fates: for to me avarice seems not so much a vice, as a deplorable piece of madness; to conceive. ourselves urinals, or to be persuaded that we are dead, is not so ridiculous, nor so many degrees beyond the power of Hellebore as this.— I have not Peru in my desires, but a competence, and ability to perform those good works to which he hath inclined my nature. He is rich who hath enough to be charitable, and it is hard to be so poor, that a noble mind may not find a way to this piece of goodness. He that giveth to the poor, lendeth to the Lord. - Upon this motive only, I cannot behold a beggar without relieving his necessities with my purse, or his soul with my prayers; these scenical and accidental differences between us, cannot make me forget that common and untouched part of us both; there is under these centoes and miserable outsides, these mutilate and semi-bodies, a soul of the same alloy with our own, whose genealogy is God as well as ours, and in as fair a way to salvation as ourselves. Statists that labour to contrive a commonwealth without poverty, take away the object of charity, not understanding only the commonwealth of a

Christian, but forgetting the prophecy of Christ."

And here I must beg leave to make a single deviation from the plan laid down, and present my readers with a quotation from the first part of the Religio Medici, on the distribution of the goods of fortune, forming an appendage to the passage just brought forward, too valuable and important to be omitted, more especially as it may tend to reconcile many a mind of taste and talent to the patient indurance of the res angustæ domi.

"It is, I confess, the common fate of men of singular gifts of mind, to be destitute of those of fortune; which doth not any way deject the spirit of wiser judgments, who thoroughly understand the justice of this proceeding; and being enriched with higher donatives, cast a more careless eye on these vulgar parts of felicity. It is a most unjust ambition to desire to engross the mercies of the Almighty, nor to be content with the goods of mind, without a possession of those of body or fortune: and it is an error worse than heresy, to adore these complemental and circumstantial pieces of feli

city, and undervalue those perfections and essential points of happiness, wherein we resemble our Maker. To wiser desires it is satisfaction enough to deserve, though not to enjoy the favours of fortune; let Providence provide for fools; it is not partiality, but equity in God, who deals with us but as our natural parents; those that are able of body and mind, he leaves to their deserts; to those of weaker merits he imparts a larger portion, and pieces out the defect of one by the access of the other."

It is, in fact, one of the soundest parts of religion and morality, to believe that the Almighty looks down upon us with favour, in proportion as we cultivate that part of our being which is more immediately the offspring of his own essence, in proportion as we learn to view him as the source of all that is purely intellectual, and therefore, pre-eminently good, in proportion as we learn to despise the accidental differences which constitute the wealth of this world. It is then, that, in the language of our author, we learn to love God for himself, and our neighbour for God;" it is then that to us, "all that is truly amiable is God, or as it were a divided

piece of him, that retains a reflex or shadow of himself. Nor is it strange, that we should place affectionon that which is invisible; all that we truly love is thus ; what we adore under affection of our senses deserves not the honour of so pure a title. Thus we adore Virtue, though to the eyes of sense she be invisible. Thus, that part of our noble friends that we love, is not that part that we embrace, but that insensible part that our arms cannot embrace. God being all goodness, can love nothing but himself; he loves us but for that part, which is as it were himself, and the traduction of his Holy Spirit.

It follows consequently, from this view of the subject, and it is one of which there cannot be a doubt as to its correctness, that every attempt to build happiness on foundations which have no immediate reference to the moral and intellectual parts of our nature, and therefore, to the eternal Spirit as their only source, must be baseless and unsatisfactory; and it is, as the result of thus rightly thinking, that the author of Religio Medici, after declaring his entire conviction of the total nothingness of what is too often sought for under the name of happiness;

terminates his work with a very emphatic expression of his creed on this topic, and with a prayer of the most perfect humility and resignation. It is a passage, in every respect worthy to close the series of sublime and moral quotations, of which the selection has afforded not only myself, but my readers also, I trust, a very high gratification.

"I conclude," says our admirable physician, "there is no felicity in that which the world adores. That wherein God himself is happy, the holy angels are happy, in whose defect the devils are unhappy, that dare I call happiness: whatsoever conduceth unto this, may, with an easy metaphor, deserve that name; whatsoever else the world terms happiness, is to me a story out of Pliny, an apparition or neat delusion, wherein there is no more of happiness than the name. Bless me in this life with but peace of conscience, command of my affections, the love of thyself, and my dearest friends, and I shall be happy enough to pity Cæsar. These are, O Lord, the humble desires of my most reasonable ambition, and all I dare call happiness on earth, wherein I set no rule, or limit, to thy hand or