صور الصفحة
PDF
النشر الإلكتروني

to be tasted; others, to be swallowed; and some few, to be chewed and digested: that is, some books are to be read only in parts; others, to be read, but not curiously; and some few, to be read wholly, and with diligence and attention. Some books also may be

read by deputy, and extracts of them made by others; but that should be only in the less important arguments, and the meaner sort of books; else distilled books are like common distilled waters, flashy things. Reading maketh a full man; conference a ready man; and writing an exact man. And, therefore, if a man write little, he had need have a present wit; if he confer little, he had need have a good memory; and if he read little, he had need have much cunning to seem to know that he doth not. Bacon.

Reflections in Westminster Abbey.

When I am in a serious humour, I very often walk by myself in Westminster Abbey; where the gloominess of the place, and the use to which it is applied, with the solemnity of the building, and the condition of the people who lie in it, are apt to fill the mind with a kind of melancholy, or rather thoughtfulness, that is not disagreeable. I yesterday passed the whole afternoon in the church-yard, the cloisters, and the church; amusing myself with the tomb-stones and inscriptions that I met with in those several regions of the dead. Most of them recorded nothing else of the buried person, but that he was born upon one day, and died upon another: the whole history of his life being comprehended in those two circumstances, that are common to all mankind. I could not but look upon these registers of existence, whether brass or marble, as a kind of satire upon the departed persons; who had left no other memorial of them, but that they were born, and that they died.

Upon my going into the church, I entertained myself with the digging of a grave, and saw in every shovel-full of it that was thrown up, the fragment of a bone or skull, intermixed with a kind of a fresh mouldering earth, that some time or other had a place in

[ocr errors]

the composition of a human body. Upon this I began to consider with myself what innumerable multitudes of people lay confused together under the pavement of that ancient cathedral; how men and women, friends and enemies, priests and soldiers, monks and prebendaries, were crumbled amongst one another, and blended together in the same common mass; how beauty, strength, and youth; with old age, weakness, and deformity-lay undistinguished in the same promiscuous heap of matter.

I know that entertainments of this nature are apt to raise dark and dismal thoughts in timorous minds, and gloomy imaginations; but, for my own part, though I am always serious, I do not know what it is to be melancholy; and can therefore take a view of Nature in her deep and solemn scenes, with the same pleasure as in her most gay and delightful ones. By this means I can improve myself with objects which others consider with terror. When I look upon the tombs of the great, every emotion of envy dies in me; when I read the epitaphs of the beautiful, every inordinate desire goes out; when I meet with the grief of parents upon a tomb-stone, my heart melts with compassion; when I see the tomb of the parents themselves, I consider the vanity of grieving for those whom we must quickly follow: when I see kings lying by those who deposed them, when I consider rival wits placed side by side, or the holy men that divided the world with their contest and disputes; I reflect, with sorrow and astonishment, on the little competitions, factions, and debates of mankind. When I read the several dates of the tombs-of some that died yesterday, and some six hundred years ago; I consider that great day when we shall all of us be contemporaries, and make our appearance together. Spectator.

Virtue Man's highest Interest.

I find myself existing upon a little spot, surrounded every way by an immense unknown expansion.-Where am I? What sort of a place do I inhabit? Is it ex

actly accommodated in every instance to my con

C

venience? Is there no excess of cold, none of heat, to offend me? Am I never annoyed by animals either of my own kind or a different? Is every thing subservient to me, as though I had ordered all myself?-No -nothing like it-the farthest from it possible. The world appears not, then, originally made for the private convenience of me alone?-It does not.But is it not possible so to accommodate it, by my own particular industry? If to accommodate man and beast, heaven and earth, if this be beyond me, it is not possible.What consequence then follows; or can there be any other than this?-If I seek an interest of my own, detached from that of others, I seek an interest which is chimerical, and can never have existence.

