the ladies' part than the men's but the success is wholly in the gardener.-Sir W. Temple.

CCLXXV.

What is he that builds stronger than either the mason, the shipwright, or the carpenter?

The gallows-maker; for that frame outlives a thousand tenants.

I like thy wit well, in good faith; the gallows does well: but how does it well? It does well to those that do ill, now thou dost ill, to say, the gallows is built stronger than the church; argal, the gallows may do well to thee. To't again; come.

Who builds stronger than a mason, a shipwright, or a carpenter.

Ay tell me that, and unyoke.

Marry now I can tell.

To't.

Mass, I cannot tell.

Cudgel thy brains no more about it? for your dull ass will not mend his pace with beating: and when you are ask'd this question next, say, a grave-maker; the houses that he makes, last till doomsday.-Shakespear.

CCLXXVI.

Difficulty is a severe instructor, set over us by the supreme ordinance of a parental guardian and legislator, who knows us better than we know ourselves, and he loves us better too. He that wrestles with us, strengthens our nerves, and sharpens our skill. Our antagonist is our helper. This amicable conflict with difficulty obliges us to an intimate acquaintance with our object, and compels us to consider it in all its relations. It will not suffer us to be superficiai.-Burke.

CCLXXVII.

Heav'n from all creatures hides the book of fate,
All but the page prescribed 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 flow'ry food,
And licks the hand just rais'd to shed his blood.
Oh! 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.

CCLXXVIII.

Pope.

We too frequently see those who seem men at twenty years of age, when the gaiety of their youth decays, and themselves grow weary of those exercises and vanities which then became them, become boys at thirty, having no supply of parts for business, or grave and sober conversation, they then grow out of love with themselves, and too soon lament those defects and impotency in themselves, which nothing but some degree of learning and acquaintance with books could have prevented. And to say that they can fall to it afterwards, and recover the time they have lost when they will, is no more reasonable (though there have been some very rare examples of such industry) than to imagine that a man, after he is forty years of age, may learn to dance as well as if he had begun it sooner. He who loves not books before he comes to thirty years of age, will hardly love them enough afterwards to understand them.Clarendon.

CCLXXIX.

Speaking much is a sign of vanity; for he that is lavish in words, is a niggard in deed.-Sir W. Raleigh.

CCLXXX.

Let the players be well used; for they are the abstract, and brief chronicles, of the time; after your death you were better have a bad epitaph, than their ill report while you live.—Shakspeare.

CCLXXXI.

Whatever difference there may appear to be in men's

fortunes, there is still a certain compensation of good and ill in all, that makes 'em equal.-Charron.

CCLXXXII.

Each man is born a king; his passions be
The practice of his sovereignty:

Who, though they still their sovereign's good pretend,
Conspire his ruin for their private end,

The love of skin thick beauty draws his eye
To yield to love his reason's majesty.
His fear throws bugbears in his way; his state
Is still infested by revengeful hate.

This idle grief for what he might prevent,
Or might not, doth usurp his government.
Thus he whom God ordains a king to be,
Obeys his subjects and is never free.

Sir P. Sidney's Arcadia.

CCLXXXIII.

I remember an ingenious physician, who told me in the fanatic times, he found most of his patients so disturbed by troubles of conscience, that he was forced to play the divine with them, before he could begin the physician; whose greatest skill, perhaps, often lies in the infusing of hopes, and inducing some composure and tranquillity of mind, before they enter upon the other operations of their art: and this ought to be the first endeavour of the patient too; without, which, all other medicines may lose their virtue.-Sir W. Temple.

CCLXXXIV.

The single and peculiar life is bound,

With all the strength and armour of the mind,
To keep itself from 'noyance; but much more
That spirit, upon whose weal depend and rest
The lives of many. The cease of majesty
Dies not alone; but, like a gulf, doth draw
What's near it, with it; it is a massy wheel,
Fix'd on the summit of the highest mount,
To whose huge spokes ten thousand lesser things

Are mortised and adjoined; which when it falls,
Each small annexment, petty consequence,
Attends the boist'rous ruin. Never alone
Did the king, sigh, but with a general groan.

CCLXXXV.

Shakspeare.

Friendship is compounded of all those soft ingredients which can insinuate themselves and slide insensibly into the nature and temper of men of the most different constitutions, as well as of those strong and active spirits which can make their way into perverse and obstinate dispositions; and because discretion is always predominant in it, it works and prevails least upon fools. Wicked men are often reformed by it, weak men seldom-Clarendon

CCLXXXVII.

Drive me, O drive me from that traitor, man!
So I might 'scape that monster, let me dwell
In lion's haunts, or in some tyger's den,
Place me on some steep, craggy, ruin'd rock,
That bellies out, just dropping in the ocean:
Bury me in the hollow of its womb:
Where, starving on my cold and flinty bed,
I may from far, with giddy apprehension,
See infinite fathoms down the rumbling deep;
Yet not e'en there, in that vast whirl of death,
Can there be found so terrible a ruin

As man! false man! smiling destructive man!
Nat. Lee

CCLXXXVIII.

A man would be apt to think, in this laughing town, that it were impossible a thing so exploded as speaking hard words should be practised by any one that had ever seen good company; but, as, if there was a standard in our minds as well as bodies, you see very many just where they were twenty years ago, and more they cannot, will not arrive at. Tatler.

CCLXXXIX.

He that cannot refrain from much speaking, is like a city without walls, and less pains in the world a man cannot take, than to hold his tongue: therefore if thou observest this rule in all assemblies, thou shalt seldom err: restrain thy choler, hearken much, and speak little; for the tongue is the instrument of the greatest good and greatest evil that is done in the world.-Sir W. Raleigh-to his son.

CCXC.

Beware of flattery 'tis a flowry weed
Which oft offends the very idol vice,
Whose shrine it would perfume.

CCXCI.

Fenton.

Sincerity is an openess of heart; 'tis found in a very few people, and that which we see commonly is not it, but a subtle dissimulation, to gain the confidence of others.-Charron.

CCXCII.
The city lies,

And like a mist beneath a hill doth rise,

Whose state and wealth, the bus'ness and the crowd,
Seems at this distance but a darker cloud,

And is, to him who rightly things esteems,
No other in effect than what it seems;

Where, with like haste, through several ways they run,
Some to undo, and some to be undone;

While luxury and wealth, like war and peace,
Are each the others ruin and increase;
As rivers lost in seas, some secret vein
Thence reconveys, there to be lost again.

Cooper's Hill-Denham.

CCXCIII.

There is no art or science that is too difficult for industry to attain to; it is the gift of tongues, and makes a man understood and valued in all countries, and by all nations; it is the philosopher's stone, that turns all me