ON WOMAN'S INCONSTANCY.

I lov'd thee once, I'll love no more,
Thine be the grief as is the blame;
Thou art not what thou wast before,
What reason I should be the same?

He that can love unlov'd again,
Hath better store of love than brain :
God send me love my debts to pay,
While unthrifts fool their love away.

Nothing could have my love o'erthrown,
If thou hadst still continued mine;
Yea, if thou hadst remain'd thy own,
I might perchance have yet been thine.
But thou thy freedom did recall,
That if thou might elsewhere inthral ;
And then how could I but disdain
A captive's captive to remain ?

When new desires had conquer'd thee,
And chang'd the object of thy will,
It had been lethargy in me,

Not constancy, to love thee still.
Yea, it had been a sin to go
And prostitute affection so,
Since we are taught no prayers to say
To such as must to others pray.

Yet do thou glory in thy choice,
Thy choice of his good fortune boast;
I'll neither grieve nor yet rejoice,
To see him gain what I have lost;

The height of my disdain shall be,
To laugh at him, to blush for thee;
To love thee still, but go no more
A begging to a beggar's door.-Sir R. Ayton.

GOVERNMENT.

In Orpheus's theatre, all beasts and birds assembled; and, forgetting their several appetites, some of prey, some of game, some of quarrel, stood all sociably together, listening unto the airs and accords of the harp; the sound whereof no sooner ceased, or was drowned by some louder noise, but every beast returned to his own nature; wherein is aptly described the nature and condition of men, who are full of savage and unreclaimed desires of profit, of lust, of revenge: which, as long as they give ear to precepts, to laws, to religion, sweetly touched with eloquence and persuasion of books, of sermons, of harangues, so long is society and peace maintained; but if these instruments be silent, or sedition and tumult make them not audible, all things dissolve into anarchy and confusion.-Lord Bacon.

AGAINST FINE CLOTHES.

Good clothes are the embroidered trappings of pride, and good cheer the very root of gluttony. Did man, think you, come wrangling into the world about no better matters, than all his lifetime to make privy searches in Birchin Lane for whalebone doublets, or for pies of nightingales' tongues in Heliogabalus his kitchen? No, no; the first suit of apparel that ever mortal man put on, came neither from the mercer's shop nor the merchant's warehouse: Adam's bill would have been taken then, sooner than a knight's bond now; yet was he great in nobody's books for satin and velvets. The

silk-worms had something else to do in those days than to set up looms, and be free of the weavers. His breeches were not so much worth as King Stephen's, that cost but a poor noble; for Adam's holiday hose and doublet were of no better stuff than plain fig-leaves, and Eve's best gown of the same piece; there went but a pair of shears between them. An antiquary of this town has yet some of the powder of those leaves to show. Tailors then were none of the twelve companies; their hall, that now is larger than some dorfes among the Netherlanders, was then no bigger than a Dutch butcher's shop: they durst not strike down their customers with large bills: Adam cared not an apple-paring for their lousy hems. There was then neither the Spanish slop, nor the skipper's galligaskin, nor the Danish sleeve, nor the French standing collar: your treble-quadruple ruffs, nor your stiff-necked rabatos, that have more arches for pride than can stand under five London bridges, durst not then set themselves out in point; for the patent for starch could by no means be signed. Fashion was then counted a disease, and horses died of it; but now, thanks to folly, it is held the only rare physic, and the purest golden asses live upon it. Thomas Decker.

BOOKS AND SHIPS COMPARED.

If the invention of the ship was thought so noble, which carrieth riches and commodities from place to place, and consociateth the most remote regions in participation of their fruits, how much more are letters to be magnified, which, as ships, pass through the vast seas of time, and make ages so distant participate of the wisdom, illuminations, and inventions, the one of the other!-Lord Bacon.

THE STRENGTH OF KINGS.

They say that the goodliest cedars which grow on the high mountains of Libanus thrust their roots between the clefts of hard rocks, the better to bear themselves against the strong storms that blow there. As nature has instructed those kings of trees, so has reason taught the kings of men to root themselves in the hardy hearts of their faithful subjects; and as those kings of trees have large tops, so have the kings of men large crowns, whereof, as the first would soon be broken from their bodies, were they not underborne by many branches, so would the other easily totter, were they not fastened on their heads with the strong chains of civil justice and of martial discipline.Sir W. Raleigh.

A VINTNER

Hangs out his bush to show he has not good wine; for that, the proverb says, needs it not. He had rather sell bad wine than good, that stands him in no more; for it makes men sooner drunk, and then they are the easier over-reckoned. By the knaveries he acts above-board, which every man sees, one may easily take a measure of those he does under-ground in his cellar; for he that will pick a man's pocket to his face, will not stick to use him worse in private, when he knows nothing of it. He does not only spoil and destroy his wines, but an ancient reverend proverb, with brewing and racking, that says, "In vino veritas ;" for there is no truth in his, but all false and sophisticated; for he can counterfeit wine as cun

ningly as Apelles did grapes, and cheat men with it, as he did birds. He is an Antichristian cheat, for Christ turned water into wine, and he turns wine into water. He scores all his reckonings upon two tables, made like those of the Ten Commandments, that he may be put in mind to break them as oft as possibly he can; especially that of stealing and bearing false witness against his neighbour, when he draws him bad wine, and swears it is good, and that he can take more for the pipe than the wine will yield him by the bottle a trick that a Jesuit taught him to cheat his own conscience with. When he is found to over-reckon notoriously, he has one common evasion for all, and that is, to say it was a mistake; by which he means that he thought they had not been sober enough to discover it; for if it had passed, there had been no error at all in the case.— Samuel Butler.

FEAR OF DEATH.

Ay, but to die, and go we know not where;
To lie in cold obstruction, and to rot;
This sensible warm motion to become
A kneaded clod; and the delighted spirit
To bathe in fiery floods, or to reside
In thrilling regions of thick-ribbed ice;
To be imprison'd in the viewless winds,
And blown with restless violence round about
The pendant world; or to be worse than worst
Of those, that lawless and incertain thoughts
Imagine howling: 'tis too horrible!
The weariest and most loathed worldly life,
That age, ache, penury, and imprisonment,
Can lay on nature, is a paradise
To what we fear of death.

Shakspere.