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(And 'twas my ministry to deal the blow.)
The poor fond parent, humbled in the dust,
Now owns in tears the punishment was just.

But now had all his fortune felt a wrack,
Had that false servant sped in safety back;
This night his treasur'd heaps he meant to steal,
And what a fund of charity would fail!

Thus Heaven instructs thy mind, this trial o'er,
Depart in peace, resign, and sin no more.

With regard, next, to the love of children to parents,-it has been often represented that filial affection is a very weak feeling when compared with that of parents. Jeremy Taylor, in his Life of Christ, says, that "Love falls from parents upon the children in cataracts, and returns back again up to parents in small dews," and Dryden goes beyond this,

He creeps, he walks, and issuing into man,
Grudges their life from which his own began.

It is a remarkable circumstance, that, in the Decalogue, a reward is held out for the performance of the Fifth Commandment. Barrow, in commenting on that commandment, notices the congruity of the duty and reward, but observes that the same reward is held out in various parts of the Old Testament. The subject of the temporal reward of long life is connected with the argument in Bishop Warburton's Legation of Moses, that a future life was not indicated to the Jews in the Mosaical institutions.

Another commentator on this commandment is Corporal Trim. The passage will introduce to us a writer of a peculiar cast of thought and style, and who has great power in pathetic description and reflection, often moving our feelings, without apparent art, in ordinary dialogue.

Pr'ythee, Trim, quoth my father-what dost thou mean by honoring thy father and mother?' Allowing them, a'nt please your honor, three halfpence a day out of my pay, when they grow old. And did'st thou do that, Trim? said Yorick. He did indeed, replied my Uncle Toby. Then, Trim, said Yorick, springing out of his chair, and taking the Corporal by the hand, thou art the best commentator upon that part of the Decalogue; and I honor thee more for it, Corporal Trim, than if thou hadst had a hand in the Talmud itself."

Another still more eminent English writer, Hume, the simplicity and clearness of whose style, together with shrewd and profound remarks on human conduct, have made a superficial, and very partial history extremely popular, gives us the example of a Princess, who, in point of filial piety, affords as strong a contrast as in various other respects, to Corporal Trim. It is to be premised, that the remarks relate to the Princess (afterwards Queen) Anne, who, in company with the Bishop of London and Lady Churchill, deserted her father, and fled to the quarters of the Revolutionists.

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The late king, in order to gratify the nation, had entrusted the education of his nieces entirely to Protestants, and as these princesses were deemed the chief resource of the established religion after their father's defection, great care had been taken to instil into them, from their earliest infancy, the strongest prejudices against popery. During the violence too of such popular currents as now prevailed in England, all private considerations are commonly lost in the general passion: and the more principle any person possesses, the more apt is he, on such occasions, to neglect and abandon his domestic duties. Though these causes may account for the behaviour of the Princess, they had no wise

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prepared the king to expect so astonishing an event. He burst into tears, when the first intelligence of it was conveyed to him. Undoubtedly he foresaw in this incident the total expiration of his royal authority: but the nearer and more intimate concern of a parent laid hold of his heart, when he found himself abandoned in his uttermost distress by a child, and a virtuous child, whom he had ever regarded with the most tender affection. God help me,' cried he, in the extremity of his agony, my own children have forsaken me!' It is indeed singular, that a prince whose chief blame consisted in imprudences, and misguided principles, should be exposed, from religious antipathy, to such treatment as Nero, Domitian, or the most enormous tyrants that have disgraced the records of history, never met with from their friends and family."

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Hume is very blameably partial to King James, and although he had access to the king's Mss. then kept in the Scotch College, at Paris, he witheld from the public the most material parts. But his censure on the princess is not undeserved; he has not, indeed, stated the worst features of the case against her. Queen Anne lost all her children, and she attributed their loss to a judgment of heaven for her unnatural conduct towards her father. She was much affected by a letter she received from her father shortly before his death, recommending his family to her care. How far she was engaged in designs to secure the succession to the crown of England, after her own death, to her brother, is an interesting problem in English history. Dr. Arbuthnot, whose professional solicitude for his royal mistress has been immortalized by Pope, writes to Swift, upon the occasion of Queen Anne's death-"I believe sleep was never more welcome to a weary traveller, than death was to her."

Miss Blandy, who was hanged at Oxford in 1752 for the murder of her father, is the most remarkable instance, in English judicial annals, of the want of filial affection. She protested, in a speech which she addressed to the " good people," (as she called the spectators,) from the scaffold, that she did not know that the powder she put into her father's tea, was poison; that it had been given her by her lover, the Hon'ble Mr. Cranstoun, in order that by giving it to her father, he would become kind to her. There were several circumstances in her conduct inconsistent with this improbable color given to the transaction. A French lady, named Marguerite D'Anbray, Marquise Brinvillier, was convicted in the year 1651 of poisoning her father and two brothers, having first tried the effects of her poisons upon a number of sick people, and children, by giving them poisoned biscuits. This lady whilst in prison, under sentence of death, was always asking for a party of picquet pour se desennuyer. Mary Blandy's chief anxiety before her execution, was that her feet might hang as near the ground as it was allowable.

In contrast with Queen Anne and Miss Blandy may be read the very interesting oriental history of Ruth. Although she was a Moabitish woman, she resolved, on the death of her husband, to cleave to her mother-in-law Naomi, and to return with her into Bethlehem, among a strange people, and of a different religion to that of her own country. Naomi represented very candidly, that she herself was too old to have another husband, but that if she was to have a husband that night, and was to bear a son, it could not be expected that Ruth would tarry till the son was old enough to marry her. But Ruth replies "Intreat me not to leave thee; for, whither thou goest I will go; and where thou lodgest I will lodge;

thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God. Where thou diest, will I die, and there will I be buried. The Lord do so to me, and more also, if aught but death part thee and me." Several of the customs in the book of Ruth are the same as Indian customs of the present day; and the whole narrative, which occupies four chapters, is one of the most simple and natural that ever was penned.

It must have been an interesting spectacle to have seen Sir Thomas More, when he was Lord Chancellor, every morning during Term time, on entering Westminster Hall, going to the part of the Hall, where his father was sitting as a Puisne Judge of the Common Pleas, and kneeling before him to receive his blessing. A parent's blessing seems to be regarded with a sort of mystical reverence, in consequence of the contrivances used to obtain that of the patriarch Isaac. The following is the picturesque account of that transaction: "And his mother made savoury meat, such as his father loved. And Rebecca took goodly raiment of her eldest son Esau, and put them upon Jacob. And she put the skins of the kids of the goats upon his hands, and upon the smooth of his neck. And he came to his father, and said, My Father: and he said, Here am I; who art thou my son? And Jacob said unto his father, I am Esau thy first-born. I have done according as thou badest me; arise, I pray thee, sit and eat of my venison, that thy soul may bless me. And Isaac said unto his son, How is it, that thou hast found it so quickly, my son? And he said, Because the Lord brought it to me. And Isaac said unto Jacob, Come near, I pray thee, that I may feel thee, my son, whether thou be my very son Esau or not. And Jacob went near unto Isaac his father, and he felt him, and said, The voice is Jacob's voice, but the hands are the hands

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