Have I no interest

How then must I determine? at all? If I have not, I am a fool for staying here: 'tis a smoky house, and the sooner out of it the better. But why no interest? Can I be contented with none but one separate and detached? Is a social interest,

joined with others, such an absurdity as not to be admitted? The bee, the beaver, and the tribes of herding animals, are enough to convince me that the thing is somewhere at least possible. How, then, am I assured that it is not equally true of man? Admit it; and what follows? If so, then honour and justice are my interest; then the whole train of moral virtues are my interest: without some portion of 'hich, not even thieves can maintain society.

But farther still-I stop not here I pursue this social interest as far as I can trace my several relations.

I pass from my own stock, my own neighbourhood, my

own nation, to the whole race of mankind, as dispersed throughout the earth. Am I not related to them all, by the mutual aids of commerce, by the general intercourse of arts and letters, by that common nature of which we all participate?

Again I must have food and clothing. Without a proper genial warmth, I instantly perish. Am I not related, in this view, to the very earth itself? to the distant sun, from whose beams I derive vigour ? to that stupendous course and order of the infinite host of heaven, by which the times and seasons ever

uniformly pass on? Were this order once confounded, I could not probably survive a moment ; so absolutely do I depend on this common general welfare. What then have I to do, but to enlarge virtue into piety? Not only honour and justice, and what I owe to man, is my interest; but gratitude also, acquiescence, resignation, adoration, and all I owe to this great polity, and its greater Governor, our common Parent!

The Character of Mary Queen of Scols.

Harris.

To all the charms of beauty, and the utmost elegance of external form, Mary added those accomplishments which render their impression irresistible. Polite, affable, insinuating, sprightly; and capable of speaking and of writing with equal ease and dignity. Sudden, however, and violent in all her attachments; because she had been accustomed from her infancy to be treated as a queen. No stranger, on some occasions, to dissimulation; which, in that perfidious court where she received her education, was reckoned among the necessary arts of government. Not insensible of flattery, or unconscious of that pleasure, with which almost every woman beholds the influence of her own beauty. Formed with the qualities that we love, not with the talents that we admire; she was an agreeable woman rather than an illustrious queen. The vivacity of her spirit, not sufficiently tempered with sound judgment, and the warmth of her heart, which was not at all times under the restraint of discretion; betrayed her both into errors and into crimes. To say that she was always unfortunate, will not account for that long and almost uninterrupted succession of calamities which befell her; we must likewise add, that she was often imprudent. Her passion for Darnley was rash, youthful, and excessive. And though the sudden transition to the opposite extreme was the natural effect of her ill-requited love, and of his ingratitude, insolence, and brutality; yet neither these, nor Bothwell's artful addresses and important services, can justify her attachment to that nobleman. Even the manners of the

age, licentious as they were, are no apology for this unhappy passion; nor can they induce us to look on that tragical and infamous scene which followed it, with less abhorrence. Humanity will draw a veil over this part of her character, which it cannot approve ; and may, perhaps, prompt some to impute her actions to her situation, more than to her disposition; and to lament the unhappiness of the former, rather than accuse the perverseness of the latter. Mary's sufferings exceed, both in degree and in duration, those tragical distresses which fancy has feigned to excite sorrow and commiseration; and, while we survey them, we are apt altogether to forget her frailties, we think of her faults with less indignation, and approve of our tears, as if they were shed for a person who had attained much nearer to pure virtue. "No man," says Brantome, "ever beheld her person without admiration and love, or will read her history without sorrow." Robertson.

The Monk.

A poor Monk of the order of St. Francis, came into the room to beg something for his convent. The moment I cast my eyes upon him, I was determined not to give him a single sous; and accordingly I put my purse into my pocket-buttoned it up-set myself a little more upon my centre, and advanced up gravely to him. There was something, I fear, forbidding in my look: I have his figure this moment before my eyes, and think there was that in it which deserved better.

The monk, as I judged from the break in his tonsure— a few scattered white hairs upon his temples being all that remained of it-might be about seventy-but from his eyes, and that sort of fire which was in them, which seemed more tempered by courtesy than years, could be no more than sixty-Truth might lie between -He was certainly sixty-five; and the general air of his countenance, notwithstanding something seemed to have been planting wrinkles in it before their time, agreed to the account.

« السابقةمتابعة »