Page images
PDF
EPUB

plaintive under little vexations and slight disappointments; as if their submission in one case gives them a right to rebel in another." It is these seemingly little trifles that give a colour to our lives, as they recur more frequently than more important events; and it is in these lesser instances, that the faculties of our minds may be most successfully exerted against the emotions of peevishness and impatience.

When the hand of death has rent from us our dearest comforts, and our bleeding hearts are alive only to anguish ; or when pain and disease absorb every faculty, and rage in every nerve, it is not the time to reason. Nature will have its way; it is fit it should be so; religion only can support or stop the impetuosity of the torrent; a debility generally succeeds this state; the passions, exhausted by their own violence, sink into a calm, and though the latent sense of loss is still the same, the expressions of it grows less strong and less apparent. Then it is we feel this sickly weariness of existence, this discontented languor of the mind, which perhaps is more fatal, both to its peace and its faculties, than any violent agitations of grief, in proportion as its effects are more lasting. We become incapable of enjoying those blessings that are left, by too keeń a remembrance of those we are deprived of. I do not mean by this to condemn that tender remembrance of our departed friends, which a grateful mind will ever cherish :

Absent or dead, still let a friend be dear,

A sigh the absent claims, the dead a tear.

When time has in some measure softened the pangs of separation, such minds will dwell with tender grateful woe (sad ecstasy!) on all the virtues that adorned, and on all the kindnesses that endeared the object of their love and grief; such emotions are certainly laudable, confined within proper limits, but we should be careful that they unfit us not for the duties of life. Ah! how difficult is it to prevent the mind, when strongly affected by such sensations, from being totally absorbed by them! But this languid discontent is not peculiar to a season of affliction, it steals over us in the hours of festivity, and withers the wreath on the brow of pleasure. "We sigh for something, what we cannot say." The mind of man must be continually in action, and if it have not other objects to feed on, it will prey on itself. I know of nothing more effectual to vanquish this silent foe to our peace, which like some treache

rous miner, saps the foundation of our happiness before we are sensible of his approaches, than fixing the mind steadily on some laudable pursuit; the imagination is not then at liberty so much to torment us with visionary ills and surely nothing can have a greater tendency to repress the urmurs of discontent, than the offices of benevolence; to confer happiness is in some measure to receive it. If our situations cannot afford us pleasure, let us rejoice in the festivity of others; and surely that joy must be heightened by the reflection, that we have in any degree contributed towards it: and though the communication of happiness will not remove those evils which Providence, for wise, though to us often undiscoverable ends, sees fit to visit us with, and for which patience and resignation are the only medicines, yet it will in a great measure repress that sickly discontent, that consumption of our peace, which originates in an ill-governed imagination, or a too dejected habit of mind. O say ye, whom Providence has indulged with the power of mitigating the woes of others, and with the still greater blessing of an inclination to make use of that power, if it be not genuine transport to wipe the tear from the widow's eye, or cheer the drooping heart of the fatherless? Can that heart be corroded with discontent, that is dilated with the glow of benevolence, and diffusing happiness, as far as the little circle of its power permits, to all around?" And next to virtue, science charms my eye," says the elegant and amiable female advocate: and can there be a more proper pursuit for rational beings than the acquisition of useful knowledge? "Knowledge, the food of minds! 'tis angel's food;" the communication of which we may, I think, without absurdity suppose, will be one of the employments of that happy world where sin and its attendant sorrow will be eternally banished.

The mind earnestly employed in exploring the arcana of nature, or tracing the mazy paths of learning, rises above the little causes that wound the unemployed and vacant mind. When we read of the fall of kingdoms and of empires, of the heroes and sages of antiquity, the preservers of the world, and the destroyers of it, we lose our little selves in the immense survey, and are ready to exclaim, "What then am I, who sorrow for myself?" Or if astronomy unfold the ample page of the firmament, and teach us to soar where other suns illumine other systems, the expanded mind looks down with contempt on the minute trifles that sometimes disturb its repose; and if human discoveries can

thus enlarge the mind, what must our contemplations be when the mind soars beyond them all to realms of brighter glory, led not by the feeble taper of science, but the full beamings of revelation? And here the mind, unilluminated by science, may wing its way far beyond her proudest discoveries.

"Knowledge, how vain! a Saviour all unknown."

Nor are there wanting sources of humbler entertainment sufficient to repress the sickly cravings of imagination, to those on whom science has never poured her intellectual day. The volume of creation is as open to my inspection as to that of the astronomer or virtuoso; and I may read Omnipotence inscribed in as legible characters on every leaf. The page of genius is not confined, and the smiles of the Muses can fill their lowliest votary with transport. Indeed the finer arts, which polish while they please, are peculiarly adapted to smooth the rugged path of life, and twine its thorns with roses. Creation wears a livelier bloom when viewed with a contemplative eye. The imagination, refined by the sweet, the powerful influence of poetry, discerns a thousand charms unobserved by a less awakened, or less attentive mind, and feels a rapture never to be described ! Beauty pencils every vale,

Music breathes in every gale!

Attention to the various pursuits in which we are engaged, is no less the parent of pleasure than of improvement. It is in the vacant unemployed hour that lassitude and discontent shed their poison over the mind; and though the imperfections of mortality forbid us to attempt or even to wish that our minds should be always upon the stretch, yet did we even in our amusements propose to ourselves some end to be attained, we should find the amusements sweetened. By following continually the impulse of the moment, we are often led into error, and still oftener into that habit of lassitude and discontent which unfits us for every labour, and consequently for every pleasure of life; for

Life's cares are comforts, such by heaven designed,
He that hath none must make them or be wretched.
Cares are employments, and without employ
The soul is on a rack, the rack of rest,

To souls most adverse, action all their joy..

YOUNG.

SUBLIME THOUGHT,

SAID TO BE WRITTEN BY NEARLY AN IDIOT, AT CIRENCESTER.

COULD we with ink the ocean fill,
Were the whole earth of parchment made,
Were ev'ry single stick a quill,
And ev'ry man a scribe by trade;
To write the love of God above
Would drain the ocean dry;

Nor could the scroll contain the whole,
Though stretch'd from sky to sky.

VIRTUE SLEEPING.

VIRTUE, as hard up hill she went,
Grew faint, her very soul was spent ;
So down she sat a while to rest,

And low'r'd her shield beneath her breast.
She slept, and as she slept she smil'd,
A dream had all her thoughts beguil'd.
Vice watch'd for this, and sent a dart
That reach'd-say not it reach'd her heart:
It must have pierc'd it through and through,
But with his shield an angel flew ;

E'en through that shield the weapon found
Its way, and lodg'd a dangerous wound;
A wound that virtue bath'd with tears
For days, for weeks, for months, for years.
'Twas heal'd at last, but virtue still
Weeps at the thought of Drowsy Hill.
When virtue sleeps, nor dreams of pain,
She'll soon be wounded-may be slain.

[merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][ocr errors][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small]

Ancient living, mode of, an extract from the diary

of Elizabeth Woodville, in 1486

Anecdotes-The Countess of Bedford

[blocks in formation]

749

533
- ibid.

[blocks in formation]

Lessons in Arithmetic

Articles, miscellaneous

Astronomy

[merged small][merged small][ocr errors][merged small][merged small]

745

210

ibid.

213

174

« PreviousContinue »