was the pleasure which awaited

us.

We arrived at the Coffee-house about six, on a bright afternoon in the middle of September, and found everything ready and excellent; the turtle magnificent and finely relieved by lime punch effectually iced; grilled salmon freshly prepared for its appropriate lemon and mustard; a leg of Welsh mutton just tasted as a "sweet remembrancer" of its heathy and hungry hills; woodcocks with thighs of exquisite delicacy and essence "deeply interfused" in thick soft toast; and mushrooms, which Nero justly called" the flesh of the gods," simply broiled and faintly sprinkled with cayenne. Our conversation was, of course, confined to mutual invitations and expressive criticisms on the dishes; the only table-talk which men of sense can tolerate. But the most substantial gratifications, in this world at least, must have an end; and the last mushroom was at length eaten. Unfortunately for the repose of the evening, we were haunted by the recollection of some highly-flavoured port, and, in spite of strong evidence of identity from conspiring waiters, sought for the like in vain. Bottle after bottle was produced and dismissed as "not the thing," till our generous host, somewhat between liberal hospitality and just impatience, smilingly begged us to accompany him into the cellar, inspect the whole of "his little stock," and choose for ourselves! We took him at his word; another friend of riper years and graver authority joined us; and we prepared to follow our guide, who stood ready to conduct us to the banks of Lethe. All the preparations, like those which preceded similar descents of the heroes of old, bespoke the awfulness and peril of the journey. Our host preceded us with his massive keys to perform an office collateral to that of St. Peter; behind, a dingy imp of the nether regions stood with glasses in his hands and a prophetic grin on his face; and each of us was armed with a flaming torch to penetrate the gloom which now stretched through the narrow entrance before us.

We descended the broken and winding staircase with cautious steps, and, to confess the truth, not without some apprehension for our upward journey, yet hoping to be numbered among that select class of Pluto's visitors, "quos ardens evexit ad æthera virtus." On a sudden, turning a segment of a mighty cask, we stood in the centre of the vast receptacle of spirituous riches. The roof of solid and stoutly compacted brick work, low, but boldly arched, looked substantial enough to defy all attacks of the natural enemy-water, and resist a second deluge. From each side ran long galleries, partially shown by the

glare of the torches, extending one way far beneath the busy trampling of the greatest shopkeepers and stock-jobbers in the world; and, on the other, below the clamour of the Old Bailey Court and the cells of its victims. What a range! Here rest, cooling in the deep delved cells, the concentrated essences of sunny years! In this archway huge casks of mighty wine are scattered in bounteous confusion, like the heaped jewels and gold on the "rich strond" of Spencer, the least of which would lay Sir Wa ter's Fleming low! Throughout that long succession of vaults, thousands of bottles, "in avenues disposed," lie silently waiting their time to kindle the imagination, to sharpen the wit, to open the soul, and to unchain the trembling tongue. There may you feel the true grandeur of qui. escent power, and walk amidst the palpable elements of madness or of wisdom. What stores of sentiment in that butt of raciest sherry! What a fund of pensive thought! What suggestions for delicious remembrance! What "aids to reflection!" (genu'ne as those of Coleridge) in that hock of a century old! What sparkling fancies, whirling and foaming, from a stout body of thought in that full and ripe champagne ! What mild and serene philosophy in that Burgundy, ready to shed its "sunset glow" on society and nature! This pale brandy, softened by age, is the true "spirit" which "disturbs us with the joy of elevated thoughts." That hermitage, stealing gently into the chambers of the brain, shall make us "babble of green fields;" and that delicate claret, innocently bubbling and dancing in the slender glass, shall bring its own vine-coloured hills more vividly before us even than Mr. Stanfield's pencil! There from a time-changed bottle, tenderly drawn from a crypt, protected by huge primeval cobwebs, you may taste antiquity, and feel the olden time on your palate! As we sip this marvelous port, to the very colour of which age has been gentle, methinks we have broken into one of those rich vaults in which Sir Thomas Browne, the chief butler of the tomb, finds treasures rarer than jewels. "Some," saith he, "discover sepulchral vessels containing liquors, which time hath incrassated into jellies. For besides lacrymatories, notable lamps, with oils and aromatic liquors, attended noble ossu. aries; and some yet retaining a vinosity and spirit in them, which, if any have tasted, they have far exceeded the palates of antiquity; liquors not to be computed by years of annual magistrates, but by great conjunctions and the fatal periods of kingdoms. The draughts of consulary date were but crude unto these, and Opimian wine but in the must unto them."

We passed on from flavor to flavor with our proud and liberal guide, whose comments added zest even to the text he had to dilate on. A scent, a note of music, a voice long unheard, the stirring of the summer breeze may startle us with the sudden revival of long-forgotten feelings and thoughts, but none of these little whisperers to the heart is so potently endowed with this simple spell as the various flavours of port to one who has tried, and, in various moods

of his own mind, relished them all. This full, rough, yet fruity wine, brings back that first season of London life, when topics seemed as exhaustless as words, and coloured with rainbow hues; when Irish students, fresh from Trinity College, Dublin, were not too loud or familiar to be borne; when the florid fluency of others was only tiresome as it interrupted one's own; when the vast Temple Hall was not too large or too cold for sociality; and ambition, dilating in the venerable space, shaped dreams of enterprise, labour and glory, till it required more wine to assuage its fervours. This taste of a liquor, firm yet in body, though tawny with years, bears with it to the heart that hour when, having returned to my birth-place after a long and eventful absence, and having been cordially welcomed by my hearty friends, I slipped away from the table and hurried, in the light of a brilliant sunset, to the gently declining fields and richly wooded hedgerows which were the favourite haunts of my serious boyhood. The swelling hills seemed touched with ethereal softness; the level plain was invested "with purpureal gleams;" every wild rose and stirring branch was eloquent with vivid recollections; a thousand hours of happy thoughtfulness came back upon the heart; and the glorious clouds which fringed the western horizon looked prophetic of the golden years "predestined to descend and bless mankind." This soft, highly-flavoured port, in every drop of which you seem to taste an aromatic flower, revives that delicious evening, when, after days of search for the tale of Rosamond Grey, of which I had indistinctly heard, I returned from an obscure circulating library with my prize, and brought out a long-cherished bottle, given me two years before as a curiosity, by way of accompaniment to that quint essence of imaginative romance. How did I enjoy, with a strange delight, its scriptural pathos, like a newly discovered chapter of the Book of Ruth; hang enamoured over its young beauty, lovelier for the antique frame of language in which it was set; and long to be acquainted with the author, though I scarcely dared aspire so high, and little anticipated those hun. dreds of happy evenings since passed in his society, which now crowd on me in rich confusion !-Thus is it that those subtlest of remembrancers not only revive some joyful season, but this also “contains a glass which shows us many more,” unlocking the choicest stores of memory, that cellar of the brain, in which lie the treasures which make life precious.

But see! our party have seated themselves beneath that central arch to enjoy a calmer pleasure after the fatigues of their travel. They look romantic as banditti in a cave, and good-humoured as a committee of alderman. A cask which has done good service in its day-the shell of the evaporated spirit-erves for a table round which they sit on rude but ample benches. The torches planted in the ground cast a broad light over the scene, making the ruddy wine glisten, and seeming by their irregular flickering as if they too felt the influence of the spot. My friend