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inclined to despise him who sinks under the weight of his distresses. On the other hand a temperate and well-governed mind looks down on such as are exalted with success with a certain shame for the imbecility of human nature, which can so far forget how liable it is to calamity as to grow giddy with only the suspense of sorrow which is the portion of all men. He therefore who turns his face from the unhappy man, does but pamper himself up for a sacrifice, and contracts in himself a greater aptitude to misery by attempting to escape it.

51. THE EARLIEST POETRY OF A NATION THE BEST. From Persia I passed into Arabia, where I saw a nation at once pastoral and warlike; who live without any settled habitation; whose only wealth is their flocks and herds; and who have yet carried on, through all ages, an hereditary war with all mankind, though they neither covet nor envy their possessions.

Wherever I went, I found that Poetry was considered as the highest learning, and regarded with a veneration somewhat approaching to that which Man would pay to the Angelic nature. And it yet fills me with wonder, that, in almost all countries, the most ancient poets are considered as the best whether it be that every other kind of knowledge is an acquisition gradually attained, and poetry is a gift conferred at once; or that the first poetry of every nation surprised them as a novelty, and retained the credit by consent, which it received by accident at first: or whether, as the province of poetry is to describe Nature and Passion, which are always the same, the first writers took possession of the most striking objects for description, and the most probable occurrences for fiction, and left nothing to those that followed them, but transcription of the same events, and new combinations of the same images. Whatever be the reason, it is commonly observed that the early writers are in possession of nature, and their followers of art: that the first excel in strength and invention, the latter in elegance and refinement. S. JOHNSON

52. FROM REV. MR HORNE TO JUNIUS, 13 JULY 1771. Singular as my present situation is, it is neither painful, nor was it unforeseen. He is not fit for public business

who does not even at his entrance prepare his mind for such an event. Health, fortune, tranquillity, and private connexions, I have sacrificed upon the altar of the public; and the only return I receive, because I will not concur to dupe and mislead a senseless multitude, is barely, that they have not yet torn me in pieces. That this has been the only return, is my pride; and a source of more real satisfaction than honours or prosperity. I can practise, before I am old, the lessons I learned in my youth.

53.

TION.

AMERICA-HER STAKE IN THE BRITISH CONSTITU

For that service, for all service, whether of revenue, trade, or empire, my trust is in her interest in the British constitution. My hold of the colonies is in the close affection which grows from common names, from kindred blood, from similar privileges, and equal protection. These are ties, which, though light as air, are as strong as links of iron. Let the colonies always keep the idea of their civil rights associated with your government; they will cling and grapple to you; and no force under heaven will be of power to tear them from their allegiance. But let it be once understood, that your government may be one thing, and their privileges another; that these two things may exist without any mutual relation; the cement is gone; the cohesion is loosened; and every thing hastens to decay and dissolution. As long as you have the wisdom to keep the sovereign authority of this country as the sanctuary of liberty, the sacred temple consecrated to our common faith, wherever the chosen race and sons of England worship freedom, they will turn their faces towards you. The more they multiply, the more friends you will have; the more ardently they love liberty, the more perfect will be their obedience. Slavery they can have any where. It is a weed that grows in every soil. They may have it from Spain, they may have it from Prussia. But, until you become lost to all feeling of your true interest and your natural dignity, freedom they can have from none but you. This is the commodity of price, of which you have the monopoly.

E. BURKE

54. OF THE SAXONS AND ANGLES. The Saxons, Angles and other kindred tribes, to whom we are indebted for the basis and character of our fine language and of our invaluable

civil institutions, were at the time of their establishment here a ferocious people, but not without noble qualities, apt for instruction and willing to be instructed. The heathenism which they introduced bears no affinity either to that of the Britons or of the Romans. It is less known than either, because while it subsisted as a living form of belief the few writers who arose in those illiterate ages were incurious concerning such things, but it has left familiar traces in our daily speech and in many of those popular customs which in various parts of the country still partially maintain their grounds. They had idols wrought in wood, stone, and metals of different kinds, even in gold-this fact implies considerable proficiency in art beyond that to which the ancient Britons had attained.

55. OF FORTUNE. Fortune is like the market, where many times, if you can stay a little, the price will fall; and again, it is sometimes like Sibylla's offer, which at first offereth the commodity at full, then consumeth part and part, and still holdeth up the price; for occasion (as it is in the common verse) turneth a bald noddle after she hath presented her locks in front, and no hold taken; or, at least, turneth the handle of the bottle first to be received, and after the belly, which is hard to clasp. There is surely no greater wisdom than well to time the beginnings and onsets of things:—and generally it is good to commit the beginnings of all great actions to Argus with his hundred eyes, and the ends to Briareus with his hundred hands-first to watch, and then to speed; for the helmet of Pluto', which maketh the politic man go invisible, is secrecy in the council and celerity in the execution; for when things are once come to the execution, there is no secrecy comparable to celerity:-like the motion of a bullet in the air, which flieth so swift as it outruns the eye.

