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and herbs at Salona, which I cultivate with my own hands, you would never talk to me of empire.

CONVERSATION AND COMPANY.

1. Dr. Arbuthnot, in his book upon Aliment, tells us (p. 7), that, "in general, whatever be the state of the tongue, the same is that of the inward coat of the stomach." For which reason physicians look at one to discover the foulness of the other. What propriety is there in that axiom of our Lord, "Out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh."

2. A man's countenance should be well watched by him who would know his mind; for, in spite of all endeavors, one will very often be the index of the other. See Collier on the Aspect: Essays, ii. 121.

3. A man's real sentiments often discover themselves by words spoken on a sudden, in drink, in anger, in pride, in grief.

4. The deepest designs are sometimes made manifest by deeds of kindness done, without a visible cause, to a man or to his dependants, secretly to gain him or them from him.

5. Wise and reserved men are best expounded by knowing the ends they have in view, as such work uniformly on a preconcerted plan; but weak and simple persons by their natures, because they do many things absurdly, and without reason; as one, who had been a Pope's nuncio in a certain kingdom, when, upon his return, his opinion was asked with regard to a successor, gave his advice, "That in any case his Holiness should not send one too wise; because," said he, "no wise man would ever imagine what they in that country were like to do."

6. You will best learn a man's weaknesses and faults from his enemies, his virtues and abilities from his friends, his hours and customs from his servants, his sentiments and opinions from his confidants.

7. It is expedient to have an acquaintance with those who have looked into the world, who know men, understand business, and can give good intelligence and good advice when they are wanted.

8. Knowledge is to be obtained from some men by being free and talkative, which provokes them to be so too; from others by reservedness and taciturnity, which induce them to trust and deposit their secrets with us.

9. In all conferences and negociations a watchful and present wit is necessary, to promote the main matter, and yet observe incidental circumstances, as Epictetus gives it in precept, that every philosopher should say to

himself, "I will do this also, and yet go on in my course."

10. Of other men's affairs it may be sometimes useful to know much, but it is always necessary to say little.-The emptiest of all characters is a busybody:

Της πολυπραγμοσύνης ουδεν κενεωτερον αλλο.

11. It is difficult to account for the choice which some men make of their companions. Lycas, the Peripatetic, had a goose that lived with him, walked with him, attended him upon all occasions, and, when it died, was buried as a brother, with burial philosophic.— See Ælian. de Animal. lib. vii. c. 36.

12. Great abilities and fine accomplishments are often concealed under the most unpromising appearance: as travellers have observed, that the mountains which contain within them mines of gold, silver, and precious stones, are generally barren.

13. Among the Athenians, the greatest festal pleasure consisted in a flow of learned, sprightly, and polite conversation, as agreeable, in a word, as useful and interesting. The banquet of Plato and that of Xenophon give us a model of the ordinary tabletalk of the Athenians; and it was thus that they prevented the two extremes of licentious mirth and irksome weariness, which preside but too often at most long meals. Goguet, xi. 225.

14. Compliments uttered pro forma, by those that hate one, bring to mind the ceremonies used in Spain, where a captain never corrects his soldier without first asking his leave, and the inquisition never burns a Jew without making an apology to him.

15. A man should be very well established in faith and virtue, who attempts to reclaim a witty and agreeable profligate: otherwise, he may become a convert instead of making one. Chapelle, a person of this character, was met one day in the street by his friend Boileau, who took the opportunity of mentioning to him his habit of drinking, and the consequences of it. Unfortunately, they were just by a tavern. Chapelle only desired they might step in there, and promised he would listen patiently and attentively. Boileau consented; and the event was, that, about one in the morning, they were carried home, dead drunk, and in separate coaches.

16. "I am no niggard according to my ability to impart what I know; but it is where I find some appetite: otherwise my most familiar friends, some of them, are as ignorant of my notions as any stranger; for, if they discover no stomach, I use not to examine them, no, not to offer them; and it would be in vain.-Pauci enim inviti discunt.

Few learn against their will."-Mede, 811. So again, 815-" I am not unwilling to communicate to you most of my tow [material— from tow or hemp, for ropes,] because I perceive you make some account of them; for in the university where I live, I know not a second man that understands anything concerning such mysteries, or desires to be made acquainted with them."

17. I have somewhere met with an observation, that conversation, in the first part of the morning, is like a dram; it heats, and hurries, and muddles, and incapacitates for business, which should therefore be entered upon, previously to visiting and chit-chat, with a mind calm, and cool, und undisturbed.

I believe this is true.

