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SECTION XI.

Early rising conducive to health and longevity. 1 The first sensation of drowsiness is nature's call for sleep. Waking shows the body is rested. After the degree of strength, of which the state of the system is capable, is restored by sleep, longer stay in bed only relaxes. He perverts reason, who, by habit or artificial excitement, keeps awake so late that he is not ready to rise at daybreak, nature's undoubted signal for quitting repose, obedience to which secures desire of rest at the fit hour. Some people close their shutters against it.

2 George III. consulted his household physicians, separately, as to the modes of life conducive to health and longevity; as to the importance of early rising, there was full coincidence. Old people, examined as to the cause of longevity, all agree that they have been in the habit of going to bed early and rising early.

3 We lose vigor by lying abed in health, longer than for necessary sleep; the mind is less tranquil, the body less disposed for refreshing sleep, appetite and digestion are lessened. Few things contribute so much to preserve health and prolong life, as going to bed early and rising early.

Boston Medical Intelligencer.

4 It is a reprehensible practice, in many parents, to prevent their younger children from acquiring the pleasant habit of early rising, for the purpose of "keeping them out of the way in the morning." The habit of rising at daybreak or earlier during the winter season, and washing the face and hands with cold water, ought to be enjoined as an indispensible duty in every public school, or domestic nursery.

5 Rising early is not only a healthy and agreeable habit, and cheap, and easy to preserve, when once acquired, but profitable, and generally absolutely necessary to success in the pursuit of wealth, prosperity, and happiness.

6 Mr. John M'Leod, the proprietor and principal of the Central Academy, at Washington City, has given an example worthy of universal imitation, and demonstrated how easily children can be led into the path of duty by rewards and proper discipline. His pupils rise voluntarily and con stantly at day light or earlier.

J. T.

PART EIGHTH.

POPE'S ESSAY ON MAN &c.

CHAPTER I.

AN ESSAY ON MAN; IN FOUR EPISTLES TO H. ST. JOHN, LORD BOLINGBROKE. то WHICH IS ADDED, THE UNIVERSAL BY ALEXANDER POPE, ESQ.

PRAYER.

EPISTLE I.

Of the Nature and State of Man, with respect to the
Universe.

1 AWAKE! my St. John! leave all meaner things
To low ambition, and the pride of kings.
Let us (since life can little more supply
Than just to look about us and to die)
Expatiate free o'er all this scene of man;
A mighty maze! but not without a plan;
A wild, where weeds and flow'rs promiscuous shoot,
Or garden, tempting with forbidden fruit.

2 Together let us beat this ample field,
Try what the open, what the covert yield,
The latent tracks, the giddy heights explore
Of all who blindly creep, or sightless soar;
Eye nature's walks, shoot folly as it flies,
And catch the manners living as they rise;
Laugh where we must, be candid where we can,
But vindicate the ways of God to man.

3 Say first, of God above, or man below, What can we reason, but from what we know; Of man what see we, but his station here,

From which to reason, or to which refer?

Through worlds unnumber'd, though the God be known, 'Tis ours to trace him only in our own.

4 He, who through vast immensity can pierce,
See worlds on worlds compose one universe,
Observe how system into system runs,
What other planets circle other suns,
What varied being peoples every star,
May tell, why Heav'n has made us as we are

5 But of this frame, the bearings and the ties, The strong connexions, nice dependencies, Gradations just, has thy pervading soul

Look'd through? Or, can a part contain the whole?
6 Respecting man, whatever wrong we call,
May, must be right, as relative to all.

In human works, though labour'd on with pain,
A thousand movements scarce one purpose gain;
In God's, one single can its end produce,

Yet serves to second too some other use.

7 When the proud steed shall know why man restrains
His fiery course, or drives him o'er the plains;
When the dull ox, why now he breaks the clod,
Is now a victim, and now Egypt's god;
Then shall man's pride and dulness comprehend
His actions', passions', being's use and end;
Why doing, suff'ring, check'd, impell'd; and why
This hour a slave, the next a deity.

8 Then say not, man's imperfect, Heav'n in fault;
Say rather, man's as perfect as he ought;
His knowledge measur'd to his state and place,
His time a moment, and a point his space.

If to be perfect in a certain sphere,

What matter soon or late, or here or there?
The blest to-day, is as completely so,

As who began a thousand years ago.

