Page images
PDF
EPUB

reading of poetry to Homer, Shakspeare and Co.; and so of other things. Is it not better to try at least to elevate and adorn one's mind by the constant study and contemplation of the great models, than merely to know of one's own knowledge that such a book is not worth reading? Some new books, to be sure, it is necessary to read—part for the information they contain—and others in order to acquaint oneself with the state of literature in the age in which one lives; but I had rather read too few than too many.

Lord Dudley, Letters.

BOOKS.

At the head of all the pleasures which offer themselves to the man of liberal education may confidently be placed that derived from books. In variety, durability, and facility of attainment, no other can stand in competition with it; and even in intensity it is inferior to few. Imagine that we had it in our power to call up the shades of the greatest and wisest men that ever existed, and oblige them to converse with us on the most interesting topics-what an inestimable privilege should we think it !-how superior to our common enjoyments! But in a well-furnished library we, in fact, possess this power. We can question Xenophon and Cæsar on their campaigns, make Demosthenes and Cicero plead before us, join in the audiences of Socrates and Plato, and receive demonstrations from Euclid and Newton. In books we have the choicest thoughts of the ablest men in their best dress. We can at pleasure exclude dulness and impertinence, and open our doors to wit and good sense alone. No apparatus, no appointment of time and place, is necessary for the enjoyment of reading. From the midst of bustle and business you may, in an instant, by the magic of a book, plunge into scenes of remote ages and countries, and disengage yourself from present care and fatigue.

John Aikin, M.D., Letters.

BOOKS.

IN the best books, great men talk to us, give us their most precious thoughts, and pour their souls into ours. God be thanked for books! They are the voices of the distant and the dead, and make us heirs of the spiritual life of past ages. Books are the true levellers. They give to all who will faithfully use them the society, the spiritual presence, of the best and greatest of our race. No matter how poor I am no matter though the prosperous of my own time will not enter my obscure dwelling: if the Sacred Writers will enter and take up their abode under my roof, if Milton will cross my threshold to sing to me of Paradise, and Shakspeare to open to me the worlds of imagination and the workings of the human heart, and Franklin to enrich me with his practical wisdom, I shall not pine for want of intellectual companionship, and I may become a cultivated man, though excluded from what is called the best society in the place where I live.

Channing

BOOKS.

Books are the legacies that a great genius leaves to mankind, which are delivered down from generation to generation, as presents to the posterity of those who are yet unborn. Addison, Spectator, No. 166.

BRIDE.

BEHOLD, while she before the altar stands,
Hearing the holy priest that to her speaks,
And blesseth her with his two happy hands,
How the red roses flush up in her cheeks,
And the pure snow, with goodly vermeil stain,
Like crimson dyed in grain:

That even the angels, which continually
About the sacred altar do remain,

Forget their service and about her fly,
Oft peeping in her face, that seems more fair,
The more they on it stare.

But her sad eyes, still fastened on the ground,
Are governed with goodly modesty

That suffers not one look to glance awry,

Which may let in a little thought unsound.

Spenser, Epithalamion.

BUILDING.

IN building, rather believe any man than an artificer in his own art for matter of charges; not that they cannotbut will not be faithful. Should they tell thee all the cost at the first, it would blast a young builder in the budding, and therefore they soothe thee up till it hath cost thee something to confute them. The spirit of building first possessed people after the Flood, which then caused the confusion of languages, and since of the estate of many a man.

Fuller, Holy State.

THE CAPITOL.

THIS place, which gave laws to the universe, where Jupiter had his temple and Rome her senate: from whence of old the Roman eagles were continually flying into every quarter of the globe, and from every quarter of the globe continually winging their way back with victories; whence a single word from the mouth of Scipio, of Pompey, or of Cæsar quickly reached the most distant nations, menacing their liberty, or deciding the fate of kings; where the greatest men of the republic still continued to live, even after their death, in statues, and still to govern the world with the authority of Romans: this place, so renowned, has lost its statues, its senate, its citadel, its temples; it retains

nothing but its name, so cemented by the blood and tears of nations that time has not yet been able to disjoin the immortal syllables of which it is composed. It is still called the Capitol; and at the Capitol we perceive, in the strongest light, the insignificance of all human things.

Dupaty.

CENSURE.

CENSURE is in season so very seldom, that it may be compared to that bitter plant which hardly comes to its maturity in the life of a man, and is said to flower but once in a hundred years. Dr. Ogden, Sermon on Calumny.

CENSURE.

‘CENSURE,' says a late ingenious author, 'is the tax a man pays to the public for being eminent.' It is a folly for an eminent man to think of escaping it, and a weakness to be affected with it. All the illustrious persons of antiquity, and indeed, of every age in the world, have passed through this fiery persecution. There is no defence against reproach but obscurity; it is a kind of concomitant to greatness, as satires and invectives were an essential part of a Roman triumph. Addison, Spectator, No. 101.

CENSURE.

CENSURE is an agreeable lemon-juice in praise; hence both are always bestowed by the world together, as if in the form of an oxymel; just as, according to the Talmud, a few fingerfuls of assafoetida were thrown with the other things upon the altar of burnt-offerings.

Richter.

CHARITY.

NOT soon provoked, she easily forgives;
And much she suffers, as she much believes.
Soft peace she brings wherever she arrives,
She builds our quiet, as she forms our lives;
Lays the rough paths of peevish nature even,
And opens in each heart a little heaven.

E'en constant Faith, and holy Hope shall die,
One lost in certainty, and one in joy ;
Whilst thou, more happy power, fair Charity,
Triumphant sister, greatest of the three,
Thy office and thy nature still the same,
Lasting thy lamp, and unconsumed thy flame,
Shalt still survive-

Shalt stand before the host of heaven confest,
For ever blessing, and for ever blest.

Prior, Charity.

CHARITY.

PURE in her aim, and in her temper mild,
Her wisdom seems the weakness of a child;
She makes excuses where she might condemn,
Reviled by those that hate her, prays for them ;
Suspicion lurks not in her artless breast:
The worst suggested, she believes the best;
Not soon provoked, however stung and teased,
And if, perhaps, made angry, soon appeased;
She rather waives than will dispute her right,
And, injured, makes forgiveness her delight.

Cowper, Charity.

« PreviousContinue »