soil which he cultivates. There is no pride which can resist Nor is it only destiny which is thus inculcated upon man; he learns also tranquillity and patience. He cannot flatter himself that the most ingenious inventions or the most restless activity will ensure his success; when he has done all that depends upon him for the cultivation and fertilization of the soil, he must wait with resignation. CICERO, de Off. lib. i. § 150, 151. De Senect. § 24, 51-60. AGRICULTURAL LIFE A THEME OF PRAISE AMONG POETS. A LMOST all poets, except those who were not able to eat bread without the bounty of great men, that is, without what they could get by flattering of them, have not only withdrawn themselves from the vices and vanities of the grand world into the innocent happiness of a retired life, but have commended and adorned nothing so much by their ever-living poems. Hesiod was the first or second poet in the world, that remains yet extant (if Homer, as some think, preceded him, but I rather believe they were cotemporaries), and he is the first writer too of the art of husbandry: he has contributed (says Columella) not a little to our profession; I suppose he means not a little honour, for the matter of his instructions is not very important; his great antiquity is visible through the gravity and simplicity of his style. The most acute of all his sayings concerns our purpose very much, and is couched in the reverend obscurity of an oracle. Πλέον ἥμισυ πάντος. The half is more than the whole. The occasion of the speech is this His brother Perses had by corrupting some great men : (Bariñas dwpopiyous, great bribe-eaters he calls them) gotten from him the half of his estate. It is no matter (says he), they have not done me so much prejudice as they imagine. Νήπιοι οὐδ ̓ ἴσασιν ὅσῳ πλέον ἥμισυ παντὸς, οὐδ ̓ ὅσον ἐν μαλάχῃ τε καὶ ἀσφοδέλῳ μέγ' ὄνειαρ, This I conceive to have been honest Hesiod's meaning.--A. Cowley. MARRIAGE FORM THE CENTRE AROUND WHICH ALL A CELEBRATED ancient orator, of whose poems we have but a few fragments remaining, has well described the progressive order in which human society is gradually led to its highest improvements, under the guardianship of those laws which secure property and regulate marriage. These two great institutions convert the selfish as well as the social passions of our nature into the firmest bands of a peaceable and orderly intercourse; they change the sources of discord into principles of quiet; they discipline the most ungovernable, they refine the grossest, and they exalt the most sordid propensities; so that they become the perpetual fountain of all that strengthens, and preserves, and adorns society they sustain the individual, and they perpetuate the race. Around these institutions all our social duties will be found at various distances to range themselves: some more near, obviously essential to the good order of human life; others more remote, and of which the necessity is not at first view so apparent; and some so distant, that their importance has been sometimes doubted, though upon more mature consideration they will be found to be outposts and advanced guards of these fundamental principles-that man should securely enjoy the fruits of his labour, and that the society of the sexes should be so wisely ordered, as to make it a school of the kind affections, and a fit nursery for the commonwealth.— Mackintosh. CICERO, de Fin. lib. v. § 65, 66. De Offic. i. § 58, 59. OUR NATIVE LAND DEARER THAN ALL OTHERS. HENCE does this love of our country, this universal WHE passion, proceed? Why does the eye ever dwell with Why do we breathe with Why are not other soils as Why does the soul of man fondness upon the scenes of infant life? greater joy the breath of our youth? grateful, and other heavens as gay? ever cling to that earth where it first knew pleasure and pain, and, under the rough discipline of the passions, was roused to the dignity of moral life? Is it only that our country contains our kindred and our friends? And is it nothing but a name for our social affections? It cannot be this; the most friendless of human beings has a country which he admires and extols, and which he would, in the same circumstances, prefer to all others under heaven. Tempt him with the fairest face of nature, place him by living waters under shadowy trees of Lebanon, open to his view all the gorgeous allurements of the climates of the sun, he will love the rocks and deserts of his childhood better than all these, and thou canst not bribe his soul to forget the land of his nativity; he will sit down and weep by the waters of Babylon when he remembers thee, oh Sion!-Rev. Sydney Smith. OVID, Tristia. lib. ii. eleg. ii. 21, 8qq. iii. 53, 8qq. LOVE OF COUNTRY. HAT we should love the land of our birth, of our happiness, THAT we social systet under of that social system under which our happiness has been produced and protected, the land of our ancestors, of all the great names and great deeds which we have been taught most early to venerate, is surely as little wonderful as that we should feel, what we all feel, a sort of affection for the most trifling object which we have merely borne about with us for any length of time. Loving the very land of our birth, we love those who inhabit it, who are to us a part, as it were, of the land itself, and the part which brings it most immediately home to our affections and services. It is a greater recommendation to our good-will, indeed, to be a relative, or a friend, or a benefactor; but it is no slight recommendation, even without any of these powerful titles, to be a fellow-countryman, to have breathed the same air and trod the same soil, and lent vigour to the same political institutions, to which our own aid has actively or passively contributed.-Brown's Lectures. CICERO, de Officiis, i. § 54-57. De Orat. i. § 196. PATRIOTISM CONSISTS IN THE PERFORMANCE OF VARIOUS DUTIES TOWARDS OUR NEIGHBOURS. ATRIOTISM is, perhaps, not properly to be considered as PATI a distinct principle of our nature; but rather as a result of a combination of the other affections. It leads us, by every means in our power, to promote the peace and the prosperity of our country, and to discourage, to the utmost of our ability, whatever tends to the contrary. Every member of the community has something in his power in this respect. He may set an example, in his own person, of dutiful and loyal respect to the first authority, of strict obedience to the laws, and respectful submission to the institutions of his country. He may oppose the attempts of factious individuals to sow among the ignorant the seeds of discontent, tumult, or discord. He may oppose and repress attempts to injure the revenue of the state; may aid in the preservation of public tranquillity, and in the execution of public justice. Finally, he may zealously exert himself in increasing the knowledge and improving the moral habits of the people-two of the most important means by which the conscientious man, in any rank of life, may aid in conferring a high and permanent benefit on his country.-Abercrombie's Moral Feelings. CICERO, de Officiis, i. § 57, 21. iii. § 22. MAN'S CHIEF DUTIES ARE SOCIAL, PRACTICAL, AND I POLITICAL, not selfiSH. REMEMBER an old scholastic aphorism, which says, "that the man who lives wholly detached from others must be either an angel or a devil." When I see in any of these detached gentlemen of our times the angelic purity, power, and beneficence, I shall admit them to be angels. In the meantime we are born only to be men. We shall do enough if we form ourselves to be good ones. It is therefore our business carefully to cultivate in our minds, to rear to the most perfect vigour and maturity, every sort of generous and honest feeling that belongs to our nature. Το bring the dispositions that are lovely in private life into the service and conduct of the commonwealth: so to be patriots as not to forget we are gentlemen. To cultivate friendships and to incur |