654. Quarrels.-Two things, well considered, would prevent many quarrels; first, to have it well ascertained whether we are not disputing about terms, rather than things; and, secondly, to examine whether that on which we differ, is worth contending about.--Colton.

655. On Civilization.-As refinement progresses, the number of the refined must necessarily be reduced. If you become elevated, you must have supporters. If your elevation be still more increased, the quantity of supporting materials must be multiplied in a like proportion. It is absurd to talk of all becoming equally refined, polished, and civilized. How can you dine in state, if there be none to wait at your table? and if we increase your refinement, state, and splendour, must not your attendants continue to be multiplied proportionably? Now, if we follow this train of thought, we shall be able to prove, by a chain of incontestable arguments, that, when civilization is carried to its acme, there will be one man polished into a god, and all the rest of the species will be slaves, parasites, and brutes.-The Savage.

656. Mutation and Decay.-I look upon the lavish expences of former ages with pity and admiration, that those things men built for the honour of their name (as they thought), are either eaten up by the steely teeth of Time, or else rest as monuments but of their pride and luxury.

Great works, undertaken for ostentation, miss of their end, and turn to the author's shame; if not, the transitions of time wear out their engraved names, and they last not much longer than Caligula's bridge over the Baja. What is become of the Mausoleum, or the ship-bestriding Colossus? Where is Marcus Seaurus's Theatre, the bituminated walls of Babylon ? and how little rests of the Egyptian Pyramids! And of these, how divers does report give in their builders! some ascribing them to one, some to another.

We have not power over the present, much less over the future, when we shall be absent or dissolved. And, indeed, if we consider the world aright, we shall find some reason for these continual mutations. If every one had power to transmit the certain possession of all his acquisitions to his own succeeders, there would be nothing left for the noble deeds of new aspirers to purchase, which would quickly betray the world to an incommunicable dulness, and utterly discourage the generous designs of the stirring and more elementary spirits. As things now are, every man thinks something may fall to his share; and since it must crown some endeavors, he demands, why not his?

Who would not pity the toils of virtue, when we shall find greater honour ascribed to loose Phryne than to victorious Alexander; who, when he had razed the walls of Thebes, she offered to re-edify them, on condition this sentence might but on them be inlettered: "Alexander pulled them down, but Phryne did rebuild them." From whence

some have jested them into a quarrel for fame betwixt a courtesan and a thief.

We e are so far from leaving anything certain to posterity, that we cannot be sure to enjoy what we have while we live. We live sometimes to see more changes in ourselves than we could expect would happen to our lasting offering.-Feltham.

657. Eloquence.-Praise for eloquence honours men of every description, from the monarch to the slave. Thus we not only see that men of the highest rank notice those who speak correctly and elegantly, of whatever profession they may be, and on the contrary, despise them who have not this advantage, but even the lowest order of people mock and rally each other, when they speak with difficulty, or when they do it in a way not perfectly pleasing to them. There is an advantage peculiar to eloquence it can never be really despised, nor can it ever be combated but by eloquence. It was this occasioned it to be said of Plato, though he seems to contemn eloquence, that it was his greatest eulogy, as it furnished him with all those elegant words with which he fought against it.

Even the most barbarous nations, who make a virtue of their insensibility to the beauties of the mind, only despise the name of eloquence. The invariable secret satisfaction which they must feel on happily expressing what they have to say, or the displeasure of feeling themselves inadequate to the task of delivering their sentiments properly, makes them esteem the art of speaking, though they despise the precepts. Let us not then blame those who endeavour to acquire this very necessary and elegant accomplishment.-Miscellaneous Literature.

658. High Station.

Our hearts ne'er bow but to superior worth:
Nor ever fail of their allegiance there.

Fools, indeed, drop the man in their account,

And vote the mantle into majesty,

Shall man be proud to wear his livery,

And souls in ermine scorn a soul without?

Can place, or lessen us or aggrandize?

Pygmies are pygmies still, though perch'd on Alps,
And pyramids are pyramids in vales;

Each man makes his own stature, builds himself,
Virtue alone out-builds the pyramids ;

Her monuments shall last when Egypt's fall.-Young.

659. Disguise.-Were we to take as much pains to be what we ought to be, as we do to disguise what we really are, we might appear like ourselves, without being at the trouble of any disguise at all.

Rochefoucault.

660. Lying is a crime the least liable to variation in its definitions. A child will upon the slightest temptation tell an untruth as readily as the truth. That is, as soon as he can suspect that it will be to his advantage; and the dread that he afterwards has of telling a lie is acquired principally by his being threatened, punished, and terrified by those who detect him in it: till at length, a number of painful impressions are annexed to the telling of an untruth, and he comes even to shudder at the thought of it. But where this care has not been taken, such a facility in telling lies and such an indifference to truth are acquired, as is hardly credible to persons who have been differently educated.--Priestley.

661. Conscience.-The voice of conscience is so delicate, that it is easy to stifle it; but it is also so clear, that it is impossible to mistake it.-Madam de Stael.

662. Hindoo Morality.-Never to hear patiently of evil, nor speak that which is mischievous and wicked;—to utter no lies, prevarications, or hypocrisy ; -to use no deceit nor overreaching in trade or dealing ; -never oppress the weak and humble, nor offer any violence to your neighbour;—to keep your hands from pilfering and theft ;—and in no way whatever to injure a fellow-creature.-Braminical Books.

