to fancy, they were born for something. They formed plans and schemes, they had no means to execute; they laid in bed, when they ought to have been at work; they sought mistresses; borrowed money at great interest; and finished in becoming gladiators and gardener's labourers.

XII.

The Platonists' believed, that when the mind was engaged in contemplation, it was, for the time, detached from the body. The faculty and the habit of contemplation are, in themselves, two of the best species of wealth, that man can enjoy. What an enviable distinction it is to have a mind, superior to the bubbles of the times; and to those objects, which derive all their value from the conceit and vanity of the more frivolous portion of mankind. For my own part, I would rather-much rather,―resemble a certain citizen of Argos. This citizen, we are told, was affected with a very curious species of delusion. He would sit in his arm-chair, and fancy himself at the theatre, witnessing the performance of a tragedy. He would go through the whole piece, he had selected for the evening's entertainment, and applaud, with as much zeal and delight, those passages, that pleased him most, as if he really were hearing them recited on the stage.

What Horace desired, Helvidius has desired:

Hoc erat in votis :-modus agri non ita magnus,

Hortus abi, et tecto vicinus jugis aquæ fons,

Et paulum silvæ super his foret.

Lib. ii. sat, vi.

The example of Ofellus, with a select library, would improve the picture to the utmost of his heart's

content.

Videas metato in agello,

Cum pecore et quatis, fortem mercede colonum.
Non ego, narrantem.

Lib. ii., sat. ii., v. 114.

When we look abroad, what do we recognize but the folly, the conceit, and the ignorance of men! In fact men agree in nothing more intimately, than in having an exalted opinion of their own wisdom, and a sovereign contempt for all the rest of the world. When we see these instances, can we do otherwise than remember the circumstance of Chrysippus having died of laughter, at seeing an ass eat figs out of a silver dish?

Every man, therefore, must rest upon himself. For if he were never to arrive at eminence, till he had obtained the consent,-even of his friends, he would die upon a molehill! For my own part

I take of worthy men whate'er they give.
Their heart I gladly take; if not their hand.

If that, too, is withheld, a courteous word;

Or the civility of placid looks:

And if e'en these are too great favours deem'd,

Faith-I can sit me down contentedly,

With plain and homely greeting, or, "God save ye!"

Bailey;-)
-De Montfort.

Happiness is like the chrysolite: It is found, for

the most part, only in fragments. Content is the for

tune of a vigorous mind; a content, arising out of tenderness and warmth of heart; elevation; sensibility to nature; and moderate means. A perennial cheerfulness is the ensign and herald of its wisdom ; and it arises out of the consciousness, that the land of gold is more subject to earthquakes, than the land of iron. But of all men, who are those, that most engage his contempt ?—The men, who are all ease, urbanity, and convenience to the world, and all avarice and despotism to the members of their own family.

XIII.

There is not a more beautiful word in the Italian language, than Gentilezza. It implies courage, generosity, elegance of sentiment, and delicacy of manners. True sensibility is reverend and imaginative. It approaches objects, it has contemplated at a distance, with timidity; and it expects to see realized all those charms, with which they were decorated by the illusion of perspective. Melancholy is it then, when, progressing through the world, it finds the charity of most men to resemble that of the panther, who signifies his clemency to the kid, by eating him up as fast as he can. Men of the world esteem every thing lost, or wasted, they do not consume themselves. Some of them, indeed, will assist you to rise; but then they imagine they can rise with you.-Another, perhaps, will prevent you from falling,—but will not assist you to rise: a third will sit still and do neither. He will see you pining for want; rise upon your ruin; and calmly refuse to you the use of

VOL. III.

U

your own ladder :-upon the principle, that the scaffolding is not only useless, but cumbersome, when the temple is built. Such is the frequent conduct of the mere man of the world! I confess that the greatest mystery, I have yet been able to discern in the works of the Deity, arises out of the reflection that, having formed man so admirable in capability, he should have left him so mean and so contemptible in his wishes.-Belisarius begged alms under his own triumphal arch; and Bentivoglio was even refused admittance into the very hospital, that his own beneficence had built.

And yet we ought not to entertain a decidedly evil opinion of mankind. Life is like the double head of Janus; it implies presence, prospect, and retrospect, Indeed to-day, yesterday, and to-morrow, have rightly been called the three ages of man. We must look on all sides: before, as well as behind; above, as well as below; to the east and the south, as well as to the north and the west.-And this, too, with a CHEERFUL DISPOSITION. A cheerful disposition, said Hume, is worth ten thousand a year. The man, who looks on the dark side only, is wrong: and he, who casts his eyes only upon the bright one, is wrong:--but they are not equally so. The latter misses the goal by thirty paces; the former by fifty. But to know mankind, thoroughly, three things are absolutely necessary; since man is so largely the mere creature of circumstances. We must have served our superiors: have lived intimately with our equals; and have had an opportunity of commanding our inferiors. Unless we have done so, the knowledge of man, in respect

to man, is built upon sand. A man, so qualified, will probably agree with me, that life derives most of its fascinations from a wide knowledge of Nature; from an agreeable, rather than an enlarged, knowledge of man; from a concealment of the future; and from a partial oblivion of the past.

CHAPTER IX.

THE Greeks were great lovers of Nature. CHIRON, whose fabulous history is the best criterion, by which may be judged the awful esteem, in which he was held, retired to a cavern at the foot of Mount Pelion, to qualify himself for the office of acting as tutor to many of the heroes, who afterwards distinguished themselves in the Trojan war. And we may judge of the impulses of PLATO by the skill, with which he adorned the academy; and by the pictures, he has exhibited in the opening and closing of his several dialogues.

"If I had another world to stand upon," said ARCHIMEDES,-a man of stupendous sagacity,-" I would move the globe, wherever I pleased." Secluded in his study, he was scarcely known to the general mass of Syracusans, till the attack of Marcellus: and then he was of more use in defending the city, than the whole population united. This profound genius was accustomed to say, that, next to the solution of

Vir stupenda sagacitatis.-Wallis.