We have no good that we can say is ours,

But ill-annexed Opportunity

Or kills his life or else his quality.

O Opportunity, thy guilt is great!

'Tis thou that executest the traitor's treason:
Thou set'st the wolf where he the lamb may get ;
Whoever plots the sin, thou 'point'st the season;
'Tis thou that spurn'st at right, at law, at reason ;
And in thy shady cell, where none may spy him,
Sits sin, to seize the souls that wander by him.1 . . .
Thy honey turns to gall, thy joy to grief!
Thy secret pleasure turns to open shame,

Thy private feasting to a public fast;
Thy smoothing titles to a ragged name;
Thy sugar'd tongue to bitter wormwood taste;

Thy violent vanities can never last.

How comes it then, vile Opportunity,

Being so bad, such numbers seek for thee?
When wilt thou be the humble suppliant's friend,
And bring him where his suit may be obtained?
When wilt thou sort an hour great strifes to end,
Or free that soul which wretchedness hath chained?
Give physic to the sick, ease to the pain'd?

The poor, lame, blind, halt, creep, cry out for thee;
But they ne'er meet with Opportunity.

The patient dies while the physician sleeps ;

I Put on the whole armour of God, that ye may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil. - Eph. vi. 1I.

PERIL OF OPPORTUNITY.

The orphan pines while the oppressor feeds;
Justice is feasting while the widow weeps ;
Advice is sporting while infection breeds;
Thou grant'st no time for charitable deeds;
Wrath, envy, treason, rape, and murder's rages,
Thy heinous hours wait on them as their pages.
When Truth and Virtue have to do with thee,
A thousand crosses keep them from thy aid:
They buy thy help; but Sin ne'er gives a fee,
He gratis comes; and thou art well appaid
As well to hear as grant what he hath said. ..
Guilty thou art of murder and of theft,
Guilty of perjury and subornation,
Guilty of treason, forgery, and shift,
Guilty of incest, that abomination ;
An accessary by thine inclination

To all sins past, and all that are to come,
From the creation to the general doom.

107

Lucrece, 1. 869.

Self-Indulgence.

Pious extasies are easier far

Than virtuous deeds; how gladly idleness,

Concealing its true motive from itself,

Would stand excused from virtuous deeds, and plead
Its pious extasies instead.

LESSING, Nathan the Wise, Act i. Sc. 2.

Of all rituals and divine services and ordinances ever instituted for the worship of any god, this of Self-worship is the ritual most faithfully observed. THOMAS CARLYLE, Essay on Goethe's Works.

WHAT is a man,

If his chief good and market of his time

Be but to sleep and feed? a beast, no more.
Sure, he that made us with such large discourse,
Looking before and after, gave us not

That capability and god-like reason

To fust in us unused.

Hamlet, Act iv. Sc. 4, 1. 33.

O gentlemen, the time of life is short!

To spend that shortness basely were too long,
If life did ride upon a dial's point,

Still ending at the arrival of an hour.

First Part of King Henry IV., Act v. Sc. 2, 1. 82.

SELF-INDULGENCE.

Now 'tis the spring, and weeds are shallow-rooted ;
Suffer them now, and they 'll o'ergrow the garden
And choke the herbs for want of husbandry.

109

Second Part of King Henry VI., Act iii. Sc. 1, 1. 31.

Shall we serve heaven

With less respect than we do minister

To our gross selves?

Measure for Measure, Act ii. Sc. 2, 1. 85.

A Sensual Heaven, an Actual Hell.

I will simply express my strong belief that the point of self-education which consists of teaching the mind to resist its desires and inclinations until they are proved to be right, is the most important of all, not only in things of natural philosophy, but in every department of daily life.

MICHAEL FARADAY, On the Education of the Judgment.

HE expense of spirit in a waste of shame

THE

Is lust in action; and till action, lust

Is perjured, murderous, bloody, full of blame,
Savage, extreme, rude, cruel, not to trust,
Enjoy'd no sooner, but despised straight,
Past reason hunted, and no sooner had
Past reason hated, as a swallow'd bait
On purpose laid to make the taker mad ;
Mad in pursuit and in possession so ;
Had, having, and in quest to have, extreme;
A bliss in proof, and proved, a very woe ;1
Before, a joy proposed; behind, a dream.

1

1 Then when lust hath conceived, it bringeth forth sin: and sin, when it is finished, bringeth forth death. — James i. 15.