bias of present practice wheel another way, thus it was in the first and primitive commonwealths, and is yet in the integrity and cradle of well ordered polities, till corruption getteth ground, ruder desires laboring after that which wiser considerations contemn, every one having a liberty to amass and heap up riches, and they a license or faculty to do or purchase any thing.

This general and indifferent temper of mine doth more nearly dispose me to this noble virtue. It is a happiness to be born and framed unto virtue, and to grow up from the seeds of nature, rather than the inoculation and forced graffs of education. Yet if we are directed only by our particular natures, and regulate our inclinations by no higher rule than that of our reasons, we are but moralists; divinity will still call us heathens. Therefore this great work of charity, must have other motives, ends, and impulsions. I give no alms only to satisfy the hunger of my brother, but to fulfil and accomplish the will and command of my God. I draw not my purse for his sake that demands it, but his that enjoined it. I relieve no man upon the rhetoric of his miseries, nor to content mine own commiserating disposition, for this is still but moral charity, and an act that oweth more to passion than reason. He that relieves another upon the bare suggestion and bowels

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of pity, doth not this so much for his sake, as for his own; for by compassion we make others' misery our own, and so by relieving them, we relieve ourselves also. It is as erroneous conceit to redress other men's misfortunes upon the common considerations of merciful natures, that it may one day be our own case; for this is a sinister and politic kind of charity, whereby we seem to bespeak the pity of men in the like occasions; and truly I have observed that those professed eleemosynaries, though in a crowd or multitude, do yet direct and place. their petitions on a few and selected persons. There is surely a physiognomy, which those experienced and master mendicants observe, whereby they instantly discover a merciful aspect, and will single out a face, wherein they spy the signatures and marks of mercy; for there are mystically in our faces certain characters which carry in them the motto of our souls, wherein he that can read A, B, C, may read our natures. I hold moreover that there is a phytognomy or physiognomy, not only of men, but of plants, and vegetables; and in every one of them some outward figures which hang as signs or bushes of their inward forms. The finger of God hath left an inscription upon all his works, not graphical or composed of letters, but of their several forms, constitutions,

parts, and operations, which aptly joined together do make one word that doth express their natures. By these letters God calls the stars by their names, and by this alphabet Adam assigned to every creature a name peculiar to its nature. Now there are, besides these characters in our faces, certain mystical figures in our hands, which I dare not call mere dashes, strokes "à la volée," or at random, because delineated by a pencil, that never works in vain; and hereof I take more particular notice, because I carry that in mine own hand, which I could never read of nor discover in another. Aristotle, I confess, in his acute and singular book of physiognomy, hath made no mention of chiromancy; yet I believe the Egyptians, who were nearer addicted to those abstruse and mystical sciences, had a knowledge therein, to which those vagabond and counterfeit Egyptians did after pretend, and perhaps retained a few corrupted principles, which sometimes might verify their prognostics.

It is the common wonder of all men, how, among so many millions of faces, there should be none alike. Now, contrary, I wonder as much how there should be any. He that shall consider how many thousand several words have been carelessly and without study composed out

of twenty-four letters; withal, how many hundred lines there are to be drawn in the fabric of one man; shall easily find that this variety is necessary; and it will be very hard that they shall so concur, as to make one portrait like another. Let a painter carelessly limn out a million of faces, and you shall find them all different; yea, let him have his copy before him, yet after all his art there will remain a sensible distinction; for the pattern or example of every thing is the perfectest in that kind, whereof we still come short, though we transcend or go beyond it, because herein it is wide, and agrees not in all points unto the copy. Nor doth the similitude of creatures disparage the variety of nature, nor any way confound the works of God; for even in things alike there is diversity, and those that do seem to accord, do manifestly disagree. And thus is man like God; for in the same things that we resemble him, we are utterly different from him. There was never any thing so like another, as in all points to concur. There will ever some reserved difference slip in, to prevent the identity; without which, two several things would not be alike, but the same, which is impossible.

But to return from philosophy to charity. I hold not so narrow a conceit of this virtue, as to conceive that to give alms, is only to be

charitable, or think a piece of liberality can comprehend the total of charity. Divinity hath wisely divided the act thereof into many branches, and hath taught us, in this narrow way, many paths unto goodness. As many ways as we may do good, so many ways we may be charitable. There are infirmities, not only of body, but of soul and fortunes, which do require the merciful hand of our abilities. I cannot contemn a man for ignorance, but behold him with as much pity as I do Lazarus. It is no greater charity to clothe his body than apparel the nakedness of his soul. It is an honorable object to see the reasons of other men wear our liveries, and their borrowed understandings do homage to the bounty of ours. It is the cheapest way of beneficence, and like the natural charity of the sun, illuminates another without obscuring itself. To be reserved and caitiff in this part of goodness, is the sordidest piece of covetousness, and more contemptible than pecuniary avarice. To this (as calling myself a scholar) I am obliged by the duty of my condition. I make not therefore my head a grave, but a treasury of knowledge. I intend no monopoly, but a community in learning. I study not for my own sake only, but for theirs that study not for themselves. knows more than myself,

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envy no man that but pity them that