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OR, THE

BEST WORDS

OF

THE BEST AUTHORS.

With the Authorities.

IN THREE VOLUMES.

VOL. II.

First American - Ecitjon..

PHILADELPHIA:

CAREY, LEA & CAREY-CHESNUT STREET.

SOLD, IN NEW YORK, BY G. & c. & H. CARVILL,—
IN BOSTON, BY MUNROE & FRANCIS.

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LACONICS.

Long trails of light descending down.-DRYDEN.

I.

THE English laws punish vice; the Chinese laws do more, they reward virtue.-Goldsmith.

II.

Whenever you commend, add your reasons for doing SO: it is this which distinguishes the approbation of a man of sense from the flattery of sycophants, and admiration of fools.-Steele.

III.

Manufactures, trade, and agriculture, naturally employ more than nineteen parts of the species in twenty; and as for those who are not obliged to labour, by the condition in which they are born, they are more miserable than the rest of mankind, unless they indulge themselves in that voluntary labour which goes by the name of exercise.-Addison.

IV.

A rebel is a voluntary bandit, a civil renegado, that renounces his obedience to his prince, to raise himself upon the public ruin. He is of great antiquity, perhaps before the creation, at least a Præadamite; for Lucifer was the first of his family, and from him he derives himself in an indirect line. He finds fault with the government, that he may get it the easier into his own hands, as men use to undervalue what they have a desire to purchase. He is a butcher of politics, and a state-tinker, that makes

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flaws in the government only to mend them again. He goes for a public-spirited man, and his pretences are for the public good; that is, for the good of his own public spirit. He pretends to be a great lover of his country, as if it had given him love-powder; but it is merely out of natural affection to himself. He has a great itch to be handling of authority, though he cut his fingers with it; and is resolved to raise himself, though it be but upon the gallows. He is all for peace and truth, but not without lying and fighting. He plays a game with the hangman for the clothes on his back; and when he throws out, he strips him to the skin. He dies in hempen sheets, and his body is hanged, like his ancestor Mahomet's, in the air. He might have lived longer, if the destinies had not spun his thread of life too strong. He is sure never to come to an untimely end, for by the course of law his glass was out long before. He calls rebellion and treason laying out of himself for the public; but being found to be false unlawful coin, he was seized upon, and cut in pieces, and hanged for falsifying himself. His espousing of quarrels proves as fatal to his country, as the Parisian wedding did to France. He is like a bell, that was made on purpose to be hanged. He is a diseased part of the body politic, to which all the bad humours gather.Butler.

V.

However the mechanical and ornamental arts may sacrifice to fashion, she must be entirely excluded from the art of painting; the painter must never mistake this capricious changeling for the genuine offspring of nature; he must divest himself of all prejudices in favour of his age and country; he must disregard all local and temporary ornaments, and look only on those general habits which are every where and always the same: he addresses his works to the people of every country; he calls upon posterity to be his spectators, and says, with Zeuxis, in eternitatem pingo.-Sir J. Reynolds.

VI.

"Pride was not made for men;" a conscious sense of guilt, and folly, and their consequence,

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