Op bliss, and pregnant with delight!

Liberty, thou goddess, heavenly bright,

Eternal Pleasures in thy presence reign,
And smiling Plenty leads thy wanton train;
Eas'd of her load Subjection grows more light,
And poverty looks cheerful in thy sight;
Thou mak'st the gloomy face of Nature gay,
Giv'st Beauty to the sun, and Pleasure to the day.
Liberty. Byron.

ETERNAL Spirit of the chainless mind!

Brightest in dungeons, Liberty! thou art,
For there thy habitation is the Heart-
The Heart which love of thee alone can bind;
And when thy sons to fetters are consign'd-
To fetters and the damp vault's dayless gloom,
Their country conquers with their Martyrdom,
And Freedom's fame finds wings on every wind.
Liberty. Byron.

ПIS

"TIS vain my tongue cannot impart
My almost drunkenness of Heart,
When first this liberated eye

Survey'd Earth, Ocean, Sun, and Sky,
As if my spirit pierc'd them through,
And all their inmost wonders knew!
One word alone can paint to thee
That more than feeling-I was Free!
E'en for thy presence ceas'd to pine:
The World-nay-Heaven itself was mine.
Liberty. Byron.

MOTO Cheerfulness the handmaid of their toil;

OTION was in their days, Rest in their slumbers,

Nor yet too many nor too few their numbers;
Corruption could not make their hearts her soil;
The lust which stings, the Splendour which encumbers,
With the free foresters divide no spoil;

Serene, not sullen, were the Solitudes

Of this unsighing people of the woods.

you would be known, and not know, vegetate in a

in a City.

Life.- La Bruyère.

THERE is a time which precedes Reason, when, like other animals, we live by instinct alone; of which the Memory retains no vestiges. There is a second term, when Reason discovers itself, when it is formed, and might act, if it were not hoodwinked, as it were, and manacled by vices of the Constitution, and a chain of Passions, which succeed one another, till the third and last age: Reason then being in its full force, naturally should assert its Dignity, and control the appetites; but it is impaired and benumbed by years, sickness, and pains, and shattered by the disorder of the declining Machine; yet these years, with their several imperfec tions, constitute the Life of Man.

Life.

ALL the world's a Stage,

Shakespeare.

And all the men and women merely Players;
They have their Exits and their Entrances,
And one man in his time plays many parts:
His acts being seven ages. At first the Infant,
Mewling and puking in the nurse's arms:

And then the whining School-boy, with his satchel,
And shining morning face, creeping like snail
Unwillingly to school. And then the Lover;
Sighing like Furnace, with a woful ballad
Made to his mistress' eyebrow. Then a Soldier;
Full of strange oaths, and bearded like the pard,
Jealous in Honour, sudden and quick in quarrel;
Seeking the bubble Reputation

Even in the cannon's mouth. And then the Justice,
In fair round belly, with good capon lin❜d,
With eyes severe, and beard of formal cut,

Full of wise saws and modern instances,

And so he plays his Part. The sixth age shifts
Into the lean and slipper'd Pantaloon,
With spectacles on nose, and pouch on side:
His youthful hose well sav'd, a world too wide
For his shrunk Shank; and his big manly voice,
Turning again towards childish treble, pipes,
And whistles in his sound. Last Scene of all,
That ends this strange eventful History,
Is second Childishness, and mere oblivion,
Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.

S it is the chief concern of wise men to retrench the

A evils of Life by the reasonings of Philosophy, it is

the employment of fools to multiply them by the sentiments of Superstition.

Ꭱ

EASON thus with Life: A breath thou art,
(Servile to all the skiey influences,)

That dost this Habitation, where thou keep'st,
Hourly afflict: merely, thou art Death's fool;
For him thou labour'st by thy flight to shun,
And yet run'st towards him still: Thou art not noble;
For all the accommodations that thou bear'st

Are nurs'd by Baseness: Thou art by no means valiant;
For thou dost fear the soft and tender fork

Of a poor worm: Thy best of rest is sleep,
And that thou oft provok'st.