LORD BACON

56. AMERICA-ITS MARINE ENTERPRISE. As to the wealth which the colonies have drawn from the sea by their fisheries-neither the perseverance of Holland, nor the activity of France, nor the dexterous and firm sagacity of English enterprise, ever carried this most perilous mode of hard industry to the extent to which it has been pushed by this recent people: a people who are still, as it were, but 1 Homer, Il. v. 845. 2 as] i.q. that.

in the gristle, and not yet hardened into the bone of manhood. When I contemplate these things, when I know that the colonies in general owe little or nothing to any care of ours, and that they are not squeezed into this happy form by the constraints of watchful and suspicious government, but that through a wise and salutary neglect, a generous nature has been suffered to take her own way to perfection; when I reflect upon these effects, when I see how profitable they have been to us, I feel all the pride of power sink, and all presumptions in the wisdom of human contrivances melt and die away within me. My rigour relents. I pardon something to the spirit of liberty.

E. BURKE

57.

UNMERITED PRAISE-THE PRACTICE OF GIVING IT

CENSURED. To scatter praise or blame without regard to justice, is to destroy the distinction of good and evil. Many have no other test of actions than general opinion; and all are so far influenced by a sense of reputation, that they are often restrained by fear of reproach, and excited by hope of honour, when other principles have lost their power; nor can any species of prostitution promote general depravity more than that which destroys the force of praise, by showing that it may be acquired without deserving it, and which, by setting free the active and ambitious from the dread of infamy, lets loose the rapacity of power and weakens the only authority by which greatness is controlled. Praise, like gold and diamonds, owes its value only to its scarcity. It becomes cheap as it becomes vulgar, and will no longer raise expectation or animate enterprise. It is therefore not only necessary, that wickedness, even when it is not safe to censure it, be denied applause, but that goodness be commended only in proportion to its degree; and that the garlands, due to the great benefactors of mankind, be not suffered to fade upon the brow of him who can boast only petty services and easy virtues. Had these maxims been universally received, how much would have been added to the task of dedication, the work on which all the power of modern wit has been exhausted. How few of these initial panegyricks had appeared, if the author had been obliged first to find a man of virtue, then to distinguish the species and degree of his desert, and at last to pay him only the honours he might justly claim. S. JOHNSON

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58. PLATO-HIS IDEAS. The mind of Plato rose above visible objects, and entered the higher regions, where exist the eternal first forms of things. To these his eye was undeviatingly directed, as the only regions where knowledge can be found, since there exists nothing beyond opinion in the world of the senses, and where real beauty, goodness, and justice dwell eternal and unchangeable as the Divinity, and yet distinct from the Divinity. He who cannot follow Plato to those regions, and feel with him in the veil of mythological fables what he himself felt rather than knew, may make many valuable and correct remarks respecting that Philosopher, but is not capable of presenting a perfect and adequate image of him. The attempt to give a body to that which is ethereal is vain; for it then ceases to be ethereal.

59. SELFISHNESS OFTENER ON THE SIDE OF HONESTY THAN OF DISHONESTY. Instead of selfishness seducing man, which it often does, from the observations of truth and honesty-it vastly oftener is on the side of these observations. Generally speaking, it is not more his interest that he should have men of integrity to deal with-than that he himself should, in his own dealings, be strictly observant of this virtue. To be abandoned by the confidence of his fellows, he would find to be not more mortifying to his pride, than ruinous to his prosperity in the world. We are aware that many an occasional harvest is made from deceit and injustice; but, in the vast majority of cases, men would cease to thrive when they ceased to be trusted. A man's actual truth is not more beneficial to others, than the reputation of it is gainful to himself. And therefore it is, that, throughout the mercantile world, men are as sensitive of an aspersion on their name, as they would be of an encroachment on their property. The one, in fact, is tantamount to the other. It is thus, that, under the constraints of selfishness alone, fidelity and justice may be in copious and current observation among men ; and while, perhaps, the principle of these virtues is exceedingly frail and uncertain in all hearts— human society may still subsist by the literal and outward observation of them.

60. SAVAGE NATIONS-FEROCITY OF THEIR WARS. When polished nations have obtained the glory of victory, or

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