able that the princes only should fight. Would it not have been infinitely more just, that Alexander and Darius, Cæsar and Pompey, and many more such destroying heroes, who might be mentioned, should have decided their disputes by single combat, than that so many thousands should have been sacrificed to their ambition? It was certainly a noble action, and worthy of great commendation, in our King Henry the Fifth, that soon after he arrived in France to assert and obtain his right to the crown of that kingdom; he sent a letter to the Dauphin, in which he challenged him to single combat, "that so," as he expressed it, "the lives of many men might be spared and the quarrel between them two be honourably fought and decided by themselves." An immense treasure, and the lives of perhaps a million of people, might have been saved, if Louis the Fourteenth of France, when he was young, and first began to disturb Europe, had been thus engaged to fight singly. Our William the Third, if he had come a little sooner into the world, would not, I believe, have refused the combat; though I could rather have wished that circumstances had concurred to have matched Louis with Charles the Twelfth of Sweden, and have brought them together upon the stage. The subjects of such a pair of royal gladiators would certainly have had reason to wish they might both have fallen in the dispute. But the worst is, that though these pernicious princes, or some of them, might have been by this means destroyed, yet bad kings are like the heads of the Hydra, if one is cut off, another immediately sprouts up.― Ibid. CLXXXII. Cruelty proceeding from Ambition.-Many are the instances of ambition having expunged pity, compassion, and humanity from the heart of man, and in the room of these benign virtues substituting cruelty, and divers other destructive vices. What havoc has cruelty made, when excited and stimulated by ambition? It has in all ages and nations been the principal motive of offensive war, that bane of human happiness, and destroyer of the human species. This passion armed Cæsar against his country; and him and Alexander, and many such tyrants, not against their countries only, but against mankind. When a plague carries off a hundred thousand persons, it is thought to do great execution; but what is that to the numbers destroyed by these greater plagues, commonly called heroes? Of Cæsar it is recorded, that he slew in battle one million, one hundred and ninety-two thousand men, besides those slaughtered in the civil wars. Of Alexander, who it is probable did not murder fewer of his fellow-creatures, that he wept, after he had, as he vainly and foolishly imagined, conquered the world, because there were no more worlds for him to conquer, that was, to enslave or destroy.-Ibid. CLXXXIII. Social Institutions.-Among social institutions, those are the best, which are best adapted for divesting man of his natural state, or depriving him of his absolute, to give a relative, existence; in short, for transferring self to a common unit, to the end that each individual may no longer consider himself as one, but as part of a unit, and have no sense or feeling, but in conjunction with the whole.-Rousseau's Emilius. CLXXXIV. Pleasure. The love of pleasure is natural to the human heart; and the best preservative against criminal pleasures is a proper indulgence of such as are innocent. The youth, who bathes in pleasure's limpid streams, CLXXXV. Pity. In benevolent natures, the impulse to pity is so sudden, that, like instruments of musie which obey the touch, the objects which are fitted to excite such impressions, work so instantaneous an effect, that you would think the will was scarce concerned, and that the mind was altogether passive in the sympathy which her own goodness has excited. The truth is, the soul is generally in such cases so busily taken up, and wholly engrossed by the object of pity, that she does not attend to her own operations, or take leisure to examine the principles upon which she acts.-Stern's Sermons. CLXXXVI. Drinking. Drunkenness is a social festive vice. The drinker collects his circle; the circle naturally spreads: of those who are drawn within it, many become the corruptors and centres of sets and circles of their own; every one countenancing, and, perhaps, emulating the rest, till a whole neighbourhood be infected from the contagion of a single example.—Paley. CLXXXVII. The Mind. The mind, like a bow, is sometimes unbent, to preserve its elasticity; and because the bow is useless in a state of remission, we make the same conclusions of the human mind; whereas, the mind is an active principle, and naturally impatient of ease; it may lose indeed its vigour, by being employed too intensely on particular subjects, but recovers itself again, rather by vary. ing its applications, than by continuing inactive.-The World. CLXXXVIII. Sources of Education.-Education is either from nature, from man, or from things; the developing of our faculties and organs is the education of nature; that of man is the application we learn to make of this very developing; and that of things is the experience we acquire in regard to the different objects by which we are affected. All that we have not at our birth, and that we stand in need of at the years of maturity, is the gift of education.-Rous seau. CLXXXIX. Plato's Republic.—Plato, in his republic, pays no attention to the multitude; he devoted all his attention to the formation of a body of sages and of warriors to keep the common herd in order: is that the plan of our modern philosopher?-The Savage. CXC. Government of Temper.—Every human creature is sensible of the propensities to some infirmity of temper, which it should be his care to correct and subdue, particularly in the early period of life; else, when arrived at a state of maturity, he may relapse into those faults which were originally in his nature, and which will require to be diligently watched and kept under, through the whole course of life; since nothing leads more directly to the breach of charity, and to the injury and molestation of our fellow-creatures, than the indulgence of an ill temper. -Dr. Blair. CXCI. Disease. It may be said that disease generally brings that equality which death completes. The distinctions which set one man so far above another, are very little preserved in the gloom of a sick chamber, where it will be in vain to expect entertainment from the gay, or instructions from the wise; where all human glory is obliterated, the wit clouded, the reason perplexed, and the hero subdued; where the highest and brightest of mortals find nothing left but consciousness and innocence.-Addison's Anecdotes. CXCII. Self. This insignificant intruder is at all times one of the most impertinent companions in the world: you may try every art and contrivance in your power to get free from his troublesome conversation: the creature will press upon your retirement, and force himself upon you in spite of your teeth will be meddling in your affairs, setting them in such a light as cannot fail of putting you out of humour, or teasing you with reflections that make you weary of your life. No place is safe from him. He will force himself into the closet, hover about the bed, and penetrate through the thickest darkness, into the deepest recess; will travel with you by land or by sea, and will not quit you, though you be in banishment. There is a very whimsical circumstance, at the same time, attendant |