them to obtain the victory of wit and contradiction, and sometimes for lucre and profession: but seldom sincerely to give a true account of their gift of reason for the benefit and use of man, as if there were sought in knowledge a couch whereupon to rest a searching and restless spirit, or a terrace for a wandering and variable mind to walk up and down with a fair prospect, or a tower of state for a proud mind to raise itself upon, or a fort or commanding ground for strife and contention, or a shop for profit and sale, and not a rich storehouse for the glory of the Creator and the relief of man's estate.-Bacon.

XI.

HE MIDDLE AND LOWER CLASSES.-The middle and lower ranks, too numerous to be bribed by a minister, and almost out of reach of court corruption, constitute the best bulwarks of liberty. They are a natural and most efficacious check on the strides of power. They ought, therefore, to know their consequence, and to preserve it with unshrinking vigilance. They have a stake, as it is called, a most important stake, in the country; let not the overgrown rich only pretend to have a stake in the country, and claim from it an exclusive privilege to regard its concerns. The middle ranks have their native freedom to preserve; their birthright to protect from the dangerous attacks of enormous and overbearing affluence. Inasmuch as liberty and security are more conducive to happiness than excessive riches, it must be allowed that the poor man's stake in the country is as great as the rich man's. If he should lose this stake, his poverty, which was consoled by the consciousness of his liberty and security, becomes an evil infinitely aggravated.

R

P

XV.

EADING.-No entertainment is so cheap as reading, nor any pleasure so lasting.-Montague.

XVI.

REJUDICES AND HABITS.-The confirmed prejudices of

a thoughtful life are as hard to change as the confirmed habits of an indolent life; and as some must trifle away age because they trifled away youth, others must labour on in a maze of error because they have wandered there too long to find their way out.-Bolingbroke.

XVII.

FFECT OF CLIMATE ON OUR DISPOSITIONS. -There is

a sort of variety amongst us which arises from our climate, and the dispositions it naturally produces. We are not only more unlike one another than any nation I know, but we are more unlike ourselves too, at several times, and owe to our very air some ill qualities as well as good.— Temple.

XVIII.

EREDITARY Government.

Admitting that govern

ment is a contrivance of human wisdom, it must

necessarily follow that hereditary succession, and hereditary rights, as they are called, can make no part of it, because it is impossible to make wisdom hereditary.-Burke.