Imagens das páginas
PDF
ePub

i.

Are they Hebrews? So am I. Are they Ísraelites? So am Are they the seed of Abraham? So am I. Are they members of Christ? I am more.

[blocks in formation]

Then saw you not his fáce? O yès, my lord.

What, looked he frówningly? A countenance more in sorrow

than in anger.

RULE VIII.

The first member of an antithetic sentence should end with the rising, and the opposite with the falling, inflection; as,

Homer was the greater génius, Virgil the better àrtist; in the one, we most admire the mán, in the other, the work. Homer hurries us with a commanding impetuósity; Virgil leads us with an attractive majesty. Homer scatters with a generous profusion; Virgil bestows with a careful magnificence. Homer, like the Nile, pours out his riches with a sudden óverflow; Virgil, like a river in its banks, with a constant strèam.

Why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother's eye, but perceivest not the beam that is in thine own eye?

RULE IX. When a sentence consists of a positive and negative part or member, the positive should have the falling, and the negative the rising, inflection; as,

I did not say a better soldier, but an èlder.

He was esteemed not for his wealth, but for his wisdom.
You were paid to fight against Alexander, and not to ráil at him.

ANTITHETIC SENTENCES.

Temperance, by fortifying the mind and body, leads to happiness : intemperance, by enervating the mind and body, ends generally in misery.

A wise man feareth and departeth from evil; but the fool rageth, and is confident. The wicked is driven away in his wickedness; but the righteous hath hope in his death. Righteousness exalteth a nation; but sin is a reproach to any people.

Almost every object that attracts our notice has its bright and its dark side. He who habituates himself to look at the dark side will sour his disposition, and consequently impair his happiness; while he who constantly beholds it on the bright side insensibly ameliorates his temper, and, in consequence of it, improves his own happiness, and the happiness of all around him.

Between fame and true honor a distinction is to be made. The former is a blind and noisy applause; the latter, a more silent and internal homage. Fame floats on the breath of the multitude; honor rests on the judgment of the thinking. Fame may give praise, while it withholds esteem; true honor implies esteem, mingled with respect. The one regards particular distinguished talents; the other looks up to the whole character.

- A wise man endeavors to shine in himself; a fool to outshine others. The former is humbled by the sense of his own infirmities; the latter is lifted up by the discovery of those which he observes in others. The wise man considers what he wants; and the fool what he abounds in. The wise man is happy when he gains his own approbation; and the fool, when he recommends himself to the applause of those about him.

Europe was one great field of battle, where the weak struggled for freedom, and the strong for dominion. The king was without power, and the nobles without principle. They were tyrants at home, and robbers abroad. Nothing remained to be a check upon ferocity and violence.

Where opportunities of exercise are wanting, temperance may in a great measure supply its place. If exercise throws off all superfluities, temperance prevents them; if exercise clears the vessels, temperance neither satiates nor overstrains them; if exercise raises proper ferment in the humors, and promotes the circulation of the blood, temperance gives nature her full play, and enables her to exert herself in all her force and vigor; if exercise dissipates a growing distemper, temperance starves it.

Dryden knew more of man in his general nature; and Pope, in his local manners. The notions of Dryden were formed by comprehensive speculation; those of Pope, by minute attention. The style of Dryden is capricious and varied; that of Pope is cautious and uniform. Dryden obeys the motions of his own mind; Pope constrains his

[ocr errors]

mind to his own rules of composition. Dryden is sometimes vehement and rapid; Pope is always smooth, uniform, and gentle. Dryden's page is a natural field, rising into inequalities, and diversified by the varied exuberance of abundant vegetation; Pope's is a velvet lawn, shaven by the scythe, and levelled by the roller. If the flights of Dryden are higher, Pope continues longer on the wing. If of Dryden's fire the blaze is brighter, of Pope's the heat is more regular and constant. Dryden often surpasses expectation; and Pope never falls below it. Dryden is read with frequent astonishment; and Pope with perpetual delight.

I have always preferred cheerfulness to mirth. The latter I consider as an act, the former as a habit of the mind. Mirth is short and transient, cheerfulness fixed and permanent. Those are often raised into the greatest transports of mirth, who are subject to the greatest depressions of melancholy; on the contrary, cheerfulness, though it does not give the mind such an exquisite gladness, prevents us from falling into any depths of sorrow. Mirth is like a flash of lightning, that breaks through a gloom of clouds and glitters for a moment; cheerfulness keeps up a kind of daylight in the mind, and fills it with a steady and perpetual serenity.