18. Never speak, but when you have something to say-" Wherefore shouldst thou run, seeing thou hast no tidings?"-See Bishop Butler's excellent Sermon on the Tongue.

COUNCIL.

1. What Gregory Nazianzen says of ecclesiastical Synods, in his tract de Differentiis Vita, is remarkable: "Mihi certum est deliberatumque, nunquam posthac anserum aut gruum temerè inter se pugnantium synodis interresse."-On this point my resolution is fixed, never again to be present at synods of geese and cranes, employed solely in fighting with each other." And so Procopius, Se nullius synodi felicem vidisse exitum”—"That he had never seen good consequences result from a synod."

2. Wise men, when they meet together in numbers, sometimes make foolish determinations. Montesquieu, in his Persian letters, speaking of the quarrel of Ramus, which obliged the legislature of France to interpose, says "It looks as if the heads of the greatest men idiotized when they meet together." Letter cix. The truth, perhaps, is, that interest, bashfulness, indolence, or some other cause, occasions men, who could give the best opinions, to withhold them, and yield to those of others more forward and domineering. See Jortin on the Various Motives by which the several members of an ecclesiastical council may happen to be actuated. Remarks on Eccl. Hist. ii. 185.

COURAGE OF DIFFERENT SORTS.

When Pelopidas was cited to be tried, that valor, which was haughty and intrepid in fight, forsook him before his judges. His air and discourse, timid and low, denoted a man who was afraid of death. Contrary behavior of Epaminondas.

CRITICISM LITERAL.

1. "I am almost tired of it," said Mr. Bryant to me, May 21, 1785. "It is often employed in removing little inequalities on the surface, when I want to have a shaft sunk, and the rich ore drawn forth from the mine within." He had been mentioning the new editions of Apollodorus, Virgil, &c., by the Germans, Heyne, &c.-May not the same observation be applied to some of the notes SS. and to the generality of the various readby Lowth, Blayney, and Newcome, on the ings amassed by Kennicott?

2. Critics, by their severity, infest authors, as the African ants do the negroes; but like them answer one good purpose, by destroying all the carrion.

CUDWORTH.

His collections for the remaining part of his Intellectual System, and Daniel's Weeks, in 3 vols. folio, after many adventures and mutilations, were lodged in the British. Museum.-See an account of this matter in Crit. Review for May, 1783, p. 391. Sold by Lord Masham, pillaged by Dodd as Locke's, and thrown into a garret by Davis. The fate of posthumous writings is treated by Johnson in one of his papers; whence he deduces an argument for a man's working up his materials, and publishing them himself; not collecting in infinitum, and then leaving those collections to be employed by the cook of his executor in singeing a goose.

DEATH.

1. There is something very affecting in the words spoken by the gallant Sir Philip Sidney to his brother, just before his death, occasioned by a wound received in battle"Love my memory, cherish my friends; but, above all, govern your will and affections by the will and word of the Creator; in me beholding the end of this world, with all her vanities."

2. St. Aldegonde, a protestant in the Low Countries, when imprisoned under the duke of Alva, tells us, that "for three months together he recommended himself to God every night, as if that would be his last; the duke having twice ordered him to be put to death in prison."-Ought not every man to do this, as no man can be certain he shall awake on the morrow?-Gen. Dict.

neys, it is a pleasing reflection, that we have 3. In the journey of life, as in other jourfriends who are thinking of us at home, and who will receive us with joy when our jour

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all his life.

7. When Mr. Paschal observed any of his friends to be afflicted at seeing the sickness and pain he underwent, he would say " Do not be so concerned for me. Sickness is the natural state of a Christian, because by it we are what we ought always to be, in a state of suffering evils, mortified to the pleasures of sense, exempt from all those passions which work upon us as long as we live, free from ambition or avarice, and in a constant expectation of death. And is it not a great happiness to be by necessity in that state one ought to be in, and to have nothing else to do, but humbly and peaceably to submit to it?" This is a noble, a just, a comfortable speculation.

8. It was a saying among the Brachmans, that our life ought to be considered as a state of conception, and death as a birth to a true and happy life. This thought seems just, and capable, on the Christian plan, of being improved into a curious and useful speculation. See Biograph. Dict. art. Gymnosophists.

9. When we rise fresh and vigorous in the morning, the world seems fresh too, and we think we shall never be tired of business or pleasure. But by that time the evening is come, we find ourselves heartily so; we quit all its enjoyments readily and gladly; we retire willingly into a little cell; we lie down in darkness, and resign ourselves to the arms of sleep, with perfect satisfaction and complacency. Apply this to youth and old age, life and death.

