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less felt, at least it is less apparent, when the Christian is in full possession of riches, and splendour, and rank, and all the gifts of nature and fortune. But, when all these are swept away by the rude hand of time, or the rough blasts of adver sity, the true Christian stands, like the glory of the forest, erect and vigorous; stripped, indeed, of his summer foliage, but more than ever discovering, to the observing eye, the solid strength of his substantial texture.

XXI.-THE UNCERTAINTIES OF FORTUNE.-Lord Bolingbroke. THE sudden invasion of an enemy overthrows such as are not on their guard; but they who foresee the war, and prepare themselves for it before it breaks out, stand, without difficulty, the first and the fiercest onset. I learned this important lesson long ago; and never trusted to Fortune, even while she seemed to be at peace with me. The riches, the honours, the reputation, and all the advantages, which her treacherous indulgence poured upon me, I placed so, that she might snatch them away without giving me any disturbance. I kept a great interval between me and them. She took them, but she could not tear them from me.

No man suffers by bad fortune, but he who has been deceived by good. If we grow fond of her gifts; if we fancy that they belong to us, and are perpetually to remain with us; if we lean upon them, and expect to be considered for them, we shall sink into all the bitterness of grief, as soon as these false and transitory benefits pass away, -as soon as our vain and childish minds, unfraught with solid pleasures, become destitute even of those which are imaginary. But, if we do not suffer ourselves to be transported with prosperity, neither shall we be reduced by adversity. Our souls will be proof against the dangers of both these states: and, having explored our strength, we shall be sure of it; for, in the midst of felicity, we shall have tried how we can bear misfortune.

Ignominy can take no hold on virtue; for virtue is in every condition the same, and challenges the same respect. We applaud the world when she prospers; and when she falls into adversity we applaud her. Like the temples of the gods, she is venerable even in her ruins. After this, must it not appear a degree of madness to defer, one moment, acquiring the only arms capable of defending us against attacks, to which at every moment we are exposed? Our being miserable or not miserable, when we fall into misfortunes, depends on the manner in which we have enjoyed prosperity.

XXII.—SALATHIEL'S ACCOUNT OF THE FALL OF JERUSALEM.—Croly. THE fall of our illustrious and happy city was supernatural. The destruction of the conquered was against the first principles of the Roman policy; and, to the last hour of our national existence, Rome held out offers of peace, and lamented our frantic disposition to be undone. But the decree was gone forth from a mightier throne. During the latter days of the siege, a hostility, to which that of man was as a grain of sand to the tempest that drives it on, overpowered our strength and senses; fearful shapes and voices in the airvisions starting us from our short and troublesome sleeplunacy in its hideous forms-sudden death in the midst of vigour the fury of the elements let loose upon our heads. We had every terror and evil that could beset human nature, but pestilence; the most probable of all, in a city crowded with the famishing, the diseased, the wounded, and the dead. Yet, though the streets were covered with unburied, though every well and trench was teeming, though six hundred thousand corpses were flung over the ramparts, and lay naked to the sun, pestilence came not; for if it had come, the enemy would have been scared away. But "the abomination of desolation," the Pagan standard, was fixed where it was to remain until the plough had passed over the ruins of Jerusalem.

On this fatal night, no man laid his head upon the pillow. Heaven and earth were in conflict. Meteors burned over usthe ground shook under our feet-the volcanoes blazed-the wind burst forth in irresistible blasts, and swept the living and the dead in whirlwinds far into the desert. We heard the bellowing of the distant Mediterranean, as if its waters were at our side, swelled by the deluge. The lakes and rivers roared and inundated the land. The fiery sword shot out tenfold fire-showers of blood fell-thunder pealed from every quarter of the heavens-lightning, in immense sheets, of an intensity and duration that turned the darkness into more than day, withering eye and soul, burned from the zenith to the ground, and marked its track by forests of flame, and shattered the summits of the hills. Defence was unthought of, for the mortal enemy had passed from the mind. Our hearts quaked for fear; but it was to see the powers of heaven shaken. All cast away the shield and spear, and crouched before the descending judgment.

We were conscience-smitten. Our cries of remorse, anguish, and horror, were heard through the uproar of the storm. We

howled to caverns to hide us. We plunged into the sepulchres, to escape the wrath that consumed the living. We would have buried ourselves under the mountains. I knew the cause-the unspeakable cause!-and knew that the last hour of crime was at hand. A few fugitives, astonished to see one man amongst them not sunk into the lowest feebleness of fear, came around me, and besought me to lead them to some place of safety, if such were now to be found on earth. I told them openly that they were to die, and counselled them to die in the hallowed ground of the Temple. They followed; and I led, through streets encumbered with every shape of human sufferings, to the foot of Mount Moriah; but beyond that, we found advance impossible. Piles of clouds, whose darkness was palpable even in the midnight in which we stood, covered the holy hill. Impatient, and not to be daunted by any thing that man could overcome, I cheered my disheartened band, and attempted to lead the way up the ascents; but I had scarcely entered the cloud, when I was swept down by a gust that tore the rocks in a flinty shower around me.