Never before were there so many opposing interests, passions, and principles committed to such a decision. On one side, a fixed attachment to the ancient order of things; on the other, a passionate desire of change; a wish in some to perpetuate, in others to destroy, every thing; every abuse sacred in the eyes of the former, every foundation attempted to be demolished by the latter; jealousy of power shrinking from the slightest innovation, pretensions to freedom pushed to madness and anarchy; superstition in all its dotage, impiety in all its fury.

At the same time that I think discretion the most useful talent a man can be master of, I look upon cunning to be the accomplishment of little, mean, ungenerous minds. Discretion points out the noblest ends to us, and pursues the most proper and laudable methods of attaining them; cunning has only private, selfish aims, and sticks at nothing which may make them succeed: discretion has large and extended views, and, like a well-formed eye, commands a whole horizon; cunning is a kind of short-sightedness, that discovers the minutest objects which are near at hand, but is not able to discern things at a distance.

Nothing is more amiable than true modesty, and nothing more contemptible than the false; the one guards virtue, the other betrays it. True modesty is ashamed to do any thing that is repugnant to the rules of right reason; false modesty is ashamed to do any thing that is opposite to the humor of the company. True modesty avoids every thing that is criminal; false modesty, every thing that is unfashionable. The latter is only a general undetermined instinct; the former is that instinct, limited and circumscribed by the rules of prudence and religion.

The peasant complains aloud; the courtier repines in secret. In want, what distress! in affluence, what satiety! The great are under as much difficulty to expend with pleasure as the mean to labor with success. The ignorant, through ill-grounded hope, are disappointed; the knowing, through knowledge, despond. Ignorance occasions mistake, mistake disappointment, and disappointment misery. Knowledge, on the other hand, gives true judgment of human things, and true judgment of human things gives a demonstration of their insufficiency to our peace.

How different is the view of past life, in the man who has grown old in knowledge and wisdom, from that of him who has grown old in ignorance and folly! The latter is like the owner of a barren country, that fills his eye with the prospect of naked hills and plains, which produce nothing very profitable or ornamental: the former beholds a beautiful and spacious landscape, divided into delightful gardens, green meadows, fruitful fields; and can scarce cast his eye on a single spot of his possessions that is not covered with some beautiful plant or flower.

When Darius offered Alexander ten thousand talents to divide Asia equally with him, he answered, "The earth cannot bear two suns, nor Asia two kings." Parmenio, a friend of Alexander, hearing the great offers Darius had made, said "Were I Alexander, I would accept them." So would I," replied Alexander, "were I Parmenio. '

As there is a worldly happiness, which God perceives to be no other than disguised misery; as there are worldly honors, which, in his estimation, are reproach; so there is a worldly wisdom, which, in his sight, is foolishness. Of this worldly wisdom, the characters are given in the Scriptures, and placed in contrast with those of the wisdom which is from above. The one is the wisdom of the crafty, the other that of the upright; the one terminates in selfishness, the other

in charity; the one is full of strife and bitter envying, the other of meicy and good fruits.

The high and the low, the rich and the poor, approach, in point of real enjoyment, much nearer to each other than is commonly imagined. Providence never intended that any state here should be either completely happy, or completely miserable. If the feelings of pleasure are more numerous and more lively in the higher departments of life, so also are those of pain. If greatness flatters our vanity, it multiplies our dangers. If opulence increases our gratifications, it increases in the same proportion our desires and demands. If the poor are confined to a more narrow circle, yet within that circle lie most of those natural satisfactions which, after all the refinements of art, are found to be the most genuine and true.

What is the blooming tincture of the skin,
To peace of mind, and harmony within ?
What the bright sparkling of the finest eye,
To the soft soothing of a calm reply?
Can comeliness of form, or shape, or air,
With comeliness of words or deeds compare?
No: those at first the unwary heart may gain,
But these these only can the heart retain.

In all thy humors, whether grave or mellow,
Thou art such a touchy, testy, pleasant fellow-
Hast so much wit, and mirth, and spleen about you,
There is no living with thee, nor without thee.

O, could I flow like thee, and make thy stream
My great example, as it is my theme:

Though deep, yet clear; though gentle, yet not dull;
Strong, without rage; without o'erflowing, full.

'Tis hard to say if greater want of skill
Appear in writing, or in judging ill;
But of the two, less dangerous is the offence
To tire our patience than mislead our sense;
Some few in that, but numbers err in this,
Ten censure wrong for one who writes amiss;
A fool might once himself alone expose,
Now one in verse makes many more in prose.

« AnteriorContinuar »