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597. Familiar Objects.---If we are not struck with astonishment and admiration at the sight of man, it is merely the effect of habit, which renders the most wonderful objects familiar. Hence it is that the

human figure, even the face, excites not the attention of the vulgar.

Sulzer.

568. Nature of Time.-If time be no more than the succession of ideas and actions, however these may be accelerated or retarded, time will be just the same; that is, neither longer nor shorter, provided the same ideas and actions succeed one another, as far, I mean, as it relates to beings so thinking and so acting. For instance, were the earth and and all the celestial bodies to perform the same revolutions in one day which they now perform in a whole year, and were all the ideas, actions, and lives of mankind hastened on in the same proportion, the period of our lives would not be in the least shortened; but that day would be exactly equal to the present year; if in the space of seventy or eighty of these days a man was born, educated, or grown up, had exercised a profession, had seen his children come to maturity, his grand-children succeed them, and, during this period had had all his ideas, and actions, all his enjoyments and sufferings, accelerated in the same proportion, he would not only seem to himself and to all who lived in the same state with him, and measured time by the same standard, to have lived so long, but actually and in fact would have lived as long as one who resides on this globe as great a number of our present years.

Soame Jenyns.

599. Words and Things.---Though a linguist should pride himself to have all the tongues that Babel cleft the world into; yet if he have not studied the solid things in them as well as the words and lexicons, he were nothing so much to be esteemed a learned man, as any yeoman or tradesman, competently wise in his mother dialect only.---Milton.

600. Sources of True Enjoyment.-How little is requisite to supply the necessities of nature! And in a view to pleasure, what comparison between the unbought satisfaction of conversation, society, study, even health and the common beauties of nature, but, above all, the peaceful reflection on one's own conduct; what comparison, I say between those and the feverish empty amusements of luxury and expense? These natural pleasures, indeed, are really without price, both because they are below all price in their attainment, and above it in their enjoyment.---Hume.

601. Ingratitude.

He that's ungrateful, has no guilt but one:

All other crimes may pass for virtues in him.-Young.

602. The Fate of Courtiers.-When I see a gallant ship well rigged, trimmed, tackled, man'd, and munitioned, with her top and top-gallant, and her spread sayles proudly swelling with a full gale in faire weather, putting out of the haven into the smooth maine, and drawing the spectators' eyes with a well-wishing admiration; and shortly heare of the same ship splitted against some dangerous rock, or wracked by some disasterous tempest, or sunk by some leake sprung in her by some accident; it seemeth I see the case of some court favourite, who to-day, like Sejanus, dazzleth all men's eyes with the splendour of his glory, and with the proud and potent beake of his powerful prosperity cutteth the waves and ploweth through the prease of the vulgar, and scorneth to fear aught at his keele below, or any cross winds, from above and yet to-morrow, on some storms of unexpected disfavour, springs a leake in his honour, and sinks on the Syrtes of disgrace, or dashed against the rocks of displeasure, is splitted and wrack'd in the Caribdis of infamy, and so concludes his voyage in misery and misfortune.—

Warwick's Spare Minutes.

603. History. They who have employed the study of it as they ought, for their instruction, for the regulation of their private manners, and the management of public affairs, must agree with me that it is the most pleasant school of wisdom. It is a familiarity with past ages, and an acquaintance with all the heroes of them. It is, if you will pardon the similitude, a perspective glass carrying your soul to a vast distance, and taking in the farthest objects of antiquity. It informs the understanding by the memory; it helps us to judge of what will happen, by shewing us the like revolutions of former times. For mankind being the same in all ages, agitated by the same passions, and moved to action by the same interests, nothing can come to pass, but some precedent of the like nature has already been produced; so that having the causes before our eyes, we cannot easily be deceived in the effects, if we have judgment enough but to draw the parallel.-Dryden's Life of Plutarch.

604. Pleasures of Study.-Learning raises up against us many enemies among the low, and more among the powerful, yet does it invest us with grand and glorious privileges, and confers on us largeness of beatitude. We enter on our studies, and enjoy a society which we alone can bring together. We raise no jealousy by conversing with one in preference to another: we give no offence to the most illustrious, by questioning him as long as we will, and leaving him as abruptly, Diversity of opinion raises no tumult in our presence; each interlocuter stands before us, speaks, or is silent, and we adjourn or decide the business at our leisure. Nothing is past which we desire to be present: and we enjoy by anticipation somewhat like the power, which I imagine we shall possess hereafter, of sailing on a wish from world to world.

Landor.

605. Conscience. The good or evil we confer on others, very often, I believe, recoils on ourselves; for as men of a benign disposition enjoy their own acts of beneficence equally with those to who n they are done, so there are scarce any natures so entirely diabolical as to be capable of doing injuries without paying themselves some pangs for the ruin which they bring on their fellow creatures.---Fielding.

606. History.—It is the resurrection of ages past : it gives us the scenes of human life, that, by their actings, we may learn to correct and improve. What can be more profitable to man, than, by an easy charge and a delightful entertainment, to make himself wise by the imitation of heroic virtues, or by the evitation of detested vices ? where the glorious actions of the worthiest treaders on the world's stage shall become our guide and conduct, and the errors that the weak have fallen into shall be marked out to us as rocks that we ought to avoid. It is learning wisdom at the cost of others; and, which is rare, it makes a man the better for being pleased.---Feltham.