10. Apply to the death of an afflicted Christian the beautiful lines of the poet, on the heartfelt pleasure of finding oneself at home, after a toilsome journey:

O quid solutis est beatius curis ?

Quum mens onus reponit, ac peregrino
Labore fessi venimus larem ad nostrum,
Desideratoque acquiescimus lecto.-

Hoc est, quod unum est pro laboribus tantis.

11. Young, healthy, and strong as we may now be, yet a little while, and we shall become qualified to join the chorus of the Spartan old men :

Αμμες ποτ' ημεν αλκιμοι νεανίαι.

12. When sickness and sorrow come upon a Christian, and order him to prepare for death, he should be able to say, in the words of Æneas,

Nulla mihi nova nunc facies inopinaque surgit.
Omnia præcepi, atque animo mecum ante peregi.
EN. lib. vi. 104.

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14. Cum tuba magna sonum dederit, cum venerit hora
Judicii, inter oves da mihi, Christe, locum.
Sis mihi, sis Jesus, ne me maledictio tangat ;
Dulcis in aure sonet vox, " Benedicte, veni!"
DIETERIC. ii. 581.

15. A Christian may say of death, what Orestes, in Sophocles, says of the report of being dead:

Τι
Οι γαρ με λυπει τιθ' ότ' αν λογω θανων,
Εργοισι σωθώ, και ξενέγκωμαι κλέος ;

ELECTRA, 59.
Why should this grieve me, that in words I die,
When I in deeds am sav'd, and by them rais'd
To glory?

PORTER.

16. They who have done much, pride themselves in a short epitaph; they who have done little, in a long one.

17. The different ranks and orders of mankind may be compared to so many streams and rivers of running water. All proceed

from an original small and obscure; some spread wider, travel over more countries, and make more noise in their passage, than others; but all tend alike to an ocean, where distinction ceases, and where the largest and most celebrated rivers are equally lost and absorbed with the smallest and most unknown streams.

18. Immatura peri; sed tu felicior annos Vive tuos, conjux optime, vive meos.

I died untimely; happier doom be thine;
Live out thy years, dear husband! live out mine.

19. On viewing the Deanry House, by Dr.
Smith, late Dean of Chester.

Within this pile of mould'ring stones
The dean hath laid his wearied bones;
In hope to end his days in quiet,
Exempt from nonsense, noise, and riot;
And pass, nor teas'd by fool nor knave,
From this still mansion to his grave.
Such there, like richer men's, his lot
To be in four days' time forgot.

See his Poetic Works and Life.

20. It is an evil disposition in some men to revile and publish the faults of those who are no longer alive to answer for themselves. It is the disposition of vultures, jackalls, and hyenas, who prey upon carcasses, and root up the dead.

DESPAIR.

The most tremendous circumstance recorded of that most dreadful scourge, the plague of Athens, is that the instant a person was seized he was struck with despair, which quite disabled him from attempting his cure.

DEVOTION.

1. He who seldom thinks of heaven is not likely to get thither; as the only way to hit the mark is to keep the eye fixed upon it.

2. The soldier, saith Xenophon, who first serves God, and then obeys his captain, may confidently hope to overcome his enemy. The case is the same in spirituals.

3. The vestal virgins were wont to spend ten years in learning their religion, ten years in practising it, and ten years in teaching the young vestals.

4. He who hath his thoughts about him can enjoy no bodily pleasure while he thinks his soul is in danger of hell fire. But the reflection that all is right with respect to another world, doubles every joy we can taste in this. As Livy tells us of Paulus Emilius, who had vanquished Perseus, but for a while thought he had lost his son Scipio-Ne sincero gaudio frueretur, cura de

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minore filio stimulabat. When his son re-
turned alive and well, Tunc demum, recepto
sospite filio, victoria tanta gaudium consel
Lib. xliv. sect. 44. His anxiety
sensit.
respecting his youngest son prevented his
satisfaction from being complete. But when
his son returned alive and well, then at last
the consul opened his mind to the full enjoy-
ment of so great a victory. The pleasures
of sense are pleasures only to the virtuous,
and the Christian, after all, turns out to be
the true epicure.

5. Boerhaave, through life, consecrated the first hour after he rose in the morning to meditation and prayer; declaring that from thence he derived vigor and aptitude for business, together with equanimity under provocations, and a perfect conquest over his irascible passions. "The sparks of calumny," he would say, "will be presently extinct of themselves, unless you blow them—

(Spreta exolescunt; si irascare, ignita videntur,)

and therefore, in return, he chose rather to commend the good qualities of his calumniators (if they had any) than to dwell upon the bad."-Life, p. 53.

