CONSULT your whole nature. Conside

not only as sensitive, but as rational beings; not only as rational, but social; not only as social, but immortal.

After we have practised good actions a while, they become easy; and when they are easy, we begin to take pleasure in them; and when they please us, we do them frequently, and by frequency of action, a thing grows into a habit; and a confirmed habit is a second kind of nature; and so far as any thing is natural, so far it is necessary, and we can hardly do otherwise; nay, we do it many times when we do not think of it.

II. It is pleasant to be virtuous and good, because that is to excel many others; it is pleasant to grow better, because that is to excel ourselves; it is pleasant to mortify and subdue our lusts, because that is victory; it is pleasant to command our appetites and passions, and to keep them in due order, within the bounds of reason and religion, because that is empire.

A WISE man endeavours to shine in himself; a fool to outshine others. The former is humbled by the sense of his own infirmities; the latter is lifted up by the discovery of those which he observes in others. The wise man considers what he wants; and the fool what he abounds in. The wise man is happy when he gains his own approbation, and the fool when he recommends himself to the applause of those about him.

II. Where opportunities of exercise are wanting, temperance may in a great measure supply its place. If exercise throws off all superfluities, temperance prevents them; if exercise clears the vessels, temperance neither satiates nor overstrains them; if exercise raises proper ferments in the humours, and promotes the circulation of the blood, tem perance gives nature her full play, and enables her to exert herself in all her force and vigour; if exercise dissipate a growing distemper, temperance starves it.

SINCERITY is to speak as we think, to do as we pretend and profess, to perform and make good what we promise, and really to be what we would seem and appear to be.

No blessing of life is any way comparable to the enjoyment of a discreet and virtuous friend; it eases and unloads the mind, clears and improves the understanding, engenders thoughts and knowledge, animates virtue and good resolutions, soothes and allays the passions, and finds employment for most of the vacant hours of life.

II. The brightness of the sky, the lengthening of the days, the increasing verdure of the spring, the arrival of a little piece of good news, or whatever carries with it the most distant glimpse of joy, is frequently the parent of a social and happy conversation.

THOUGH there is a great deal of pleasure in contemplating the material world, by which I mean that system of bodies into which nature has so curiously wrought the mass of dead matter, with the several relations which those bodies bear to one another: there is still something more wonderful and surprising in contemplating the world of life, or those various animals with which every part of the universe is furnished.

II. Since it is certain that our hearts deceive us in the love of the world, and that we cannot command ourselves enough to resign it, though we every day wish ourselves disengaged from its allurements; let us not stand upon a formal taking of leave, but wean ourselves from them, while we are in the midst of them.

When a man has got such a great and exalted soul as that he can look upon life and death, riches and poverty, with indifference, and closely adheres to honesty, in whatever shape she presents herself; then it is that virtue appears with such a brightness, as that all the world would admire her beauties.

NOTWITHSTANDING all the care of

tory informs us, that Marcus proved a mere block............. and that nature, (who, it seems, was even with the son for her prodigality to the father) rendered him incapable of improving by all the rules of eloquence, the precepts of philosophy, his own endeavours, and the most refined conversation of Athens.

The opera (in which action is joined with musick, in order to entertain the eye at the same time with the ear) I must beg leave (with all due submission to the taste of the great) to consider as a forced conjunction of two things, which nature does not allow to go together.

II. As to my own abilities in speaking (for I shall admit this charge, although experience has convinced me, that what is called the power of eloquence depends for the most part upon the hearers, and that the characters of publick speakers are determined by that degree of favour which you vouchsafe to each) if long practice, I say, hath given me any proficiency in speaking, you have ever found it devot. ed to my country.

IS it credible, is it possible, that the mighty soul of a Newton should share exactly the same fate with the vilest insect that crawls upon the ground; that, after having laid open the mysteries of nature, and pushed its discoveries almost to the very boundaries of the universe, it should on a sudden, have all its lights at once extinguished, and sink into everlasting darkness and insensibility?

II. Suppose a youth to have no prospect either of sitting in parliament, of pleading at the bar, of appearing upon the stage, or in the pulpit; does it follow that he need bestow no pains in learning to speak properly his native language? Will he never have occasion to read in a company of his friends, a copy of verses, a passage of a book, or newspaper ? Must he never read a discourse of Tillotson, or a chapter of the Whole Duty of Man, for the instruction of his children and servants?

III. Cicero justly observes, that address in speaking is highly ornamental, as well as useful, even in private life. The limbs are parts of the body much less noble than the tongue; yet no gentleman grudges a considerable expense of time and money to have his son taught to use them properly which is very commendable. And is there no attention to be paid to the use of the tongue, the glory of

man?

LESSON LXI.

I HAVE always preferred cheerfulness to mirth. The latter I consider as an act, the former as a habit of the mind. Mirth is short and transient, cheerfulness fixed and permanent. Those are often raised into the greatest transports of mirth, who are subject to the greatest depressions of melancholy on the contrary, cheerfulness, though it does not give the mind such an extensive gladness, prevents us from falling into any depths of sorrow. Mirth is like a flash of lightning, that breaks through a gloom of clouds, and glitters for a moment; cheerfulness keeps up a kind of day-light in the mind, and fills it with a steady and per petual serenity.

II. At the same time that I think discretion the most useful talent a man can be master of, I look upon cunning to be the accomplishment of little, mean, ungenerous minds. Discretion points out the noblest ends to us, and pursues the most proper and laudable methods of attaining them; cunning has only private, selfish aims, and sticks at nothing which may make them succeed; discretion has large and extended views, and, like a well formed eye, commands a whole horizon; cunning is a kind of short-sightedness, that discovers the minutest objects which are near at hand, but is not able to discern things at a distance.

LESSON LXII.

IN fair weather, when my heart is cheered, and I feel that exultation of spirits which results from light and warmth, joined with a beautiful prospect of nature, I regard myself as one placed by the hand of God in the

midst of an ample theatre, in which the sun, m stars, the fruits also and vegetables of the earth, p ly changing their positions or their aspects, exhib gant entertainment to the understanding, as well as to..... eye. Thunder and lightning, rain and hail, the painted bow, and the glaring comets, are decorations of this mighty theatre; and the sable hemisphere, studded with spangles, the blue vault at noon, the glorious gildings and rich colours in the horizon, I look on as so many successive

scenes.

II. Complaisance renders a superior amiable, an equal agreeable, and an inferior acceptable. It smooths distinction, sweetens conversation, and makes every one in the company pleased with himself. It produces good nature, and mutual benevolence, encourages, the timorous, soothes the turbulent, humanizes the fierce, and distinguishes a society of civilized persons from a confusion of savages. In a word, complaisance is a virtue that blends all orders of men together in a friendly intercourse of words and actions, and is suited to that equality in human nature, which every one ought to consider so far as is consistent with the order and economy of the world.

TO hear a judicious and elegant discourse from the pulpit, which would in print make a noble figure, murdered by him who had learning and taste to compose it, but having been neglected as to one important part of his education, knows not how to deliver it otherwise than with a tone between singing and saying, or with a nod of his head, to enforce, as with a hammer, every emphatical word, or with the same unanimated monotony, in which he was used to repeat Que genus at Westminster school what can be imagined more lamentable? Yet what more

common !

;

II. Having already shown how the fancy is affected by the works of nature, and afterwards considered in general both the works of nature and art, how they mutually assist and complete each other, in forming such scenes and prospects as are most apt to delight the mind of the beholder; I