Thou art not thyself;

For thou exist'st on many a thousand grains
That issue out of Dust: Happy thou art not;
For what thou hast not, still thou striv'st to get;

And what thou hast, forget'st: Thou art not certain;
For thy complexion shifts to strange effects,
After the Moon: If thou art rich, thou art poor;

For, like an ass, whose back with ingots bows,
Thou bear'st thy heavy riches but a Journey,

And Death unloads thee: Friends hast thou none;
For thine own bowels, which do call thee sire,
The mere effusion of thy proper loins,

Do curse the Gout, serpigo, and the rheum,

For ending thee no sooner: Thou hast nor youth nor age; But, as it were, an after-dinner's sleep,

Dreaming on both: for all thy blessed Youth

Becomes as aged, and doth beg the alms

Of palsied eld; and when thou art old, and rich,
Thou hast neither Heart, affection, limb, nor beauty,

To make thy riches pleasant. Yet in this life
Lie hid more thousand deaths: yet Death we fear.

THE

Life. Addison.

HE ready way to the right enjoyment of life is, by a prospect towards another, to have but a very mean opinion of it.

THE

A

HE vanity of Human Life is like a River, constantly passing away, and yet constantly coming on.

HIS is the state of Man; to-day he puts forth
The tender leaves of Hope, to morrow blossoms,
And bears his blushing Honours thick upon him:
The third day, comes a Frost; a killing Frost;
And,-when he thinks, good easy man, full surely
His Greatness is a ripening,-nips his Fruit,
And then he falls.

A

FLOWER that does with opening morn arise,
And, flourishing the day, at evening dics;

A winged Eastern Blast, just skimming o'er
The ocean's brow, and sinking on the shore;

A Fire, whose flames through crackling stubble fly,
A Meteor shooting from the summer sky;
A Bowl adown the bending Mountain roll'd;
A Bubble breaking, and a Fable told;

A Noon-tide Shadow, and a Midnight Dream;
Are emblems which, with semblance apt, proclaim
Our Earthly Course.

MAN is thirty years old before he has any settled thoughts of his Fortune; it is not completed before fifty; he falls a building in his old age, and dies by that time his House is in a condition to be painted and glazed.

THERE still are many rainbows in your sky;

But mine have vanish'd. All, when Life is new, Commence with feelings warm, and prospects high; But Time strips our Illusions of their hue, And one by one in turn, some grand mistake, Casts off its bright skin yearly like the Snake.

The love, that leaves, where'er it lights,
A chill'd or burning Heart behind!

B My primo od life in wandering spent and care:
Impell'd, with steps unceasing, to pursue
Some fleeting good, that mocks me with the view;
That, like the circle bounding earth and skies,
Allures from far, yet, as I follow, flies;

UT me, not destin'd such delights to share,

My fortune leads to traverse realms alone,
And find no spot of all the world my own.
Life. - La Bruyère.

IF you suppress the exorbitant love of Pleasure and
Money, idle Curiosity, iniquitous pursuits and wanton
Mirth, what a stillness would there be in the greatest
Cities! the necessaries of life do not occasion, at most, a
third part of the Hurry.

IFa

A

MBITION was my idol, which was broken
Before the shrines of Sorrow and of Pleasure;
And the two last have left me many a token,
O'er which reflection may be made at leisure.

this Life is unhappy, it is a Burden to us which it is difficult to bear; if it is in every respect happy, it is dreadful to be deprived of it: so that in either case the result is the same, for we must exist in Anxiety and Apprehension,

THE

HERE is no fooling with Life, when it is once turned beyond forty: the seeking of a fortune then is but a desperate after-game: it is a hundred to one if a man fling two sixes, and recover all; especially if his hand be no luckier than mine.

WILL

Fortune never come with both hands full,
But write her fair words still in foulest letters ?

She either gives a stomach, and no food,-
Such are the poor in health; or else a feast,
And takes away the stomach,-such the rich,
That have abundance, and enjoy it not.