607. Contemporaneous and Posthumous Fame.-Great minds had rather deserve contemporaneous applause without obtaining it, than obtain it without deserving it. If it follow them, it is well; but they will not deviate to follow it. With inferior minds the reverse is observable; so that they can command the flattery of knaves while living, they care not for the execrations of honest men, when dead. Milton neither aspired to present fame, nor even expected it; but (to use his own words) his high ambition was, "to leave something so written to after ages, that they should not willingly let it die!" and Cato finely observed, he would much rather that posterity should inquire why no statues were erected to him, THAN WHY THEY WERE.-Lacon.

608. True sources of Kingly strength.-They say that the goodliest cedars, which grow on the high mountain of Libanus, thrust their roots between the clifts of hard rocks, the better to bear themselves against the strong storms that blow there. As nature has instructed those kings of trees, so hath reason taught the kings of men to root themselves in the hardy hearts of their faithful subjects. And as those kings of trees have large tops, so have the kings of men large crowns, whereof as the first would soon be broken from their bodies, were they not underborne by many branches, so would the other easily totter, were they not fastened on their heads with the strong chains of civil justice and martial discipline.-Sir Walter Raleigh.

LONDON: Printed and Published by J. H. STARIE, 59, Museum Street, and to be had of all Booksellers.

Materials for Thinking,

EXTRACTED FROM THE WORKS OF

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"WHATEVER CHARITY WE OWE TO MEN'S PERSONS, WE OWE NONE TO

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No. XXIV.

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609. The Freedom of the Press. From minds subdued by the terrors of punishment there could issue no works of genius to expand the empire of human reason, nor any masterly compositions on the general nature of governments, by the help of which the great commonwealths of mankind have founded their establishments; much less any of those useful applications of them to critical conjunctions, by which, from time to time, our own constitution, by the exertions of patriot citizens, has been brought back to its standard. Under such terrors all the great lights of science and civilization must be extinguished; for men cannot communicate their free thoughts to one another with a lash held over their heads. It is the nature of every thing that is great and useful, both in the animate and inanimate world, to be wild and irregular; and we must be contented to take them with the alloys which belong to them, or live without them. Genius breaks from the fetters of criticism; but its wanderings are sanctioned by its majesty and wisdom when it advances in its path: subject it to the critic and you tame it into dulness. Mighty rivers break down their banks in the winter, sweeping to death the flocks which are fattened on the soil that they fertilize in the summer: the few may be saved by embankments from drowning, but the flock must perish for hunger. Tempests occasionally shake our dwellings and dissipate our commerce; bnt they scourge before them the lazy elements which, without them, would stagnate into pestilence. In like manner, Liberty herself, the last and best gift of God to his creatures, must be taken just as she is. You might pare her down into bashful regularity, and shape her into a perfect model of severely scrupulous law; but she would then be Liberty no longer, and you must be content to die under the lash of this inexorable justice, which you had exchanged for the banners of freedom. The proposition which I mean to maintain as the basis of the liberty of the press, and without which it is an empty sound, is this-that man not intending to mislead, but seeking to en

lighten others with what his own reason and conscience, however erroneously, have dictated to him as truth, may address himself to the universal reason of a whole nation, either upon the subject of governments in general, or upon that of our own particular country; that he may analyse the principles of its constitution, point out its errors and defects, examine and publish its corruptions, and warn his fellow-citizens against their ruinous consequences, and exert his whole faculties in pointing out the most advantageous changes in establishments which he considers to be radically defective, or sliding from their object by abuse. All this every subject of this country has a right to do, if he contemplates only what he thinks would be for its advantage, and but seeks to change the public mind by the conviction that flows from reasoning dictated by conscience.-Erskine.

610. Philosophy of Patience.—He who can wait for what he desires, takes the course not to be exceedingly grieved if he fails of it. He, on the contrary, who labors after a thing too impatiently, thinks the success, when it comes, is not a recompense equal to all the pains he has been at about it.-La Bruyere.

611. Worldly Emulation and Christian Ambition. Emulation has been termed a spur to virtue, and assumes to be a spur of gold. But it is a spur composed of baser materials, and if tried in the furnace, will be found to want that fixedness which is the characteristic of gold. He that pursues virtue, only to surpass others, is not far from wishing others less forward than himself; and he that rejoices too much at his own perfections, will be too little grieved at the defects of other men. We might also insist upon this, that true virtue, although the most humble of all things, is the most progressive: it must persevere to the end. But, as Alexander scorned the Olympic games, because there were no kings to contend with, so he that starts only to outstrip others, will suspend his exertions when that is attained; and self-love will, in many cases, incline him to stoop for the prize, even before he has obtained the victory. But the views of the Christian are more extensive, and more enduring; his ambition is, not to conquer others, but himself, and he unbuckles his armour only for his shroud.-Lacon.

612. Source of Sympathy.-There is a first model of beauty and agreeableness, which consists in a certain relation between our own nature and the thing with which we are affected. Whatever is formed on this model, interests and delights us; whatever differs from it, is always displeasing.-Pascal.

613. Truth.-It is very easy to convey a lie in the words of truth.

Franklin.

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