Power, like the diamond, dazzles the beholder, and also the wearer; it dignifies meanness: it magnifies littleness; to what is contemptible, it gives authority; to what is low, exhaltation. To acquire it, appears not more difficult than to be dispossessed of it when acquired, since it enables the holder to shift his own errors on dependants, and to take their merits to himself. But the miracle of losing it vanishes, when we reflect that we are as liable to fall as to rise, by the treachery of others; and that to say I am' is language that has been appropriated exclusively to God!

Virtue without talent, is a coat of mail, without a sword; it may indeed defend the wearer, but will not enable him to protect his friend.

He that aspires to be the head of a party, will find it more difficult to please his friends than to perplex his foes. He must often act from false reasons which are weak, because he dares not avow the true reasons which are strong. It will be his lot to be forced on some occasions to give his consideration to the wealthy, or the titled, although they may be in the wrong and withhold it from the energetic, but necessitous, although they may be in the right. There are moments when he must appear to sympathize, not only with the fears of the brave, but also with the follies of the wise. He must see some appearances that do not exist, and be blind to some that do. To be above others, he must condescend at times, to be beneath him self, as the loftiest trees have the lowest roots, but without the keenest circumspection, his very rise, will be his ruin. For a masked battery is more destructive than one that is visible, and he will have more to dread from the secret envy of his adherents, than the open hate of his adversaries This envy will be ever near him, but he must not appear to suspect it; it will narrowly watch him, but he must not appear to perceive it even when he is anticipating all its effects, he must give no note of preparation; and, in defending himself against it, he must conceal both his sword and his shield. Let him pursue success as his truest friend, and apply to confidence as his ablest counsellor. Subtract from a great man, all that he owes to opportunity, and all that he owes to chance; all that he has gained by the wisdom of his friends, and by the folly of his enemies; and our Brobdignag will often become a Lilliputian. I think it is Voltaire who observes, that it was very fortunate for Cromwell, that he appeared upon the stage at the precise moment when the people were tired of kings; and as unfortunate for his son Richard, that he had to make good his pretensions, at a moment when the people were equally tired of protectors.

All poets pretend to write for immortality, but the whole tribe have no objection to present pay, and present praise. Lord Burleigh is not the only statesman, who has thought one hundred pounds too much for a song, though sung by Spencer; although Oliver Goldsmith, is the only poet who ever considered himself to have been overpaid. The reward in this arena is not to the swift, nor the prize to the strong. Editors have gained more pounds, by publishing Milton's works, than he ever gained pence by writing them; and Garrick has reaped a richer harvest in a single night, by acting in one play 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 progressive 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 she 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 Unitarian 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 the Trinitarian reformer, who advocates trienmal