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455. OF SORROW. Sorrow is not that regret for negligence or error which may animate us to future care or activity, or that repentance of crimes for which, however irrevocable, our Creator has promised to accept it as an atonement; the pain which arises from these causes has very salutary effects, and is every hour extenuating itself by the reparation of those miscarriages that produce it. Sorrow is properly that state of the mind in which our desires are fixed upon the past, without looking forward to the future, an incessant wish that something were otherwise than it has been, a tormenting and harassing want of some enjoyment or possession which we have lost, and which no endeavours can possibly regain. Into such anguish many have sunk upon some sudden diminution of their fortune, an unexpected blast of their reputation, or the loss of children or of friends. They have suffered all sensibility of pleasure to be destroyed by a single blow, have given up for ever the hopes of substituting any other object in the room of that which they lament, resigned their lives to gloom and despondency, and worn themselves out in unavailing misery.

456. CHARACTER OF THE EMPEROR CHARLES V. His promptitude in execution was no less remarkable than his patience in deliberation. He did not discover greater sagacity in his choice of the measures which it was proper to pursue, than fertility of genius in finding out the means for rendering the pursuit of them successful. Though he had naturally so little of the martial turn, that during the most ardent and bustling periods of life, he remained in the cabinet inactive; yet when he chose at length to appear at the head of his armies, his mind was so formed for vigorous exertions in every direction, that he acquired such knowledge in the art of war, and such talents for command, as rendered him equal in reputation and success to the most able generals of the age. But Charles possessed, in the most eminent degree, the science which is of greatest importance to a monarch, that of knowing men and of adapting their talents to the various departments which he allotted to them. From the death of Chievres to the end of his reign, he employed no general in the field, no minister in the cabinet, no ambassador to a foreign court, no governor of a province, whose abilities were inadequate to the trust which he reposed in them. Though destitute of that bewitching affability of

manners which gained Francis the hearts of all who approached his person, he was no stranger to the virtues which secure fidelity and attachment. He placed unbounded confidence in his generals; he rewarded their services with munificence; he neither envied their fame nor discovered any jealousy of their power. Almost all the generals who conducted his armies may be placed on a level with those illustrious personages who have attained the highest eminence of military glory; and his advantages over his rivals are to be ascribed so manifestly to the superior abilities of the commanders whom he set in opposition to them, that this might. seem to detract in some degree from his own merit, if the talent of discovering and steadiness in employing such instruments, were not the most undoubted proof of a capacity for government. W. ROBERTSON

457. QUEBEC. 'I Congratulate you, my brave countrymen and fellow-soldiers, on the spirit and success with which you have executed this important part of our enterprise. The formidable Heights of Abraham are now surmounted; and the city of Quebec, the object of all our toils, now stands in full view before us. A perfidious enemy, who have dared to exasperate you by their cruelties, but not to oppose you on equal ground, are now constrained to face you on the open plain, without ramparts or entrenchments to shelter them.

SPEECH OF GENERAL WOLFE TO HIS ARMY BEFORE

"You know too well the forces which compose their army to dread their superior numbers. A few regular troops from Old France, weakened by hunger and sickness, who, when fresh, were unable to withstand the British soldiers, are their general's chief dependence. Those numerous companies of Canadians, insolent, mutinous, unsteady, and illdisciplined, have exercised his utmost skill to keep them together to this time; and as soon as their irregular ardour is damped by one firm fire, they will instantly turn their backs, and give you no further trouble but in the pursuit. As for those savage tribes of Indians, whose horrid yells in the forests have struck many a bold heart with affright, terrible as they are with a tomahawk and scalping-knife to a flying and prostrate foe, you have experienced how little their ferocity is to be dreaded by resolute men upon fair and open ground: you can now only consider them as the just objects of a severe revenge for the unhappy fate of many

slaughtered countrymen. This day puts it into your power to terminate the fatigues of a siege which has so long employed your courage and patience. Possessed with a full confidence of the certain success which British valour must gain over such enemies, I have led you up these steep and dangerous rocks; only solicitous to shew you the foe within your reach. The impossibility of a retreat makes no difference in the situation of men resolved to conquer or die: and believe me, my friends, if your conquest could be bought with the blood of your general, he would most cheerfully resign a life which he has long devoted to his country.'