9 Heaven from all creatures hides the book of fate,
All but the page prescrib'd, their present state:
From brutes what men, from men what spirits know;
Or who could suffer being here below?

The lamb thy riot dooms to bleed to-day,
Had he thy reason, would he skip and play?
Pleas'd to the last, he crops the flowery food,
And licks the hand just rais'd to shed his blood.
10 O blindness to the future! kindly giv'n,
That each may fill the circle mark'd by Heav'n;
Who sees with equal eye, as God of all,
A hero perish, or a sparrow fall,

Atoms or systems into ruin hurl'd,

And now a bubble burst, and now a world.

11 Hope humbly then; with trembling pinions soar : Wait the great teacher, death, and God adore! What future bliss, he gives not thee to know, But gives that hope to be thy blessing now.

Hope springs eternal in the human breast:
Man never is, but always to be blest.
The soul uneasy, and confin'd from home,
Rests and expatiates in a life to come.

12 Lo! the poor Indian, whose untutor'd mind
Sees God in clouds, or hears him in the wind;
His soul proud science never taught to stray
Far as the solar walk, or milky way;
Yet simple nature to his hope has giv'n,
Behind the cloud-topt hill, an humbler heav'n;
Some safer world in depth of woods embrac'd,
Some happier island in the wat'ry waste,
Where slaves once more their native land behold,
No fiends torment, no Christians thirst for gold!
To be, contents his natural desire,

He asks no angel's wings, no seraph's fire;
But thinks, admitted to that equal sky,
His faithful dog shall bear him company.

13 Go, wiser thou! and in thy scale of sense
Weigh thy opinion against Providence;
Call imperfection what thou fancy'st such,
Say, here he gives too little, there too much;
Destroy all creatures for thy sport or gust;
Yet cry, if man's unhappy, God's unjust.

14 În pride, in reas'ning pride, our error lies;
All quit their sphere, and rush into the skies.
And who but wishes to invert the laws
Of order, sins against th' Eternal Cause.

15 Ask for what end the heavenly bodies shine, Earth for whose use ? Pride answers, ""Tis for mine: "For me kind Nature wakes her genial power, "Suckles each herb, and spreads out every flower; "Annual for me, the grape, the rose renew "The juice nectareous, and the balmy dew; "For me, the mine a thousand treasures brings; "For me, health gushes from a thousand springs; "Seas roll to waft me, suns to light me rise; "My footstool earth, my canopy the skies."

16 But errs not Nature from this gracious end, From burning suns when livid deaths descend, When earthquakes swallow, or when tempests sweep Towns to one grave, whole nations to the deep? "No ('tis reply'd) the first Almighty Cause "Acts not by partial, but by general laws;

Z

"Th' exceptions few; some change since all began:
"And what created perfect?" Why then man?
17 If the great end be human happiness,
Then nature deviates; and can man do less?
As much that end a constant course requires
Of showers and sun-shine, as of man's desires;
As much eternal springs and cloudless skies,
As men for ever temp'rate, calm, and wise.
Why charge we Heav'n in those, in these acquit?
In both, to reason right, is to submit.

18 Better for us, perhaps it might appear,
Were there all harmony, all virtue here;
That never air or ocean felt the wind;
That never passion discompos'd the mind;
But all subsists by elemental strife ;
And passions are the elements of life.
The gen'ral order, since the whole began,
Is kept in nature, and is kept in man.

19 What would this man? now upward will he soar,
And little less than angel, would be more;
Now looking downward, just as griev'd appears
To want the strength of bulls, the fur of bears.
Made for his use all creatures if he call,
Say what their use, had he the pow'rs of all?
20 Nature to these, without profusion kind,
The proper organs, proper pow'rs assign'd;
Each seeming want compensated of course,
Here, with degrees of swiftness, there, of force;
All in exact proportion to the state;
Nothing to add, and nothing to abate.
Each beast, each insect, happy in its own;
Is Heav'n unkind to man, and man alone?

Shall he alone, whom rational we call,

Be pleas'd with nothing, if not blest with all?

21 The bliss of man (could pride that blessing find)

Is, not to act or think beyond mankind;

No pow'rs of body or of soul to share,

But what his nature and his state can bear.

Why has not man a microscopic eye?

For this plain reason-man is not a fly.

22 Say what the use, were finer optics giv'n,
T' inspect a mite, not comprehend the heav'n?
Or touch, if tremblingly alive all o'er,
To smart and agonize at every pore?

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