Now came the last and most wonderful sign that marked the fate of rejected Israel. While I lay helpless, I heard the whirlwind roar through the cloudy hill, and vapours began to revolve. A pale light, like that of the rising moon, quivered on the edges of the horizon; and the clouds rose rapidly, shaping themselves into the forms of battlements and towers. The sound of voices was heard within, low and distinct, yet strangely sweet. Still the lustre brightened; and the airy building rose, tower on tower, and battlement on battlement, in awe that held us mute. We knelt and gazed on this more than mortal architecture, that continued rising and spreading, and glowing with a serener light, still soft and silvery, yet to which the broadest moonlight was dim. At last, it stood forth to earth and heaven, the colossal image of the first Temple of the building raised by the wisest of men, and consecrated by the Visible Glory.

All Jerusalem saw the image; and the shout that, in the midst of their despair, ascended from the thousands and tens of thousands, told that proud remembrances were there. But a hymn was heard, that might have hushed the world beside. Never fell on my ears, never on the human sense, a sound so majestic, yet so subduing-so full of melancholy, yet of grandeur and command. The vast portal opened, and from it marched a host, such as man had never seen before, such as man shall never see but once again—the guardian angels of

the city of David. They came forth gloriously, but woe in all their steps-the stars upon their helmets dim-their robes stained-tears flowing down their celestial beauty. "Let us go hence!" was their song of sorrow. "Let us go hence!" was answered by sad echoes of the mountains. "Let us go hence!" swelled upon the night to the furthermost limits of the land. The procession lingered long upon the summit of the hill. The thunders pealed; and they rose at the command, diffusing waves of light over the expanse of heaven. The chorus was heard, still magnificent and melancholy, when their splendou was diminished to the brightness of a star. Then the thunder roared again-the cloudy Temple was scattered on the wind --and darkness, the omen of the grave, settled upon Jerusalem!

XXIII.

OSSIAN'S ADDRESS TO THE SUN.-Macpherson's Ossian,

O THOU that rollest above, round as the shield of my fathers! Whence are thy beams, O Sun; thy everlasting light? Thou comest forth in thy awful beauty-the stars hide themselves in the sky; the moon, cold and pale, sinks in the western wave. But thou thyself movest alone: who can be a companion of thy course?

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The oaks of the mountains fall; the mountains themselves decay with years; the ocean shrinks and grows again; the moon herself is lost in heaven: but thou art for ever the same-rejoicing in the brightness of thy course.

When the world is dark with tempests; when thunder rolls, and lightning flies; thou lookest in thy beauty from the clouds, and laughest at the storm. But to Ossian thou lookest in vain; for he beholds thy beams no more, whether thy yellow hairs flow on the Eastern clouds, or thou tremblest at the gates of the West.

But thou art, perhaps, like me-for a season: thy years will have an end; thou shalt sleep in the clouds, careless of the voice of the morning. Exult, then, O Sun, in the strength of thy youth! Age is dark and unlovely: it is like the glimmering light of the moon when it shines through broken clouds: the mist is on the hills; the blast of the north is on the plain; the traveller shrinks in the midst of his journey.

XXIV.-EULOGIUM ON MARIE ANTOINETTE, QUEEN OF FRANCE.

Burke.

Ir is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the Queen of France, then the dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she just began to move in, glittering like the morning star; full of life and splendour, and joy. Oh! what a revolution!-and what a heart must I have, to contemplate, without emotion, that elevation and that fall!

Little did I dream that, when she added titles of veneration to those of enthusiastic, distant, respectful love, she should ever be obliged to carry the sharp antidote against disgrace concealed in that bosom !-little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fallen upon her in a nation of gallant men,-in a nation of men of honour and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look that threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone. That of sophisters, economists, and calculators, has succeeded; and the glory of Europe is extinguished for ever.

Never, never more, shall we behold that generous loyalty to rank and sex; that proud submission, that dignified obedience, that subordination of the heart, which kept alive, even in servitude itself, the spirit of an exalted freedom. The unbought grace of life, the cheap defence of nations, the nurse of manly sentiment and heroic enterprise, is gone. It is gone,—that sensibility of principle, that chastity of honour, which felt a stain like a wound, which inspired courage whilst it mitigated ferocity, which ennobled whatever it touched, and under which vice itself lost half its evil by losing all its grossness.

XXV.-CHARACTER OF NAPOLEON BONAPARTE.-Phillips.

HE is fallen! We may now pause before that splendid prodigy, which towered amongst us like some ancient ruin, whose frown terrified the glance its magnificence attracted.

Grand, gloomy, and peculiar, he sat upon the throne, a sceptred hermit, wrapped in the solitude of his own originality. A mind bold, independent, and decisive a will, despotic in its dictates, an energy that distanced expedition, and a

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