MORAL. An accomplice is as guilty as the prin

cipal.

APPLICATION. This fable may be illustrated by an amusing episode in English history. Baldwin Archbishop of Canterbury accompanied Richard Coeur de Lion to the Crusades. The prelate, taken prisoner in a sally by the Saracens, begged his liberty, and to be sent back to his sovereign, as being a priest, and not a soldier. They showed him the breastplate he had worn in the combat, inquired if that was the dress of a prelate or of a paladin, and held him a fast prisoner till he died a captive at Acre. The English law acknowledges the same principle. "Qui facit per alium, facit per se." He that makes another the instrument of his evil intentions, is himself guilty of the wrong committed. There is a very slight difference between the man who holds a candle to, or opens the door for, a thief, and the thief himself. He who blows the coals, must expect to be scorched. He who prompts another, is equally responsible with him for the deed done, and must bear a like share in the merit or shame, in the guilt or goodness, of the transaction.

All hate their faults, and hate of them to hear;
And faultiest, of fault would seem most clear.

P

A CERTAIN man having taken a Partridge, plucked some of the feathers out of its wings, and turned it into a poultry-yard, where he kept Game Cocks. The Cocks for a while made the poor bird lead a sad life, continually pecking and driving it away from its food. This treatment was taken more unkindly because offered to a stranger. But at last, observing how frequently they quarrelled and fought with each other, he comforted himself with this reflection: that it was no wonder they were cruel to him, since there was so much bickering and animosity among themselves.

MORAL. Those who are unkind to their relations, cannot be depended on as friends.

APPLICATION. No greater happiness is allotted to man on earth than the comforts of a peaceful home and of a united family circle; and there is no greater misery than a fireside worried and made wretched by perpetual jars and dissensions. Home example, too, has a most powerful influence. The child imitates the sayings, doings, and manners of its superiors, and, in the freedom of the play-room, reacts them again with his young companions. What an instrument of evil, therefore, must that home be in which domestic disagreements, personal feuds, and ever-recurrent altercations, continually occur! The hatreds of relatives are proverbially the most bitter and inveterate; and if the child lives in the atmosphere of family disunion, he will naturally learn to be quarrelsome with his equals, and disrespectful to his betters. This fable points out the evils of family quarrels, and attributes the cruelties of these Game Cocks towards a stranger to their frequent onsets and fightings with each other. Man, whose heav'n-erected face

The smiles of love adorn,—

Man's inhumanity to man,

Makes countless thousands mourn.

When members of a household think lightly of those ties by which God and nature have united them,

what guarantee have their friends of better treatment at their hands? The wise man will as much as possible avoid intercourse with those who fail in their duties to their own relations, lest he experience, after the example of the Partridge in this fable, disrespect and ill-treatment at their hands.

So perish all whose breasts ne'er learnt to glow
For others' good, or melt at others' woe.

A FALCONER having taken a Partridge in his nets, the bird begged hard for a reprieve, and promised the man, if he would let him go, to decoy other Partridges into his net. "No," replied the Falconer; "I was before determined not to spare you; but now you have condemned yourself by your own words: for he who is such a scoundrel as to offer to betray his friends to save himself, deserves, if possible, worse than death."

MORAL. Better a death of honour than a life of

shame.