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senses to observe accurately; the memory to register carefully and recall readily; the reason to compare, reflect, and judge. without partiality or passion. It is to infuse into the soul a principle of enduring activity and curiosity, such that it shall ever be awake in quest of light, never counting itself to have apprehended, but pressing continually forward towards higher truths and a larger knowledge.

Again, man begins life without virtue. He has propensities that urge him to self-gratification, affections that impel him to gratify others, and moral instincts that incline him to duty. But, left to himself and without culture, his propensities predominate; the affections spend themselves in capricious acts of kindness or charity; and the moral instincts raise, without effect, their solemn and monitory voice.

It is the office of moral education to harmonize these contending and irregular powers, by restoring conscience to its rightful authority, and by replacing unreflecting impulses with fixed and enlightened principles. It is its business to cultivate habits which make man master of himself, and which enable him, even when pressed by fierce temptation, to prefer loss, disgrace, and death itself, before dishonor. "The great_principle and foundation of all virtue," says Locke, "lies in this—that a man is able to deny himself his own desires, cross his own inclinations, and purely follow what reason directs as best, though the appetite lean the other way."

Again, man begins life without taste. Through his senses, he is early attracted and charmed by what he terms beautiful. As he advances in years, these impressions, made by outward objects, blend themselves with remembrances of the past, and with creations of the mind itself. The result is seen in conceptions which bear away the soul from the imperfections and trials of actual life, to a world of imagined purity, beauty, and bliss.

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Now, in the untutored mind, these conceptions are rude and often uncouth. It is the province of education to give them form and symmetry, to teach the true difference between

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beauty and deformity, to inspire a love for simple excellence in literature and art, as well as a taste for the beauties and sublimites of nature, and, finally, to awaken a profound reverence for moral grandeur, and thus kindle aspirations after glory, honor, and immortality.

BISHOP POTTER

1977

71. The Rich Man and the Beggar.

ANOTHER feature in the ways of God,

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That wondrous seemed, and made some men complain,
Was the unequal gift of worldly things.
Great was the difference indeed of men
Externally, from beggar to the prince.
The highest take, and lowest and conceive
The scale between. A noble of the earth,
One of its great, in splendid mansion dwelt;
Was robed in silk and gold, and every day
Fared sumptuously; was titled, honored, served.
Thousands his nod awaited, and his will
For law received; whole provinces his march
Attended, and his chariot drew, or on
Their shoulders bore aloft the precious man.
Millions, abased, fell prostrate at his feet;
And millions more thundered adoring praise.
CAs far as eye could reach, he called the land
His own, and added yearly to his fields.
Like tree that of the soil took healthy root,
He grew on every side, and towered on high,
And over half a nation shadowing wide,

He spread his ample boughs; air, earth, and sea,
Nature entire, the brute and rational,

To please him mihistered, and vied among
Themselves who most should his desires prevent,

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Watching the moving of his rising thoughts
Attentively, and hasting to fulfil.

His palace rose and kissed the gorgeous clouds;
Streams bent their music to his will; trees sprung
The naked waste put on luxuriant robes;
And plains of happy cottages cast out
Their tenants, and became a hunting-field.
Before him bowed the distant isles, with fruits
And spices rare; the south her treasures brought;
The east and west sent; and the frigid north
Came with her offering of glossy furs.
Musicians soothed his ear with airs select;
Beauty held out her arms; and every man
Of cunning skill and curious device,
And endless multitudes of liveried wights,
His pleasure waited with obsequious look.
And when the wants of nature were supplied,
And common-place extravagances filled,
Beyond their asking, and caprice itself,

In all its zigzag appetites, gorged full,

The man new wants and new expenses planned,
Nor planned alone: wise, learned, sober men,
Of cogitation deep, took up his case,

And planned for him new modes of folly wild;
Contrived new wishes, wants, and wondrous means
Of spending with despatch; yet, after all,
His fields extended still, his riches grew,
And what seemed splendor infinite, increased.
So lavishly upon a single man

Did Providence his bounties daily shower.

Turn now thy eye, and look on poverty;
Look on the lowest of her ragged sons:
We find him by the way, sitting in dust;
He has no bread to eat, no tongue to ask ;

No limbs to walk; no home, no house, no friend >
-Observe his goblin cheek; his wretched eye;

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See how his hand, if any hand he has,
Involuntary opens, and trembles forth,

As comes the traveller's foot; and hear his groan,
His long and lamentable groan, announce

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The want that gnaws within; severely now
The sun scorches and burns his old, bald head;
The frost now glues him to the chilly earth;
On him hail, rain, and tempest rudely beat;
And all the winds of heaven, in jocular mood,
Sport with his withered rags, that, tossed about,
Display his nakedness to passers by,
And grievously burlesque the human form.
Observe him yet more narrowly his limbs,
With palsy shaken, about him blasted lie;
And all his flesh is full of putrid sores

And noisome wounds; his bones, of racking pans.
Strange vesture this for an immortal soul!
Strange retinue to wait a lord of earth!
It seems as Nature, in some surly mood,
After debate and musing long, had tried
How vile and miserable thing her hand

Could fabricate, then made this meagre man.

This great disparity of outward things

Taught many lessons; but this taught in chief,
Though learned by few that God no value set,

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That man should none, on goods of worldly kind:
On transitory, frail, external things,

Of migratory, ever-changing sort;

And further taught, that in the soul alone,

The thinking, reasonable, willing soul,

God placed the total excellence of man,

And meant him evermore to seek it there.

19*

POLLOK

72. The Simple Man and the Wise Man

BUT stranger still the distribution seemed

Of intellect; though fewer here complained,
Each with his share, upon the whole, content.
One man there was and many such
you might
Have met who never had a dozen thoughts
In all his life, and never changed their course;
But told them o'er, each in its 'customed place,
From morn till night, from youth till hoary age.
Little above the ox which grazed the field
His reason rose: so weak his memory,

The name his mother called him by he scarce
Remembered; and his judgment so untaught,
That what at evening played along the swamp,
Fantastic, clad in robe of fiery hue,

He thought the devil in disguise, and fled
With quivering heart and winged footsteps home.
The word "philosophy " he never heard,
Or "science"; never heard of liberty,
Necessity; or laws of gravitation ;
And never had an unbelieving doubt.
Beyond his native vale he never looked ;

But thought the visual line, that girt him round,

The world's extreme; and thought the silver moon, That nightly o'er him led her virgin host,

No broader than his father's shield. He lived

Lived where his father lived - died where he died;

Lived happy, died happy, and was saved.

Be not surprised.

He loved and served his God.

There was another, large of understanding,

Of memory infinite, of judgment deep;
Who knew all learning, and all science knew;
And all phenomena, in heaven and earth,
Traced to their causes; traced the labyrinths

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