How many drink the cup Of baleful grief, or eat the bitter bread Of misery. Sore pierc'd by wint'ry winds, How many shrink into the sordid hut, Of cheerless poverty. Now, all amid the rigors of the year, In the wild depth of winter, while without Where ruddy fire, and beaming tapers join, p. 169. To cheer the gloom. There studious let me sit, Silence, thou lonely power! the door be thine; Even in the depth of polar night, they find p. 175. p. 184. And half enlivened by the distant sun, Deep from the piercing season sunk in caves, Muttering, the winds at eve, with blunted point Blow hollow-blustering from the south. p. 187. Subdu'd The frost resolves into a trickling thaw. p. 188. Behold, fond man! See here thy pictur'd life!-Pass some few years, And pale concluding winter comes at last, And shuts the scene. Ah! whither now are fled Those gay spent festive nights? those veering thoughts, All now are vanish'd! Virtue sole survives, p. 189. Ye vainly wise! ye blind presumptuous! now In starving solitude: while luxury, In palaces, lay straining her low thought p. 190. EXTRACTS FROM THE FIRST VOLUME OF THE STUDIES OF NATURE, GENERALLY KNOWN BY THE TITLE DE ST. PIERRE. SEVERAL persons have invited me to take residence at their country seats, and up my to enjoy those rural scenes, of which as they are pleased to say, I am so passionately fond. Yes, undoubtedly, I should dearly love a country residence, but a residence which I could call my own, and not another man's. I made the best acknowledgment in my power, to tenders of service so flattering; but could avail myself only of the good will which they breathed. Benevolence is the flower of friendship, and its perfume always lasts while you let it remain on the stem, without gathering it. Notes, p. 10. EXTRACTS FROM THE STUDIES, &c. 123 Others have opposed to me, as a complete refutation, the authority of Newton, who did not think as I do. I respect Newton for his genius and his virtues, but I respect truth still much more. The authority of great names serves but too frequently as a strong hold to error. p. 17. What then could I have done in this crowd of men, vain and intolerant, to each of whom an European education says, from the days of infancy, be the first; and among so many doctors titled, and without titles, who have appropriated to themselves the right to freedom of speech, unless it were to shut myself up, as I frequently do, in my freedom of silence? If I speak there, it is of few things, or of things of slight import ance. Fly from the world, then, ye who will neither flatter nor malign; for you will lose in it, at once, the good which you expected from it, and that which is the gift of your own conscience, p. 18. |