pride and luxury. Great works, undertaken for ostentation, miss of their end and turn to the author's shame; if not, the transitions of time wear out their engraved names, and they last not much longer than Caligula's bridge over the Baiæ. What is become of the Mausoleum or the ship-bestriding Colossus ? Where is Marcus Scaurus's theatre, the bituminated walls of Babylon? And how little rests of the Egyptian pyramids ? and of these, how divers does report give in their builders? some ascribing them to one, some to another. Who would not pity the toils of virtue, when he shall find greater honor inscribed to loose Phryne, than to victorious Alexander? who, when he had razed the walls of Thebes, she offered to reëdify them, with condition this sentence might but on them be inlettered: Alexander pulled them down, but Phryne did rebuild them." From whence some have jested it into a quarrel for fame betwixt a whore and a thief. Doubtless no fortifications can hold against the cruel devastations of time. I could never yet find any estate exempted from this mutability. Nay, those which we would have thought had been held up with the strongest pillars of continuance, have yet suffered the extremest changes. The houses of the dead and the urned bones have sometimes met with rude

66

hands that have scattered them. Who would have thought, when Scanderbeg was laid in his tomb, that the Turks should after rifle it, and wear his bones for jewels? Change is the great lord of the world; time is his agent that brings in all things to suffer his unstaid dominion.

"Ille, tot regum parens,

Caret sepulchro Priamus, et flammâ indiget,
Ardente Trojâ."

Senec. in Troad. act. 1.

"He that had a prince each son,

Now finds no grave, and, Troy in flames,

He wants his funeral one."

We are so far from leaving any thing certain

to posterity, that we cannot be what we have while we live.

sure to enjoy

We live some

times to see more changes in ourselves, than we could expect could happen to our lasting offspring. As if none were ignorant of the fate, the poet asks,

"Divitis audita est cui non opulentia Crœsi?
Nempe tamen vitam, captus ab hoste, tulit.
Ille, Syracosiâ modo formidatus in urbe,
Vix humili duram reppulit arte famem."

Ov. ex Pont. lib. iv. ep.

"Who has not heard of Croesus' heaps of gold,
Yet knows his foe did him a prisoner hold?
He that once awed Sicilia's proud extent,
By a poor art could famine scarce prevent."

3.

We all put into the world as men put money into a lottery. Some lose all and get nothing. Some with nothing get infinite prize, which perhaps venturing again, with hope of increase, they lose with grief that they did not rest contented. There is nothing that we can confidently call our own, or that we can surely say we shall either do or avoid. We have not power over the present, much less over the future, when we shall be absent or dissolved. And indeed, if we consider the world aright, we shall find some reason for these continual mutations. If every one had power to transmit the certain possession of all his acquisitions to his own succeeders, there would be nothing left for the noble deeds of new aspirers to purchase; which would quickly betray the world to an incommunicable dulness, and utterly discourage the generous designs of the stirring and more elementary spirit. As things now are, every man thinks something may fall to his share; and since it must crown some endeavours, he imagines, why not his? Thus, by the various trades of men, every action comes to be done which is requisite for the world's maintaining. But since nothing here below is certain, I will never purchase any thing with too great a hazard. It is ambition, not wisdom, that makes princes hazard their whole estates

for an honor merely titular. If I find that lost which I thought to have kept, I will comfort myself with this, that I knew the world was changeable, and that as God can take away a less good, so he can, if he please, confer me a greater.

OF PREACHING.

THE excess which is in the defect of preaching, has made the pulpit slighted; I mean the much bad oratory we find it guilty of. It is a wonder to me, how men can preach so little and so long; so long a time and so little matter; as if they thought to please by the inculcation of their vain tautologies. I see no reason, that so high a princess as divinity is should be presented to the people in the sordid rags of the tongue; nor that he, which speaks from the Father of languages, should deliver his embassage in an ill one. A man can never speak too well where he speaks not too obscure. Long and distended clauses are both tedious to the ear and difficult for their retaining. A sentence well couched, takes both the sense and the understanding. I love not those cart-rope speeches that are longer than the

memory of man can fathom. I see not 1 that divinity, put into apt significants, mi ravish as well as poetry.

The weighty lines men find upon the sta I am persuaded, have been the lures to dr away the pulpit's followers. We complain drowsiness at a sermon, when a play, of doubled length, leads us on still with al rity. But the fault is not all in ourselves. we saw divinity acted, the gesture and vari would as much invigilate. But it is too hi

The sta

to be personated by humanity. feeds both the ear and the eye; and through t latter sense the soul drinks deeper draugh Things acted possess us more, and are t more retainable than the passable tones of t tongue. Besides, here we meet with mo composed language, the "dulcia sermonis moulded into curious phrase; though it is be lamented, such wits are not set to the rig tune and consorted to divinity; who witho doubt, well decked, will cast a far more radia lustre, than those obscene scurrilities that t stage presents us with, though o'd and span led in their gaudiest tire.

At a sermon well dressed, what understan er can have a motion to sleep? Divinity, we ordered, casts forth a bait which angles t soul into the ear; and how can that close whe