458. THE HAPPINESS OF OBSCURITY. If we engage into a large acquaintance and various familiarities, we set open our gates to the invaders of most of our time: we expose our life to a quotidian ague of frigid impertinencies, which would make a wise man tremble to think of. Now as for being known much by sight and pointed at, I cannot comprehend the honour that lies in that. I love and commend

a true good fame, because it is the shadow of virtue: the best kind of glory, no doubt, is that which is reflected from honesty, such as was the glory of Cato and Aristides, but it was harmful to them both, and is seldom beneficial to any man whilst he lives. Upon the whole matter, I account a person who has a moderate mind and fortune, and lives in the conversation of two or three agreeable friends, with little commerce in the world besides, who is esteemed well enough by his few neighbours that know him, and is truly irreproachable by anybody, and so after a healthful quiet life, before great inconveniencies of old age, goes more silently out of it than he came in (for I would not have him so much as cry in the Exit). This innocent deceiver of the world, as Horace calls him, this muta persona, I take to have been more happy in his part, than the greatest actors that fill the stage with show and noise, nay, even than Augustus himself, who askt with his last breath, whether he had not played his farce very well.

A. COWLEY

459. THE INHABITANTS OF LILLIPUT, THEIR MODE OF SELECTING PUBLIC OFFICERS. In choosing persons for all employments, they have more regard to good morals than to

great abilities: for, since government is necessary to mankind, they believe that the common size of understanding is fitted to some station or other, and that Providence never intended to make the management of public affairs a mystery, to be comprehended only by a few persons of sublime genius, of which there seldom are three born in an age; but they suppose truth, justice, temperance, and the like, to be in every man's power, the practice of which virtues, assisted by experience and a good intention, would qualify any man for the service of his country, except when a course of study is required. But they thought the want of moral virtues was so far from being supplied by superior endowments of the mind, that employments could never be put into such dangerous hands as those of persons so qualified; and, at least, that the mistakes committed by ignorance, in a virtuous disposition, would never be of such fatal consequence to the public weal, as the practices of a man whose inclinations led him to be corrupt, and who had great abilities to manage, to multiply and defend his corruptions.

J. SWIFT

460. PLEASURE OF CONTEMPLATING DIVINE WISDOM AS SEEN IN THE FORMATION OF THE EARTH. Neither is it perhaps such an intricate thing as we imagine at first sight to trace a chaos into an habitable world; at least there is a particular pleasure to see things in their origin, and by what degrees and successive changes they rise into that order and state we see them in afterwards when completed. I am sure, if ever we would view the paths of divine wisdom, in the works and in the conduct of nature, we must not only consider how things are, but how they came to be so. It is pleasant to look upon a tree in the summer, covered with its green leaves, decked with blossoms, or laden with fruit, and casting a pleasing shade under its spreading boughs; but to consider how this tree, with all its furniture, sprang from a little seed; how nature shaped it, and fed it, in its infancy and growth; added new parts, and still advanced it by little and little, till it came to this greatness and perfection; this, methinks, is another sort of pleasure, more rational, less common, and which is properly the contemplation of divine wisdom in the works of nature. So to view this earth and this sublunary world, as it is now, complete, distinguished into the several orders of bodies of which

it now consists, every one perfect and admirable in its kind; this is truly delightful, and a very good entertainment to the mind: but to see all these in their first seeds, as I may so say: to take in pieces this frame of nature, and melt it down into its first principles; and then to observe how the divine wisdom wrought all these things out of confusion into order, and out of simplicity into that beautiful composition we now see them in: this, methinks, is another kind of joy, which pierceth the mind more deep, and is more satisfactory..

T. BURNET

461. MONTE NUOVO. West of Cicero's villa stands the eminent Gaurus, a stony and desolate mountain, in which there are divers obscure caverns, choaked almost with earth, where many have consumed much fruitless industry in searching for treasure. The famous Lucrine lake extended formerly from Avernus to the aforesaid Gaurus: but is now no other than a little sedgy plash, choaked up by the horrible and astonishing eruption of the new mountain; whereof, as oft as I think, I am easy to credit whatsoever is wonderful. For who here knows not, or who elsewhere will believe, that a mountain should arise, partly out of a lake and partly out of the sea, unto such a height as to contend in altitude with the high mountains adjoining? In the year of our Lord 1538, on the 29th of September, when for certain days foregoing, the country hereabout was so vexed with perpetual earthquakes, as no one house was left so entire as not to expect an immediate ruin; after that the sea had retired two hundred paces from the shore, (leaving abundance of fish and springs of fresh water rising on the bottom,) this mountain visibly ascended about the second hour of the night, with an hideous roaring, horribly vomiting stones, and such store of cinders as overwhelmed all the buildings thereabout, and the salubrious baths of Tripergula, for so many ages celebrated: consumed the vines to ashes, killing birds and beasts: the fearful inhabitants of Puzzol flying through the dark with their wives and children, naked, defiled, crying out, and detesting their calamities. Manifold mischiefs have they suffered by the barbarous, yet none like this which Nature inflicted. This new mountain, when newly raised, had a number of issues; at some of them smoking and sometimes burning: at others disgorging rivulets of hot waters: keeping within a terrible rumbling; and many miserably perished that ventured to descend into the

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