1022. Men that marry for riches, many times bring into their families an unfupportable mistress.

1023. Many marriages prove convenient and useful; but few delightful.

1024. Unmarried men are best friends, best masters, best servants, but not always best subjects; for they are light to run away; and almost all fugitives are of that condition.

1025. It is the fault of weak reafoners to venture upon many things they do not understand, and to renounce them as foon as they come to know them.

1026. Too fervile a fubmiffion to the books and opinions of the antients, has fpoiled many an ingenious man, and plagued the world with abundance of pedants.

1027. It is observed, that as profperity unexpected makes men careless and remiss, if they be not very wife; fo they who have received the wounds of adverse fortune, become more vigilant and collected.

1028. The Arabian proverb fays, The habitation of danger is on the borders of fecurity; and that a man never runs greater hazards, than when he leaft fears them.

1029. He that looks for content muft look for innocence, for those who fly from the one will never obtain the other.

1030. The highest pitch of human understanding is to be thoroughly acquainted with our own weakness, vanity, and mifery: And the lefs wit a man has, the lefs he knows of thefe matters.

1031. The joys of

parents are fecret; and fo are their

griefs and fears: They cannot utter the one, nor will they exprefs the other. Children fweeten labour, but they make misfortunes more bitter: They increase the cares of life, but they mitigate the remembrance of death.

1032. What a happy condition is that, which gives a man fo frequent opportunities to do good to fo many thousands! What a dangerous poft is that, which expofes a man to do hurt to fo many millions!

1033. History antedates, and is the witnefs of time, the fight of truth, the life of memory, the herald of antiquity, and the mistress of life, which brings experience without grey hairs, and makes us wife at the cost of others, that, upon the light which is given us of past times, we may form prudent judgments of the prefent, and probable conjectures of the time to come. By reading, a man makes himself cotemporary with the ages past, and this way of running up beyond our nativity is much better than Plato's pre-existence: However, covet not many books, let them be like the number of your friends, very choice, but few; for good books are a guide in youth, an entertainment in age, a fupport in folitude, and keep us from being a burden to ourselves. When we are at any time weary of the living, we may thus repair to the dead, who have nothing of peevishness, pride, or defign in all their converfation.

1034. Reading is to the mind, what exercife is to the body as by the one health is preserved, ftrengthened and invigorated; fo by the other, virtue, which is the health of the mind, is kept alive, cherished, and confirmed. But as exercise becomes tedious, and painful, when we make

ufe

ufe of it only as the means of health, fo reading is apt to grow uneasy, and burdenfome, when we apply ourselves to it, only for our improvement in virtue. For this reafon, the virtue which we gather from a fable, or allegoty, is like the health we get by hunting; as we are engaged in an agreeable purfuit, that draws us on with pleafure, and makes us infenfible of the fatigues that accompany it.

1035. The standards of history are, Thucydides among the Greeks, and Livy among the Romans; they are noble, without foaring too high, and natural, without finking too low. Quintus Curtius, by aiming at too much politeness, has loft a great deal of that grand and majestick air, which fo well becomes Salluft, who made a voyage to Africa, on purpose, to obferve the fituation of the places he should have occafion to mention in the Jugurthine war. The generality of hiftorians being penfioners of the court, it is no wonder they are biaffed. A man must lay aside hopes and fears, and all kinds of interests, when he engages in this great attempt, fo that he may always dare to speak the truth.

1036. All precepts concerning Kings are fummarily comprehended in these two: Remember that thou art a man; and that thou art instead of God: The one bridles their power, and the other their will.

19hed Hudgment then 1037. A private man is judged of by his companions, a is the formed prince by his minifters.

A

of the Ring && B8 1038. Good and bad times are only modest terms for who has had plant good or bad men in employments.

If all Demiptions. 1039. All men affect an air and outside suitable to

their

their profeffion, that may make them appear what they have a mind to be taken for; fo that we may say, that the world is made up of nothing but formal countenances

and shows.

1040. It is hard to determine which of the two is the greater shame, either to be denied a place we deserve, or granted one we deferve not.

1041. Courtiers generally pay fervices with fmoak and fair words, and ufe a world of unprofitable ceremony to mortify an honest man.

1042. What a great deal of time and eafe that man gains, who is not troubled with the fpirit of curiofity, who lets his neighbour's thoughts and behaviour alone, confines his infpections to himself, and takes care of the point of honesty and confcience!

1043. It is part of the bufinefs of life, to lofe it handfomely.

1044. England was at firft a monarchy under the Britons, and then a province under the Romans, and after that divided into feven kingdoms under the Saxons, after them the Danes, then the Normans, and now a monarchy again under the English, and all this by God's providence, who suffered his own peculiar people, the Jews, to be under divers manners of government at divers times; at first under patriarchs, Abraham, Ifaac, &c. then under captains, as Mofes, Joshua, &c. then under judges, as Othniel,' Ebud, Gideon, &c. then under high priests, Eli and Samuel; then under kings, as Saul, David, &c. then under captains and high priests, again, as Zorobabel, Judas Maccabeus, and his brethren; until the government was,

laftly, brought under the power of the Romans. The government of Britain is a mixed, limited monarchy, where the fupreme power is divided between the king and the people, that is, the lords and commons, fince he can neither raise money, nor make nor annul laws, without them; and thofe laws are a rule to both, a common measure to him of his power, and to them of their obedience. The government is called a monarchy, because the king is predominant in the conftitution, he having his fhare in the supreme power, and the chief executive part or administration is fingly in him. The crown is not held by a paternal right, but by the laws of the realm, which allow no power of difpofing of the throne to its kings, nor can a king be deprived of his lawful right by any act of his predeceffor.

1945. Fuller fays, "the Turkish empire is the greatest and best compacted the fun ever faw, not excepting the Roman itself, in all its glory, take sea and land together; from Buda in the weft, to Tauris in the east, it stretches above three thousand miles; little lefs in the extent thereof north and fouth; it lies in the heart of the world, commanding the most fruitful countries of Europe, Afia, and Africa; only America (not more happy in her rich mines, than her remoteness) lies free from their reach. Mahometanism has lafted above a thousand years, a longer continued fcourge than any enemy of old: For the Egyptians oppreffed Ifrael fcarce two hundred years ; the Canaanites twenty; the Moabites eighteen; the Philistines forty; the Affyrians and Chaldeans, three hundred; Antiochus Epiphanes, forty years; the Christian church, from

Nero