nence, it is frequently the first, that endeavours to reap advantage from it.

In man is centered every thing that is strong, and every thing that is weak. In him there is falsehood and truth; deformity and beauty; littleness and grandeur. Some would destroy the fairest and the finest in Nature they would slay the slain. They see no beauty in knowledge; they only feel its strength :they see no harmony in truth; they only feel the awe and the terror it engenders.

With them every man of merit is an enemy. He builds structures never to fall into ruins. They, too, would build pyramids :—but they would build mighty pyramids with mighty nothings. Jealous of the reputation of others, nothing is too extravagant for their own vanity they even pass through life without praising the woman or the man, they love. Reaping no harvest of love or friendship, they are ignorant that to communicate pleasure is to receive it. This unfortunate disposition is "implanted." "I have seen," says St. Augustine," "an infant burning as it were with jealousy. He could not yet talk; and yet with a pale countenance he would cast a look, full of fury at another child sucking at the other breast." We all have seen a similar picture of melancholy. To correct this impulse, therefore, ought to be a parent's first and most solicitous care: for envy and jealousy are, of all others, the greatest scourges of a man's existance.

1 Confessions, b. i. ch. 7.

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But some men live embalmed in the liveliest recollection of all their friends. Their names in imagination are synonimous with urbanity of manner; with beauty of person; or with splendour of mind. They are dead: they live not: at least they live not to the present generation.—When they did, they were rich! Men, for the most part, fear present genius too much they fear it is too much removed from dullness; from ignorance; from attacks, open or secret. They are alarmed when genius thinks it politic to magnify itself: and yet they ought to be silent and reverential for the more genius enlarges its capacity, the more gentle, the more amiable, the more modest it becomes: as deep oceans are more pacific than shallow ones. By long trial and patient meditation, genius acquires a knowledge of the strength, the beauty, and the dignity of wisdom and the first and the last lesson, that wisdom gives, is "be modest if you would be strong. If you would not live in a state of perpetual childhood, acquire knowledge: cherish it and let fortune act as she will. Prejudice and opinion not unfrequently endeavour to tyrannize over Nature; but the strength, which knowledge imparts to the mind, enables it often to triumph over fortune itself."

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VII.

There are three orders of men my soul despises ! The first is personified by a Persian poet.

Little care we, who revel in plenty and splendour,

How many may pine in chill poverty's blast;

With forms full as fair, and with hearts full as tender,

On this world's friendless stage by adversity cast!

Anon.

Secondly;-Men, who alternately act the sycophant and the traitor. Mankind, says Lucian,'-and who knew mankind better?-resent it highly, should we not admit them to share in our happiness; when the wind sets fair, and the voyage is prosperous. Should the winds turn, however, and the waves swell; they leave us to the mercy of every storm! Of such conduct the Jews accused the Samaritans.-For when they were successful abroad, and happy at home, the Samaritans smiled,whenever they met them. They embraced their society with eagerness; and indicated their friendship by deducing their descent from Joseph the Patriarch. No sooner, however, did misfortune arrive, and the Jews were low in estate; than they disclaimed all affinity; they insulted them, whenever they met them; and insisted, as was indeed the truth, that they were originally Medes and Persians.

Thirdly-It was a saying among the Greeks, that all men carried a wallet over their shoulders; the forepart of which contained the faults of their neighbours; the hind part their own. It is thus in every country under heaven! For what Paterculus said of the Romans, full eighteen hundred years ago, is equally applicable to the whole human race :-that "though we overlook every fault of our own; we overlook none that belong to another." The invidious look at the brightest of men's qualities; but speak only of his worst:-their vision inoculates the jaundice upon every thing they see. In this they are unwise, even in worldly advantage : 2 Josephus.

1 Toxaris.

for their shadows precede, instead of following them. Every blow, they receive, sinks to the soul; while, to gratify their outraged vanity and spleen, they would blot the sun out of heaven.

Man is, indeed, a paradox, so complicate and intricate, that one of Melancthon's consolations in death arose out of the hope, that he should soon learn the secret, why men were made as they are. "The Alps," says the author of La Spectacle de la Nature, "are the sources of the Rhine, the Rhone, and the Po and though those mountains are, for the most part, clad in eternal sterility, they make of Italy and France two most delightful gardens." Thus Nature elicits wealth out of want, and good out of evil. The same result graces the perspectives of moral philosophy.

Genius is frequently wild in infancy, and melancholy in youth but vigorous in manhood. For mental strength rises and ripens naturally out of the soul's delicacy delicacy frequently settling, at last, in a consciousness of power, which exhibits itself in a magnificent grandeur of character; which, subduing the voice of passion, reconciles wisdom to misfortune, by connecting the past and the present with the future. "It was sown in weakness; it is raised in power: it was sown in dishonour; it is raised in glory.”

But genius, for the most part, may be compared to the horse of Seius. This horse was named Sejanus: and was of exquisite symmetry. But whoever chanced to possess him, (and he had many masters), was sure to be involved in a multitude of difficulties.

Yet Fortune is not so unjust, as she appears to be: for while she compensates the want of ability by wealth or rank: she compensates the want of rank and wealth by the power, influence, and pleasure of ability. Few men of genius, therefore, are doomed unpitied, to sustain

More real misery than their pens can feign.

VIII.

Truth is in a constant state of persecution :-shall men of genius, then, mourn, because they share the destiny of so honourable a master? If misfortunes could be remedied by tears, says Muretus, tears would be purchased with gold :-misfortune does not call for tears, but counsel. Yet who would wish for a sea, that was continually calm? For a sky, that was constantly serene? Or for a life, passed in a state of pre-eminent monotony? The asperities of vicissitude are soothed by frequent intervals of content. More renowned than enriched, it is true, that fortune seldom comes to genius. "Always wooed and never won," she proves only the mother of Hope: and while the medicine is preparing, says the Arabic proverb, the patient dies. What a fate! Is there any one so sordid, so lost to every sympathetic impulse, who cannot feel for the man of delicate feelings, and of fine talents, who is constrained, not only to dedicate his life to ephemeral calculations, but even to writhe under the necessity of exerting all his intellectual strength, to preserve the vulgarity of