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best means to secure your own happiness, you will have the sublime inducement of promoting the happiness of mankind." The second excellence of knowledge is, that even the selfish man, when he has once begun to love virtue from little motives, loses the motive as he increases the love, and at last worships the Deity, where before he only coveted gold upon its altar.-E. L. Bulwer.

XXVII. der

Prejudices.-The world, with all its boasting, is scarcely out of swaddling clothes, and has little notion of throwing off the prejudices in which it has been nursed. Among its fallacies, can any be more gross than the principle on which it awards superiority? The machinist and mechanic, who are the principal organs of human greatness, are, forsooth, of the inferior class; while the monarch and his court minions, wrapped up in the chrysalis of pomp, like insects in the pupa state, are of the superior class! Woman, whose soul is "as fine an emanation from the great fountain of spirit as that of man," who has higher responsibilities, more important duties in the world, and pays a heavier tribute to it, is the inferior sex.-Monthly Magazine.

XXVIII.

Education.-On this subject, as most others, strange notions have been entertained in the world—that nothing in a mind is better than any thing; or, that if something must be there, that something is better supplied by chance than by design, as if fortune were wisdom's surest guide. But, "nothing" will not keep its hold in any mind. Be it as it may with space, nature endures no vacuum in minds. The mind is a field, in which, so sure as man sows not wheat, so sure will the devil be to

sow tares. Another strange notion, if another it may be ↑ termed, which has been entertained—as if there were a repugnancy between morality and letters, as if the health of the affections and moral faculties depended, in this rank of life more than any other, upon a morbid state of the intellectual-letters, it has been said, may be an instrument of fraud; so may bread, if discharged from the mouth of a cannon, be an instrument of death.-Bentham.

ΧΧΙΧ.

Opinions respecting Government.-The opinions of men, with respect to Government, are fast changing in all countries. The revolutions of France and America have thrown a light over the world, which reaches into the minds of men. The enormous expenses of Government, have provoked people to think, by making them feel; and when once the veil begins to rend, it admits of no repair. Ignorance is of a peculiar nature, once dispelled, it is impossible to re-establish it; it is not a thing of itself, but is only the absence of knowledge; and though men may be kept ignorant, they cannot be made ignorant. The mind, in discovering truth, acts in the same manner as the eye in discovering objects, when once the object has been seen, it is impossible to put the mind back to the same condition it was before it saw it.

XXX.

Early Impression.-To some extrinsic cause may be generally imputed our good and bad qualities; many of our defects and our excellences. The attention we give to the primary impressions was slight or fleeting; and it is not easy for the wisest of men to trace the gradual progress of their own thoughts, or to measure the accumu

lated force of those outward circumstances which acted upon them with increasing, and, perhaps, unsuspected energy; but surely when from beginnings in appearance so trivial, a long and momentous train of consequences is known to flow, it becomes us to give virtue all the advantage which can be derived “from first possession." -Parr's Discourse on Education.

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XXXI.

Rules for Correcting Credulous and Contradictory Dispositions. The prejudice of credulity may in some measure be cured, by learning to set a high value upon truth, and by taking more pains to attain it, remembering that truth often lies dark and deep, and requires us to dig for it as hid treasure; and that falsehood often puts on a fair disguise, and therefore we should not yield up our judgment to every plausible appearance. It is no part of civility or good breeding to part with truth, but to maintain it with decency and candour.-Watts.

XXXII.

Baseness or Nobleness of the Literary Character.-Authorship is, according to the spirit in which it is pursued, an infamy, a pastime, a day labour, a handicraft, an art, a science, a virtue.-Schlegel.

XXXIII.

Perfect Happiness in our Present State is impossible.Our nature is inseparable from desires, and the very word desire (the craving for something not possessed) implies that our present felicity is not complete.-Hobbes.

XXXIV.

Beauty.-Beauty has so many charms, one knows not how to speak against it; and when it happens that a graceful figure is the habitation of a virtuous soul, when the beauty of the face speaks out the modesty and humility of the mind, and the justness of the proportion raises our thoughts up to the heart and wisdom of the great Creator, something may be allowed it and something to the embellishment which sets it off; and yet, when the whole apology is read, it will be found at last, that beauty, like truth, never is so glorious as when it goes the plainest. Sterne's Sermons.

XXXV.

Happiness. That state of life is most happy, where superfluities are not required and necessaries are not wanting. Plutarch.

XXXVI.

Honesty the best Policy.-Irritated one day at the bad faith of Madame Jay, Mirabeau said to her, "Madame Jay, if probity did not exist, we ought to invent it, as the best means of getting rich."-Dumont.

XXXVII.

The Hottentot Herdsman.

Mild, melancholy, and sedate, he stands,

Tending another's flock upon the fields,

His father's once, where now the white man builds
His home, and issues forth his proud commands,
His dark eye flashes not; his listless hands
Lean on the shepherd's staff; no more he wields
The Libyan bow-but to th' oppressor yields

Submissively his freedom and his lands.
Has he no courage? once he had—but, lo!
Hard servitude hath worn him to the bone;
No enterprise? alas! the brand, the blow,
Have humbled him to dust-e'en Hope is gone.
"He's a base-hearted hound-not worth his food”
His master cries-"he has no GRATITUDE."

XXXVIII.

Duty of Kings. In those countries that pretend to freedom, princes are subject to those laws which their people have chosen; they are bound to protect their subjects in liberty, property and religion; to receive their petitions, and redress their grievances; so that the prince is, in the opinion of wise men, only the greatest servant of the nation; not only a servant to the public in general, but, in some sort, to every man in it.-Swift-Sermon on Mutual Subjection.

XXXIX.

The Province of Reason.-Now here it seems proper in the first place to try to settle the real province of reason, for here the parties generally become litigants at setting out; and till they can be brought to some agreement on this point, there is little to hope of travelling amicably together for the rest of the journey. The believer is perpetually warning men to beware of reason as a blind fallacious guide, to submit their reason to faith, to believe things they cannot understand. The rationalist will admit nothing of all this; for he maintains, that reason is the only faculty we can have to distinguish truth from falsehood, right from wrong; and, therefore, if we discard this guide, we must grope in the dark without any guide at all.-Tucker's Light of Nature.

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