663. Poetical Justice is one of the merest fictions; and consists, as the term imports, rather with Utopian views, than with the real rugged course of human life. To place virtue and vice in one scale, and an adequate portion of good or evil, as reward and punishment, in the other, may produce meat for babes, but the picture has little reference to the true course of events in this variegated world, where the base and bad rejoice and revel daily in the high places, whilst excellence mourns in the dust. Honesty begs for bread, and knavery prospers, adding houses to houses and land to land. The just suffers whilst the unjust judge is in ermine.

The child, however, is taught that virtue is its own reward; and every volume in his juvenile library not only inculcates the same principle, but holds out a direct promise of an equitable adjustment in this world. An absurd system; by which, instead of being fore-armed and fore-warned by the prospect of trials to come, the good boy grows up a good man, and is astonished and disgusted to find himself, instead of being even a silver-gilt Whittington, a contemned object, walking in the world bare-foot and pennyless, with the reward of virtue in the likeness of one of those tin or pewter medals of merit that used to decorate him at school.-T. Hood.

664. Envy is more irreconcileable than hatred.-Anon.

665. Criminal Existence without Consent.-Would animals who endure such sufferings of various kinds for the service and entertainment of man, accept existence on the terms on which they have it ? Madam Sevigne, who, though she had many enjoyments, felt with delicate sensibility the prevalence of misery, complains of the task of existence having been imposed upon her without her consent.

Dr Johnson.

666. A Citizen Soldier.-In a land of liberty, it is extremely dangerous to make a distinct order of the profession of arms. In free states, no man should take up arms but with a view to defend his country and its laws. He puts not off the citizen when he enters the camp; but it is because he is a citizen, and would wish to continue so, that he makes himself, for a while, a soldier.-Blackstone.

667. The Constitution of the World does not look like a system of optimism. It appears to be arranged in all its departments on the principle of slow and progressive improvement. Physical nature itself has undergone many revolutions, and apparently has constantly advanced. Geology seems to shew a distinct preparation of it for successive orders of living beings, rising higher and higher in the scale of intelligence and organization, until man appeared.

The globe, in its first state in which the imagination can venture to consider it, says Sir H. Davy, appears to have been a fluid mass, with an immense atmosphere revolving in space round the sun. By its cooling, a portion of its atmosphere was probably condensed into water, which occupied a part of its surface. In this state, no forms of life such as belong to our system could have inhabited it. The crystaline rocks, or, as they are called by geologists, the primary rocks, which contain no vestiges of a former order of things, were the result of the first consolidation on its surface. Upon farther cooling, the water, which had more or less covered it, contracted; depositions took place; shell-fish and coral insects were formed, and began their labours. Islands appeared in the midst of the ocean; raised from the deep by the productive energies of millions of Zoophytes. These islands became covered with vegetables, fitted to bear a high temperature, such as palms and various species of plants, similar to those which now exist in the hottest parts of the world. The submarine rocks of these new formations of land became covered with aquatic vegetables, on which various species of shell fish and common fishes found their nourishment. As the temperature of the globe became lower, species of the oviparous reptiles appear to have been created to inhabit it: and the turtle, crocodile, and various gigantic animals of the lizard tribe, seem to have haunted the bays and waters of the primitive lands. But in this state of things, there appears to have been no order of events, similar to the present. Immense volcanic explosions seem to have taken place, accom

panied by elevations and depressions of the surface of the globe producing mountains, and causing new and extensive depositions from the primitive ocean. The remains of living beings, plants, fishes, birds, and oviperous reptiles, are found in the strata of rocks, which are the monuments and evidences of these changes. When these revolutions became less frequent, and the globe became still more cooled, and inequalities of temperature were established, by means of mountain chains, more perfect animals became its inhabitants, such as the mammoth, megalonix, negatherium, and gigantic hyena; many of which have become extinct. Five successive races of plants, and four successive races of animals, appear to have been created and swept away by physical revolutions of the globe, before the system of things became so permanent as to fit the world for man. In none of these formations, whether called secondary, tertiary, or diluvial, have the fossil remains of man, or any of his works been discovered. At last man was formed; and since that period there has been little alteration in the physical circumstances of the globe. In all these various formations, says Dr Buckland, the coprolites, or the dung of the lizard tribe, in a fossil state, exhibiting scales of fishes and other traces of the prey which they had devoured, form records of warfare waged by successive generations of inhabitants of our planet on one another: and the general law of nature, which bids all to eat and to be eaten in their turn, is shewn to be co-existensive with animal existence upon our globe; the carnivora, in such period of the world's history, fulfilling their destined office-to check excess in the progress of life, and maintain the balance of creation.-Combe on the Constitution of Man.

668. Plutarch to Trajan.-I am sensible that you sought not the empire-your natural modesty would not suffer you to apply for a distinction, to which you were always entitled by the excellency of your manners. That modesty, however, makes you still more worthy of those honours you had no ambition to solicit. Should your future government prove in any degree answerable to your former merit, I shall have reason to congratulate both your virtue and my own good fortune on this great event. But if otherwise, you have exposed yourself to danger and me to obloquy; for Rome will never endure an Emperor unworthy of her; and the faults of the scholar will be imputed to the master. Seneca is reproached, and his fame will suffer for the vices of Nero. The reputation of Quintillian is hurt by the ill conduct of his scholar; and even Socrates is accused of negligence in the education of Alcibiades. Of you, however, I have better hopes and flatter myself that your administration will do honour to your virtues. Only continue to be what you are. Let your government commence in your breast; and lay the foundation of it in the command of your paşsions. If you make virtue the rule of your conduct, and the end of your actions, every thing will proceed in harmony and order. I have