ACTIVE VIRTUE.

I CANNOT praise a fugitive and cloistered virtue unexercised and unbreathed, that never sallies out and sees her adversary, but slinks out of the race, where that immortal garland is to be run for,

cency, except men knew exactly all the conditions of the serpent; his baseness and going upon his belly: his volubility, and lubricity; his envy and sting.

The connection between truth and error, or rather how error leads to truth, may be seen in tracing the progress of any invention, as the steam engine; or of any science, of astronomy for instance, of which there is to any person desi> rous to see how light arises out of darkness, a very interesting delineation in the posthumous works of Adam Smith.

Yet surely to alchemy this right is due, that it may be compared to the husbandman, whereof Æsop makes the fable; that, when he died, told his sons, that he had left unto them gold buried under ground in his vineyard: and they digged over all the ground, and gold they found none : but by reason of their stirring and digging the mould about the roots of the vines, they had a great vintage the year following; so assuredly the search and stir to make gold hath brought to light a great number of good and fruitful inventions and experiments, as well for the disclosing of nature, as for the use of man's life.-BACON.

Good and ill are universally intermingled and confounded; -happiness and misery, wisdom and folly, virtue and vice. Nothing is pure and entirely of a piece. All advantages are attended with disadvantages. A universal compensation prevails in all conditions of being and existence. And it is scarce possible for us by our most chimerical wishes, to form the idea of a station or situation altogether desirable. The draughts of life, according to the poet's fiction, are always mixed from vessels on each hand of Jupiter: or if any cup be presented altogether pure, it is drawn only, as the same poet tells us, from the left-handed vessel.-HUME.

Truth is often covered with heaps of idle and unprofitable

not without dust and heat. This was the reason why our sage and serious poet, Spenser, describing true temperance under the person of Guion, brings him in with his palmer through the cave of Mammon and the bower of earthly bliss, that he might see and know and yet abstain.*

traditions: yet may it be worth our while to seek for a few truths under a whole heap of rubbish.—BISHOP TAYlor.

Nothing tends so much to the corruption of science as to suffer it to stagnate; these waters must be troubled before they can exert their virtues.—BURKE.

There are errors which no wise man will treat with rudeness while there is a probability that they may be the refraction of some great truth as yet below the horizon.

COLERIDGE.

Pythagoras, being asked by Hiero what he was, answered: If Hiero were ever at the Olympian games, he knew the manner, that some came to try their fortunes for the prizes; some as merchants to utter their commodities; some to make good cheer and be merry, and to meet their friends: and some came to look on; and that he was one of them that came to look on but men should know that, in this theatre of man's life, it is reserved only for God and angels to be lookers on.

LORD BACON.

But, according to Swift, even angels are not to be passive: the royal arms of Lilliput, are, he says, "An angel lifting a lame beggar from the earth."

:

Lord Bacon abounds with observations to the same effect : he says,---" A contemplative life, which does not cast any beam of heat or light upon human society, is not known to divinity and the necessity of advancing the public good, censures that philosophy which flies perturbations. Philosophy which introduces such a health of mind, as was that of Herodicus in body, who did nothing all his life, but intend his health. 'Sustine,' and not Abstine,' was the commen

dation of Diogenes."

Philosophy censures the tenderness of some men, who retire too easily from public life, to avoid indignity; but their solu

LIBERTY.

THIS is not the liberty which we can hope, that no grievance ever should arise in the common

tion ought not to be so fine, that every thing may catch in it and tear it.-LORD BACON.

Are we not all passively kind, that is, do we not all, in a greater or less degree, enjoy the pleasures of kindness; and does not the chief difference consist in active and passive kindness. "The cause which I knew not, I searched out," are the words of Job :-" I was an hungred and, ye gave me meat; I was thirsty and ye gave me drink; I was a stranger and ye took me in; naked and ye clothed me; I was sick and ye visited me; I was in prison and ye came unto me," is the language of christianity.

Yet even this, this cold beneficence

Seizes my praise, when I reflect on those,
The sluggard pity's vision weaving tribe

Who sigh for wretchedness, yet shun the wretched,
Nursing in some delicious solitude,

Their slothful loves and dainty sympathies.

COLERIDGE.

Of the duty of activity Milton and Bacon are illustrious examples, Milton says, "When that task of answering the king's defence was enjoined me by public authority, being both in an ill state of health, and the sight of one eye almost gone already, the physicians openly predicting the loss of both, if I undertook this labour; yet nothing terrified by their premonition, I did not long balance whether my duty should be preferred to my eyes."

We all remember his noble sonnet descriptive of this blind

ness:

Cyriac, this three years day, these eyes, tho' clear
To outward view of blemish or of spot,

Bereft of sight, their seeing have forgot.
Nor to their idle orbs does day appear,

Or sun, or moon, or star, throughout the year,

U

wealth, that let no man in this world expect; but when complaints are freely heard, deeply consiOr man or woman. Yet I argue not

Against heaven's hand, or will, nor bate one jot
Of heart or hope; but still bear up, and steer
Right onward. What supports me dost thou ask?
The conscience, friend, to have lost them over-ply'd
In liberty's defence, my noble task,

Whereof all Europe rings from side to side.

This thought might lead me thro' this world's vain mask, Content, tho' blind, had I no other guide.

How deeply Milton felt the sacrifice which he made, may be collected from the following effusion :

With small willingness I endure to interrupt the pursuit of no less hopes than those, and leave a calm and pleasing solitariness, fed with cheerful and confident thoughts, to embark in a troubled sea of noises and hoarse disputes, put from beholding the bright countenance of truth, in the quiet and still air of delightful studies, to come into the dim reflection of hollow antiquities sold by the seeming bulk, and there be fain to club quotations with men whose learning and belief lies in marginal stuffings.

So, too, Lord Bacon says, "We judge also that mankind may conceive some hopes from our example, which we offer, not by way of ostentation, but because it may be useful. If any one therefore should despair, let him consider a man as much employed in civil affairs as any other of his age, a man of no great share of health, who must therefore have lost much time, and yet in this undertaking, he is the first that leads the way, unassisted by any mortal, and steadfastly entering the true path, that was absolutely untrod before, and submitting his mind to things, may somewhat have advanced the design."

How beautifully does Lord Bacon warn us that we ought not too soon to encounter the world. "As the fable goes of the basilisk, that if he see a man first the man dies; but if a man see him first the basilisk dies; so it is with frauds, impostures and evil arts,-if a man discover them first, they lose their power of doing hurt; but if they are not seen, they are dangerous."

dered, and speedily reformed, then is the utmost bound of civil liberty attained that wise men look for.*

LIBELS.

I DENY not, but that it is of the greatest concernment in the church and commonwealth, to have a vigilant eye how books demean themselves as well as men; and thereafter to confine, imprison, and do sharpest justice on them as malefactors; for books are not absolutely dead things, but do contain a progeny of life in them to be as active as that soul was whose progeny they are; nay, they do preserve as in a vial the purest efficacy and extraction of that living intellect that bred them. I know they are as lively, and as vigorously productive, as those fabulous dragons' teeth; and being sown up and down, may chance to spring up armed men.

LICENSERS OF THE PRESS.

LEST Some should persuade ye, lords and commons, that these arguments of learned men's discouragement at this your order are mere flourishes and not real, I could recount what I have seen

* This is true liberty, when free-born men,
Having to advise the public, may speak free.