SECT. VII.

The seventh rule for promoting the strength and effect of sentences, is, to attend to the harmony and easy flow of the words and members.

Grammar, p. 309. Key, p. 137.

SOBERMINDEDNESS suits the present state of man. As conventiclers, these people were seized and punished.

To use the Divine name customarily, and without serious consideration, is highly irreverent.

From the favourableness with which he was at at first received, great hopes of success were entertained.

They conducted themselves wilily, and ensnared us before we had time to escape.

It belongs not to our humble and confined station, to censure, but to adore, submit, and trust.

Under all its labours, hope is the mind's solace; and the situations which exclude it entirely are few.

The humbling of those that are mighty, and the precipitation of persons who are ambitious, from the towering height that they had gained, concern but little the bulk of men.

Tranquillity, regularity, and magnanimity, reside with the religious and resigned man.

Sloth, ease, success, naturally tend to beget vices and follies.

By a cheerful, even, and open temper, he conciliated general favour.

We reached the mansion before noon. strong, grand, Gothic house.

It was a

I had a long and perilous journey, but a comfortable companion, who relieved the fatigue of it. The speech was introduced by a sensible preamble, which made a favourable impression.

The commons made an angry remonstrance against such an arbitrary requisition.

The truly illustrious are they who do not court

the praise of the world, but who perform such actions as make them indisputably deserve it.

By the means of society, our wants come to be supplied, and our lives are rendered comfortable, as well as our capacities enlarged, and our virtuous affections called forth into their proper exercise.

Life cannot but prove vain to such persons as affect a disrelish of every pleasure, which is not both new and exquisite, measuring their enjoyments by fashion's standard, and not by what they feel themselves; and thinking that if others do not admire their state, they are miserable.

By experiencing distress, an arrogant insensibility of temper is most effectually corrected, from the remembrance of our own sufferings naturally prompting us to feel for others in their sufferings: and if Providence has favoured us, so as not to make us subject in our own lot to much of this kind of discipline, we should extract improvement from the lot of others that is harder; and step aside sometimes from the flowery and smooth paths which it is permitted us to walk in, in order to view the toilsome march of our fellow-creatures through the thorny desert.

As no one is without his failings, so few want good qualities.

Providence delivered them up to themselves, and they tormented themselves.

From disappointments and trials, we learn the insufficiency of temporal things to happiness, and the necessity of goodness.

CHAP. IV.

Instances of an irregular use of Figures of Speech.

Grammar, p. 315. Key, p. 138.

No human happiness is so serene as not to contain any alloy.

There is a time when factions, by the vehemence of their own fermentation, stun and disable one another.

I intend to make use of these words in the thread of my speculations.

Hope, the balm of life, darts a ray of light through the thickest gloom.

The scheme was highly expensive to him, and proved the Charybdis of his estate.

He was so much skilled in the empire of the oar, that few could equal him.

The death of Cato has rendered the Senate an orphan.

Let us be attentive to keep our mouths as with a bridle; and to steer our vessel aright, that we may avoid the rocks and shoals, which lie every where around us.

At length Erasmus, that great injur'd name, (The glory of the priesthood and the shame,) Curb'd the wild torrent of a barb'rous age, And drove those holy Vandals off the stage.

In this our day of proof, our land of hope,
The good man has his clouds that intervene;
Clouds that may dim his sublunary day,
But cannot conquer: even the best must own,
Patience and resignation are the columns
Of human peace on earth.

On the wide sea of letters, 'twas thy boast
To crowd each sail, and touch at ev'ry coast:
From that rich mine how often hast thou brought
The pure and precious pears of splendid thought!
How didst thou triumph on that subject tide,
Till vanity's wild gust, and stormy pride,
Drove thy strong mind, in evil hour, to split
Upon the fatal rock of impious wit!

Since the time that reason began to bud, and put forth her shoot, thought, during our waking hours, has been active in every breast, without a moment's suspension or pause. The current of ideas has been always moving. The wheels of the spiritual engine have exerted themselves with perpetual motion.

The man who has no rule over his own spirit, possesses no antidote against poisons of any sort. He lies open to every insurrection of ill humour, and every gaie of distress. Whereas he who is employed in regulating his mind, is making provision against all the accidents of life. He is erecting a fortress into which, in the day of sorrow, he can retreat with satisfaction.

Tamerlane the Great, writes to Bajazet, emperor of the Ottomans, in the following terms-"Where is the monarch who dares resist us? Where is the potentate who does not glory in being numbered among our attendants? As for thee, descended from a Turcoman sailor, since the vessel of thy unbounded ambition has been wrecked on the gulf of thy self-love, it would be proper that thou shouldst take in the sails of thy temerity, and cast the anchor of repentance in the port of sincerity and justice, which is the port of safety; lest the tempest of our vengeance make thee perish in the sea of the punisly ment thou deservest."

It is pleasant to be virtuous and good; because that is to excel many others: it is pleasant to grow better; because that is to excel ourselves: it is pleasant to command our appetites and passions, and to keep them in due order, within the bounds of reason and religion; because this is empire: nay, it is pleasant even to mortify and subdue our lusts: because that is victory.