which, suffered to elapse, and no foundation laid, seldom

returns.

Young folks are sometimes very cunning in finding out contrivances to cheat themselves.-Richardson.

"Too often do we lose humility, in contentions for faith, and forfeit hope, by forgetting charity."

"Better is the humble peasant who serveth God, than the proud philosopher who can describe the course of the planets, but is destitute of the knowledge of himself."

"Wherever thou art, turn everything to an occasion of improvement; if thou beholdest good examples let them kindle a desire of imitation; if thou seest aught wrong, beware of doing it thyself."

"To maintain peace with the churlish and perverse, the irregular and impatient, and those that most contradict and oppose our opinions and desires, is a heroic and glorious attainment."

"Endeavor to be always patient with the faults and imperfections of others. Hast thou not many faults and imperfections of thine own, that require a reciprocation of forbearance? And if thou art not able to make thyself that which thou wishest to be, how canst thou expect to mould another into conformity with thine own will?"-Kempis.

MEMORY.

It is the treasure-house of the mind, wherein the monuments thereof are kept and preserved. Plato makes it the mother of the Muses. Aristotle sets it in one degree further, making experience the mother of arts, memory the parent of experience. Philosophers place it in the rear of the head; and it seems the mine of memory lies there, because there men naturally dig for it, scratching it when they are at a loss. This again is two-fold, one, the simple retention of things; the other, a regaining them when forgotten.

First, soundly infix in thy mind what thou desirest to remember. What wonder is it if agitation of business jog out of thy head which was there rather tacked than fastened? It is best knocking in the nail over night, and clinching it the next morning.

that

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Overburden not thy memory to make so faithful a servant slave. Remember, Atlas was weary. Have as much reason as a camel, to rise when thou hast thy full load. Memory, like a purse, if it be over full that it cannot shut, all will drop out of it; take heed of a gluttonous curiosity to feed on many things, lest the greediness of the appetite of thy memory spoil the digestion thereof.

Marshal thy notions into a handsome method. One will carry twice more weight trussed and packed up in bundles, than when it lies untoward, flapping and hanging about his shoulders. Things orderly fardled up under heads are most portable.-Fuller.

LIFE HATH NO "UNMEDDLED" JOY.

There is in this world continual interchange of pleasing greeting accidence, still keeping their succession of times, and overtaking each other in their several courses;

and

no

Picture can be all drawn of the brightest colors, nor a

harmony consorted only of trebles; shadows are needful in expressing of proportions, and the bass is a principal part in

joy; our

we

whole life is temperate between sweet and sour, and must all look for a mixture of both: the wise so wish:

better that they still think of worse, accepting the one if it come with liking, and bearing the other without impatience,

being so much masters of each other's fortunes, that neither shall work them to excess. The dwarf groweth not on the

highest hill, nor the tall man loseth not his height in the lowest valley; and as a base mind, though most at ease, will be dejected, so a resolute virtue in the deepest distress is most impregnable-Southwell.

THOUGHTS ON DEATH AND IMMORTALITY.

In a field of Old Walsingham, not many months past, were digged up between forty and fifty urns, deposited in a dry and sandy soil, not a yard deep, not far from one another: not all strictly of one figure, but most answering these described; some containing two pounds of bones, distinguishable in skulls, ribs, jaws, thigh-bones, and teeth, with fresh impressions of their combustion; besides, the extraneous substances, like pieces of small boxes, or combs handsomely wrought, handles of small brass instruments, brazen nippers, and in one some kind of opal.

That these were the urns of Romans, from the common custom and place where they were found, is no obscure conjecture; not far from a Roman garrison, and but five miles from Brancaster, set down by ancient record under the name of Brannodunum; and where the adjoining town, containing seven parishes, in no very different sound, but Saxon termination, still retains the name of Burnham; which being an early station, it is not improbable the neighbor parts were filled with habitations, either of Romans themselves, or Britons Romanised, which observed the Roman customs.

