and ingratitude indivisibly wreathed, and twisted together. Ingratitude overlooks all kindnesses, but it is, because pride makes it carry its head so high. Ingratitude is too base to return a kindnéss, and too proud to regard it; much like the tops of mountains, barren indeed, but yet lofty; they produce nothing, they feed nobody, they clothe nobody, yet are high and stately, and look down upon all the world about them. Ingratitude indeed put the poniard into Brutus's hand, but it was want of compassion which thrust it into Cæsar's heart. Friendship consists properly in mutual offices, and a generous strife in alternate acts of kindness. But he who does a kindness to an ungrateful person, sets his seal to a flint, and

anxious for the safety and fortunes of his son, than about the little that might remain of his own life, began immediately to enquire of the officers who seized him, whether his son were well, whether he had done his duty to the satisfaction of his generals. "That son," replied one of the officers, "so dear to thy affections, betrayed thee to us; by his information thou art apprehended, and diest." The officer with this struck a poniard to his heart, and the unhappy parent fell, not so much affected by his fate, as by the means to which he owed it.-Ibid. 8.

THE POET.

The bridegroom may forget his bride

Was made his wedded wife yestreen :
The monarch may forget his crown
Which on his head an hour has been;

The mother may forget her child

Wha' smiles sae sweetly on her knee,

But I'll remember thee, Glencairn,

And all that thou hast done for me. BURNS.

sows his seed upon the sand: upon the former he makes no impression, and from the latter he finds no production. The only voice of ingratitude is, give, give; but when the gift is once received, then, like the swine at his trough, it is silent and insatiable. In a word, the ungrateful person is a monster, which is all throat and belly; a kind of thoroughfare or common shore, for the good things of the world to pass into; and of whom, in respect of all kindnesses conferred on him, may be verified that observation of the lion's den; before which appeared the footsteps of many that had gone in thither, but no prints of any that ever came out thence.

COVETOUSNESS.

OF covetousness we may truly say, that it makes both the Alpha and Omega in the devil's alphabet, and that it is the first vice in corrupt nature which moves, and the last which dies. For look upon any infant, and as soon as it can but move a hand, we shall see it reaching out after something or other which it should not have; and he who does not know it to be the proper and peculiar sin of old age, seems himself to have the dotage of that age upon him, whether he has the years or no.

The covetous person lives as if the world were made altogether for him, and not he for the world, to take in every thing, and to part with nothing. Charity is accounted no grace with him, nor gratitude any virtue. The cries of the poor never

enter into his ears; or if they do, he has always one ear readier to let them out than the other to take them in. In a word, by his rapines and extortions, he is always for making as many poor as he can, but for relieving none, whom he either finds or makes so. So that it is a question, whether his heart be harder, or his fist closer. In a word, he is a pest and a monster: greedier than the sea, and barrenner than the shore.

SELF-DECEPTION.

FROM the beginning of the world, to this day, there was never any great villany acted by men, but it was in the strength of some great fallacy put upon their minds by a false representation of evil for good, or good for evil. Is a man impoverished and undone by the purchase of an estate? why; it is, because he bought an imposture; payed down his money for a lie, and by the help of the best and ablest counsel (forsooth) that could be had, took a bad title for a good. Is a man unfortunate in marriage? still it is, because he was deceived, and put his neck into the snare, before he put it into the yoke, and so took that for virtue and affection, which was nothing but vice in a disguise, and a devilish humour under a demure look. Is he again unhappy and calamitous in his friendships? why in this also, it is because he built upon the air and trod upon a quicksand, and took that for kindness and sincerity which was only malice and design.

KNOWLEDGE OF GOOD AND EVIL.

THE natural inability of most men to judge exactly of things, makes it very difficult for them to discern the real good and evil of what comes before them, to consider and weigh circumstances, to scatter and look through the mists of error, and so separate appearances from reality. For the greater part of mankind is but slow and dull of apprehension; and therefore in many cases under a necessity of seeing with other men's eyes, and judging with other men's understandings. To which their want of judging or discerning abilities, we may add also their want of leisure and opportunity to apply their minds to such a serious and attent consideration, as may let them into a full discovery of the true goodness and evil of things, which are qualities which seldom display themselves to the first view There must be leisure and retirement, solitude and a sequestration of man's self from the noise and toil of the world; for truth scorns to be

seen by eyes too much fixed upon inferior objects. It lies too deep to be fetched up with the plough, and too close to be beaten out with the hammer. It dwells not in shops or workhouses; nor till the late age was it ever known, that any one served seven years to a smith or a tailor, that he might at the end thereof, proceed master of any other arts, but such as those trades taught him: and much less that he should commence doctor or di

vine from the shopboard, or the anvil; or from whistling to a team, come to preach to a congregation. These were the peculiar, extraordinary privileges of the late blessed times of light and inspiration otherwise nature will still hold on its old course, never doing anything which is considerable without the assistance of its two great helps -art and industry. But above all, the knowledge of what is good and what is evil, what ought and what ought not to be done in the several offices and relations of life, is a thing too large to be compassed, and too hard to be mastered, without brains and study, parts and contemplation.*

* Such were the sentiments of South. Shakespeare, in Troilus and Cressida, says,

Paris, and Troilus, you have both said well;
And on the cause and question now in hand
Have gloz'd, but superficially; not much
Unlike young men, whom Aristotle thought
Unfit to hear moral philosophy :

The reasons you allege, do more conduce
To the hot passion of distemper'd blood,
Than to make up a free determination

'Twixt right and wrong; for pleasure and revenge
Have ears more deaf than adders to the voice

Of any true decision.

Lord Bacon, in stating the objections made by divines to the advancement of learning, says, They urge that knowledge is of the nature and number of those things, which are to be accepted with great limitation and caution; that the aspiring to overmuch knowledge was the original temptation and sin, whereupon ensued the fall of man." To which Lord Bacon answers, "the divines do not observe and consider, that it was not that pure and primitive knowledge of nature, by the light whereof man did give names to other