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CLVIII.

When you meet with several readings of the text (scripture) take heed you admit nothing against the tenets of your church: but do as if you was going over a bridge, be sure you hold fast by the rail, and then you may dance here and there as you please; be sure you keep to what is settled, and then you may flourish upon your various lections.-Selden.

CLIX.

The confirmed prejudices of a thoughtful life, are as hard to change as the confirmed habits of an indolent life: and as some must trifle away age, because they trifled away youth, others must labour on in a maze of error, because they have wandered there too long to find their way out.-Bolingbroke.

CLX.

Frugality may be termed the daughter of prudence, the sister of temperance, and the parent of liberty. He that is extravagant will quickly become poor, and poverty will enforce dependence, and invite corruption. It will almost always produce a passive compliance with the wickedness of others, and there are few who do not learn by degrees to practise those crimes which they cease to censure.-Johnson.

CLXI.

Beauty is not a quality of the circle. It lies not in any part of the line, whose parts are all equally distant from a common centre. It is only the effect which that figure produces upon a mind, whose particular fabric or structure renders it susceptible of such sentiments. In vain would you look for it in the circle, or seek it, either by your senses or by mathematical reasonings, in all the properties of that figure.-Hume.

CLXII.

Nothing makes a woman more esteemed by the opposite sex, than chastity, whether it be that we always

prize those most who are hardest to come at, or, that nothing besides chastity, with its collateral attendants, truth, fidelity, and constancy, gives the man a property in the person he loves, and consequently endears her to him above all things.-Addison.

CLXIII.

Fame and honour were purchased at a bitter pennyworth by satire, rather than by any other productions of the brain; the world being soonest provoked to praise by lashes, as men are to love.-Swift.

CLXIV.

The taxes are indeed very heavy; and if those laid on by the government were the only ones we had to pay, we might more easily discharge them; but we have many others, and much more grievous to some of us.We are taxed twice as much by our idleness, three times as much by our pride, and four times as much by our folly; and from these taxes the commissioners cannot ease or deliver us, by allowing an abatement.-Franklin.

CLXV.

It is downright hypocrisy in a man of certain degree, not immediately to take the rank due to him, and which every body is ready to give up; it is no self-denial in him to be modest, to mingle with the multitude, that would open to make way for him, to take the lowest seat at a public meeting, that every one may see him there, and strive to sit him higher. Modesty in men of ordinary condition is more trying; if they come into a crowd, they are jostled and elbowed; if they choose an incommodious seat, there they may remain.-Bruyere.

CLXVI.

We frequently bestow praise on virtuous actions, performed in very distant ages and remote countries; where the utmost subtlety of imagination would not discover any appearance of self-interest, or find any connexion of our present happiness and security, with events so widely separated from us.—Hume.

CLXVII.

The most manifest sign of wisdom is continued cheerfulness: her estate is like that of things in the regions above the moon, always clear and serene.-Montaigne.

CLXVIII.

I fancy the proper means of increasing the love we bear our native country, is to reside some time in a foreign one.-Shenstone.

CLXIX.

Laws are like cobwebs, which may catch small flies, but let wasps and hornets break through.-Swift.

CLXX.

A vulgar man is captious and jealous; eager and impetuous about trifles. He suspects himself to be slighted, thinks every thing that is said meant at him: if the company happens to laugh, he is persuaded they laugh at him: he grows angry and testy, says something very impertinent, and draws himself into a scrape, by showing what he calls a proper spirit, and asserting himself. -Chesterfield.

CLXXI.

A woman of fashion who is employed in remarks upon the weather, who observes from morning to noon that it is likely to rain, and from noon to night that it spits, that it mizzles, that it is set in for a wet evening; and being incapable of any other discourse, is as insipid a companion, and just as pedantic, as he who quotes Aristotle over his tea, or talks Greek at a card table.-B. Thornton.

CLXXII.

The great art of life is to play for much, and stake little.-Johnson.

CLXXIII.

As almost every character which has excited either attention or pity, has owed part of its success to merit, and part to a happy concurrence of circumstances in its favour: had Cæsar or Cromwell exchanged countries, the one might have been a sergeant and the other an ex

cise-man. So it is with wit, which generally succeeds more from being happily addressed, than from its native poignancy.-Goldsmith.

CLXXIV.

True honour is to honesty what the court of chancery is to common law.-Shenstone.

CLXXV.

The liberty of a people consists in being governed by laws which they have made themselves, under whatsoever form it be of government: the liberty of a private man, in being master of his own time and actions, as far as may consist with the laws of God, and of his country. -Cowley.

CLXXVI.

We are never present with, but always beyond, ourselves. Fear, desire, and hope are still pushing us on towards the future; depriving us in the mean time of the sense and consideration of that which is, to amuse us with the thought of what shall be, even when we shall be no more.-Montaigne.

CLXXVII.

The composition of all poems is, or ought to be, of wit; and wit in poetry, or wit-writing, (if you will give me leave to use a school distinction,) is no other than the faculty of imagination in the writer, which, like a nimble spaniel, beats over and ranges through the field of memory, till it springs the quarry it hunted after; or, without a metaphor, which searches over all the memory for the species or ideas of those things which it designs to represent.-Dryden.

CLXXVIII.

A lady's face, like the cart in the "Tale of a Tub," will wear well, if left alone, but if you offer to load it with foreign ornaments, you destroy the original ground. Connoisseur.

CLXXIX.

It is with books as with women, where a certain plainness of manner and of dress, is more engaging, than that

glare of paint and airs and apparel, which may dazzle the eye, but reaches not the affections.-Hume.

CLXXX.

All courageous animals are carnivorous, and greater courage is to be expected in a people, such as the Enlish, whose food is strong and hearty, than in the half starved commonalty of other countries.-Sir W. Temple.

CLXXXI.

A young fellow who seems to have no will of his own, and does every thing that is asked of him, is called a very good-natured, but at the same time is thought a very silly young fellow.-Chesterfield.

CLXXXII.

It hath been observed both among ancients and moderns, that a grey critic has been certainly a green one, the perfection and acquirement of his age being only the improved talent of his youth; like hemp, which some naturalists inform us, is bad for suffocations, though taken but in the seed.-Swift.

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CLXXXIII.

The maxim, in vino veritas—a man who is well warmed with wine will speak truth'-may be an argument for drinking, if you suppose men in general to be liars: but, sir, I would not keep company with a fellow, who lies as long as he is sober, and whom you must make drunk before you can get a word of truth out of him.-Johnson.

CLXXXIV.

There seems to be but three ways for a nation to acquire wealth: the first is by war, as the Romans did, in plundering their conquered neighbours-this is robbery; the second by commerce, which is generally cheating; the third by agriculture, the only honest way, wherein man receives a real increase of the seed thrown into the ground, in a kind of continual miracle, wrought by the hand of God in his favour, as a reward for his innocent life and his virtuous industry.-Franklin.

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