What song the sirens sang, or what name Achilles assumed when he hid himself among women, though puzzling questions, are not beyond all conjecture. What time the persons of these ossuaries entered the famous nations of the dead, and slept with princes and counsellors, might admit a wide solution. But who were the proprietaries of these bones, or what bodies these ashes made up, were a question above antiquarianism: not to be resolved by man, not easily perhaps by spirits, except we consult the provincial guardians, or tutelary observators. Had they made as good provision for their names, as they have done for their relics, they had not so grossly erred in the art of perpetuation. But to subsist in bones, and be but pyramidally extant, is a fallacy in duration. *

*

*

*

*

*

In

But the iniquity of oblivion blindly scattereth her poppy, and deals with the memory of men without distinction to merit of perpetuity. Who can but pity the founder of the pyramids ? Herostratus lives, that burnt the temple of Diana! he is almost lost that built it. Time hath spared the epitaph of Adrian's horse, confounded that of himself. vain we compute our felicities by the advantage of our good names, since bad have equal durations; and Thersites is like to live as long as Agamemnon, without the favor of the everlasting register. Who knows whether the best of men be known, or whether there be not more remarkable persons forgot, than any that stand remembered in the known account of time? The first man had been as unknown as the last, and Methuselah's long life had been his only chronicle.

There is nothing strictly immortal, but immortality. Whatever hath no beginning, may be confident of no end. All others have a dependent being, and within the reach of destruction, which is the peculiar of that necessary essence that cannot destroy itself, and the highest strain of omnipotency, to be so powerfully constituted, as not to suffer even from the power of itself. But the sufficiency of Christian immortality frustrates all earthly glory, and the quality of either state after death makes a folly of posthumous memory.

Man is a noble animal, splendid in ashes, and pompous in the grave; solemnizing nativities and deaths with equal lustre.

To subsist in lasting monuments, to live in their productions, to exist in their names, and predicament of chimeras, was large satisfaction unto old expectations, and made one part of their Elysiums. But all this is nothing in the metaphysics of true belief. To live indeed is to be again ourselves, which being not only a hope, but an evidence in noble believers, it is all one to lie in St. Innocent's churchyard, as in the sands of Egypt; ready to be anything in the ecstacy of being ever, and as content with six foot as the moles of Adrianus.-Browne.

THE DEATH OF A FATHER.

The first sense of sorrow I ever knew was upon the death of my father, at which time I was not quite five years of age; but was rather amazed at what all the house meant, than possessed with a real understanding why nobody was willing to play with me.

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I remember I went into the room where his body lay, and my mother sat weeping alone by it. I had my battledore in my hand, and fell a beating the coffin, and calling papa; for. I know not how, I had some slight idea that he was locked up there. My mother catched me in her arms, and, transported beyond all patience of the silent grief she was before in, she almost smothered me in her embraces; and told me in a flood of tears, Papa could not hear me, and would play with me no more, for they were going to put him under ground, whence he could never come to us again." She was a very beautiful woman, of a noble spirit, and there was a dignity in her grief amidst all the wildness of her transport; which, methought, struck me with an instinct of sorrow, that before I was sensible of what it was to grieve, seized my very soul, and has made pity the weakness of my heart ever since. The mind in infancy is, methinks, like the body in embryo; and receives impressions so forcible, that they are as hard to be removed by reason, as any mark, with which a child is born, is to be taken away by any future application. Hence it is, that good nature in me is no merit; but having been so frequently overwhelmed with her tears before I knew the cause of my affliction, or could draw defences from my own judgment, I imbibed commiseration, remorse, and an unmanly gentleness of mind, which has since ensnared me into ten thousand calamities; from whence I can reap no advantage, except it be, that, in such a humor as I am now in, I can the better indulge myself in the softness of humanity, and enjoy that sweet anxiety which arises from the memory of past afflictions.-Steele.

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