of Shakspeare's, than that poet himself obtained by the genius which inspired the whole of them.

Avarice begets more vices than Priam did children, and like Priam survives them all. It starves its keeper to surfeit those who wish him dead; and makes him submit to more mortifications to lose heaven, than the martyr undergoes to gain it. Avarice is a passion full of paradox, a madness full of method; for, although the miser is the most mercenary of all beings, yet he serves the worst master more faithfully than some Christians do the best, and will take nothing for it. He falls down and worships the god of this world, but will have neither its pomps, its vanities, nor its pleasures, for his trouble. He begins to accumulate treasure as a mean to happiness, and by a common but morbid association, he continues to accumulate it as an end. He lives poor, to die rich; and is the mere jailer of his house, and the turnkey of his wealth. Empoverished by his gold, he slaves harder to imprison it in his chest, than his brother slave to liberate it from the mine. The avarice of the miser may be termed the grand sepulchre of all his other passions, as they successively decay. But unlike other tombs it is enlarged by repletion and strengthened by age. The latter paradox, so peculiar to this passion, must be ascribed to that love of power inseparable from the human mind. There are three kinds of power-wealth, strength, and talent; but as old age always weakens, often destroys the two latter, the aged are induced to cling with the greater avidity to the former. And the attachment of the aged to wealth, must be a growing and rogressive attachment, since, such are not slow in

discovering, that those same ruthless years, which detract so sensibly from the strength of their bodies, and of their minds, serve only to augment and to consolidate the strength of their purse.

Men will wrangle for religion; write for it; fight for it; die for it; any thing but-live for it.

Honour is unstable, and seldom the same ; for she feeds upon opinion, and is as fickle as her food. She builds a lofty structure on the sandy foundation of the esteem of those, who are of all beings the most subject to change. But virtue is uniform and fixed, because she looks for approbation only from Him, who is the same yesterday-to-dayand for ever. Honour is the most capricious in her rewards. She feeds us with air, and often pulls down our house, to build our monument. She is contracted in her views, inasmuch as her hopes are rooted in earth, bounded by time, and terminated by death. But virtue is enlarged and infinite in her hopes, inasmuch as they extend beyond present things, even to eternal; this is their proper sphere, and they will cease only in the reality of deathless enjoyment. In the storms, and in the tempests of life, honour is not to be depended on, because sne herself partakes of the tumult; she also is buffeted by the wave, and borne along by the whirlwind. But virtue is above the storm, and has an anchor sure and steadfast, because it is cast into heaven. The noble Brutus worshipped honour, and in his zeal mistook her for virtue. In the day of trial he found her a shadow and a name. But no man can purchase his virtue too dear; for it is the only thing whose value must ever increase with the price it has cost us. Our integrity is never worth so much as when we have parted with our all to keep it. The Pagans (says Bayle) from the obscurity wherein they lived, as to another life, reasoned very inconsequentially on the reality of virtue. It belongs to Christians alone to argue upon it aright; and if those good things to come, which the Scripture promises the faithful, were not joined to the desire of virtue, then an innocency of life, might be placed in the number of those things on which-Solomon pronounced his definitive decree, Vanity of vanities, all is vanity "

Modern reformers are not fully aware of the difficulty they will find to make converts, when that period which we so fondly anticipate shall arrive an era of universal illumination. They will then experience a similar rebuff, with those who now attempt to make proselytes among the Jews. These cunning descendants of Laban shrewdly reply: Pray would it not be better for your Chris tians, first of all to decide amongst yourselves what Christianity is, and when that important point is fully settled, then we think it will be time enough for you to begin your attempts of converting others? And the reasoning and enlightened inquirer will also naturally enough demand of the reformist, what is reformation? This he will find to be almost as various as the advocates for it. The thorough-paced and Uritarian reformer, who thinks one year a sufficient period for a parliament, in order to bring in another unity still more absurd and dangerous, the majesty of the people, one and indivisible, must be at irreconcilable issue with he Trinitarian reformer, who advocates triennial parliaments, and who has not lost his respect for that old and orthodox association of king, lords, and commons. In politics, as in religion, it so happens, that we have less charity for those who believe the half of our creed, than for those that deny the whole of it; since if Servetus had been a Mohammedan, he would not have been burnt by Calvin. There are two parties, therefore, that will form a rent in the Babel building of Reform, which, unlike that of the Temple, will not be confined to the vail, but will in all probability reach the foundation.

Times of general calamity and confusion, have ever been productive of the greatest minds. The purest ore, is produced from the hottest furnace, and the brightest thunderbolt, is elicited from the darkest storm.

Hypocrites act by virtue, like Numa by his shield. They frame many counterfeits of her, with which they make an ostentatious parade, in all public assemblies, and processions; but the original of what they counterfeit, and which may indeed be said to have fallen from heaven, they produce seldom, that it is cankered by the rust of sloth, and useless from non-application.

SO

The wealthy and the noble, when they expend large sums in decorating their houses with the rare and costly efforts of genius, with busts from the chisel of a Canova, and with cartoons from the pencil of a Raphael, are to be commended, if they do not stand still here, but go on to bestow some pains and cost, that the master himself be not inferior to the mansion, and that the owner be not the only thing that is little, amidst every thing else that is great. The house may draw visiters, but it is the possessor alone that can detain them. We cross the Alps, and after a short interval, we are glad to return :-we go to see Italy, not the Italians.

Public events of moment, when deeply and fully considered, are the fertile womb of political maxims, which ought to contain the very soul of the moral history; and then they are imperishable and indestructible, worthy of being resorted to as a tower of strength in the storm, and spreading their effulgence over the tide of time, as a beacon in the night.

Secrecy of design, when combined with rapidity of execution, like the column that guided Israel in the deserts, becomes the guardian pillar of light and fire to our friends, a cloud of overwhelming and impenetrable darkness to our enemies.

'Felix, quem faciunt aliena pericula cautum:* his is well translated by some one who observes that it is far better to borrow experience than to buy it. He that sympathizes in all the happiness of others, perhaps himself enjoys the safest happiness, and he that is warned by all the folly of others, has perhaps attained the soundest wisdom. But such is the purblind egotism, and the suicidal selfishness of mankind, that things so desirable are seldom pursued, things so accessible, seldom attained. That is indeed a twofold knowledge, which profits alike, by the folly of the foolish, and the