6. To our Saviour and his commands may be applied, with propriety, what Hamlet, in Shakspere, says of the injunctions of his father's ghost:

-Remember thee!

Yea, from the table of my memory
I'll wipe away all trivial fond records,

All saws of books, all forms, all pressures past,
That youth and observation copied there;
And thy commandment all alone shall live
Within the book and volume of my brain,
Unmixt with baser matter.-

7. To one who knows much of religion, and practises little, may be applied what Milton says of Satan perched on the tree of

life:

-Nor on the virtue thought
of that life-giving plant, but only us'd
For prospect, what, well us'd, had been the pledge
Of immortality; so little knows
Any, but God alone, to value right
The good before him, but perverts best things
To worst abuse, or to their meanest use.
P. L. iv. 196.

8. Lord Astley, before he charged, at the battle of Edgehill, made this short prayer"O Lord, thou knowest how busy I must be this day. If I torget thee, do not thou forget me!" There were certainly, says Hume, much longer prayers said in the parliamentary army; but I doubt if there was so good a one. Vol. vii. p. 65.

9. The divine, who spends all his time in

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2. It is but too much a custom to give ill names to those who differ from us in opinion. Dr. Hammond mentions, as a humorous instance of it, that when a Dutchman's horse does not go as he would have him, he in great rage calls him an Arminian.

DUELLING.

From the will of colonel Thomas, dated London, September 3, 1783 :

of what is called honor, forced into a per"I am now called upon, and by the rules sonal interview with Col. Gordon. God only can know the event; and into his hands J commit my soul, conscious only of having done my duty. In the first place I commit my soul to Almighty God, in hopes of his mercy and pardon for the irreligious step I now (in compliance with the unwarrantable customs of this wicked world) put myself under the necessity of taking."

ECCLESIASTICUS.

12. Aben Ezra, on Exod. xxxviii. 8, extols The late Sir Edward Dering used so say, the generosity of those women who devoted" He did not pretend to understand much of to the construction of a holy vessel (the the Bible, but he was sure the gentleman laver) those utensils of self-love (their brazen mirrors) for which the persons of their sex have so great an inclination, and who showed, by such a sacrifice, that they preferred the service of God to the pleasures and vanities of the world.-Saurin, Diss. 466.

Thomas Aquinas's Prayer before Study. Ineffably wise and good Creator, illustrious original, true fountain of light and wisdom, vouchsafe to infuse into my understanding some ray of thy brightness, thereby removing that twofold darkness, under which I was born, of sin and ignorance.

Thou, that makest the tongues of infants eloquent, instruct, I pray thee, my tongue likewise; and pour upon my lips the grace of thy benediction.

Give me quickness to comprehend, and memory to retain; give me happiness in expounding, a facility in learning, and a copious eloquence in speaking.

Prepare my entrance on the road of science, direct me in my journey, and bring me safely to the end of it, even happiness and glory, in thine eternal kingdom, through Jesus Christ our Lord. See the Latin.

who wrote that book knew the world as well as any man that ever lived in it." Sept. 29, 1782. There is more good sense, and are better precepts for the conduct of life, than in all the morality of the heathen. Dr. Campbell, Biog. Brit. 215.-It is pity but a small and fair edition of the Greek were printed for the use of scholars and preachers.

ECSTASIES.

There is a set of Mahometan heretics, who excuse themselves from going the pilgrimage to Mecca, affirming, that the purity of their souls, their sublime contemplations, &c. show them Mecca and Mahomet's tomb, without stirring out of their cells.-They are called Ebrbuharites.

EDUCATION.

1. So important a concern did the right education of children appear to Augustus Cæsar, that, when master of the world he himself attended to that of his grandchildren. Nepotes et literas, et alia rudimenta, per se plerumque docuit: ac nihil æque laboravit quam ut imitarentur chirographum suum. Neque canavit una, nisi ut imo lecto assiderent: neque iter fecit, nisi ut vehiculo anteirent, aut circa adequitarent. Sueton. August. 64. Er1. Disputation makes us ready and ex-nest.-He himself instructed his grandsons in pert in using the knowledge we have, but sufficeth not for the acquisition of more. It is exercise, but not food. Hist. of R. p. 18.

DISPUTATION.

S.

the rudiments of literature and science, and was peculiarly assiduous to teach them to imitate his own hand-writing. They always supped in his company, and were placed on

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