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Our innocence is not our shield:

They take offence, who have not been offended;
They seek our ruin too, who speak us fair;
And death is often ambush'd in our smiles.
We know not whom we have to fear.

Young's Revenge, a. 3.

Foul hypocrisy's so much the mode,

There is no knowing hearts from words and looks.
Thieves, bawds, and panders wear the holy leer;
Ev'n ruthians cant, and undermining knaves
Display a mimic openness of soul.

W. Shirley's Parricide.

Think'st thou there are no serpents in the world
But those who slide along the grassy scd,
And sting the luckless foot that presses them?
There are who in the path of social life
Do bask their spotted skins in fortune's sun,
And sting the soul-Ay, till its healthful frame
Is chang'd to secret, fest'ring, sore disease,
So deadly is the wound.

Joanna Baillie's De Montford, a. 1, s. 2.

He seem'd

For dignity compos'd and high exploit:

But all was false and hollow.

Milton's Paradise Lost, b. 2.

Hypocrisy, the only evil that walks

Invisible, except to God alone,

By his permissive will, through heav'n and earth.
And oft though wisdom wakes, suspicion sleeps
At wisdom's gate, and to simplicity

Resigns her charge, while goodness thinks no ill

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Where no ill seems.

Ibid, b. 3.

The world's all title-page; there's no contents;
The world's all face; the man who shows his heart!
Is whooted for his nudities, and scorn'd.

Young's Night Thoughts, n. 8.

I.

IDLENESS.

The grey-ey'd morning braves me to my face,
And calls me sluggard. Middleton's Family of Love.
Life's cares are comforts; such by Heav'n design'd;
He that has 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's Night Thoughts, n. 2. Leisure is pain; takes off our chariot wheels; How heavily we drag the load of life! Blest leisure is our curse; like that of Cain, It makes us wander; wander earth around To fly that tyrant thought. As Atlas groan'd The world beneath, we groan beneath an hour. Ibid.

Is there aught in sleep can charm the wise?

To lie in dead oblivion, losing half

The fleeting moments of too short a life;
Total extinction of the enlighten'd soul !
Or else to feverish vanity alive,

Wilder'd, and tossing thro' distemper'd dreams?
Who would in such a gloomy state remain
Longer than nature craves; when every muse
And every blooming pleasure wait without,
To bless the wildly devious morning walk ?

Thomson's Seasons--Summer.

1

An empty form

Is the weak virtue, that amid the shade
Lamenting lies, with future schemes amus'd,
While wickedness and folly, kindred powers,
Confound the world.

Arrest the present moments;

For be assur'd they are all arrant tell-tales;

Thomson.

And though their flight be silent, and their path track

less

As the wing'd couriers of the air,

They post to Heaven, and there record their folly—
Because, tho' station'd on the important watch,
Thou, like a sleeping, faithless sentinel,
Didst let them pass unnotic'd, unimprov'd.
And know, for that thou slumber'st on the guard,
Thou shalt be made to answer at the bar
For every fugitive: and when thou thus
Shalt stand impleaded at the high tribunal
Of hoodwink'd justice, who shall tell thy audit?
Cotton's To-morrow.

Go to the ant, thou sluggard, learn to live,
And by her wary ways reform thine own.

From other care absolv'd, the busy mind
Finds in yourself a theme to pore upon :
It finds you miserable, or makes you so.
For while yourself you anxiously explore,
Timorous self-love, with sick'ning fancy's aid,
Presents the danger that you dread the most,
And ever galls you in your tender part.
Hence some for love, and some for jealousy,
For grim religion some, and some for pride,
Have lost their reason: some for fear of want,
Want all their lives; and others every day
For fear of dying suffer worse than death.

Smart.

Armstrong's Art of Preserving Health, b. 4.

The sedentary stretch their lazy length
When custom bids, but no refreshment find,
For none they need: the languid eye, the cheek
Deserted of its bloom, the flaccid, shrunk,
And wither'd muscle, and the vapid soul,
Reproach their owner with that love of rest
To which he forfeits ev'n the rest he loves.

Cowper's Task, b. 1.

Come hither, ye that press your beds of down
And sleep not see him sweating o'er his bread
Before he eats it.-'Tis the primal curse,
But soften'd into mercy; made the pledge

Of cheerful days, and nights without a groan. Ibid.

Like a coy maiden, ease, when courted most,
Farthest retires-an idol, at whose shrine
Who oft'nest sacrifice are favor'd least.

IMMORTALITY.

It must be so: Plato, thou reasonest well:
Else whence this pleasing hope, this fond desire,
This longing after immortality?

Or whence this secret dread, and inward horror,
Of falling into nought? Why shrinks the soul
Back on herself, and startles at destruction ?
'Tis the divinity that stirs within us;

'Tis Heav'n itself that points out an hereafter,
And intimates eternity to man.

Ibid.

Addison's Cato.

The soul secure in her existence, smiles
At the drawn dagger, and defies its point:
The stars shall fade away, the sun himself
Grow dim with age; and Nature sink in years:
But thou shalt flourish in immortal youth,

Unhurt amidst the war of elements,

The wreck of matter, and the crash of worlds. Ibid.

158

IMMORTALITY-INDEPENDENCE.

Look nature through, 'tis revolution all;

All change; no death. Day follows night; and night
The dying day; stars rise, and set, and rise;
Earth takes th' example. See, the summer gay,
With her green chaplet, and ambrosial flowers,
Droops into pallid autumn: winter grey,
Horrid with frost, and turbulent with storm,
Blows autumn, and his golden fruits, away:
Then melts into the spring: soft spring, with breath
Favonian, from warm chambers of the south,
Recalls the first. All, to re-flourish, fades ;
As in a wheel, all sinks, to reascend.
Emblems of man, who passes, not expires.

Young's Night Thoughts, n. 6.

Can it be?

Matter immortal? and shall spirit die?
Above the nobler, shall less noble rise?
Shall man alone, for whom all else revives,
No resurrection know? Shall man alone,
Imperial man! be sown in barren ground,

Less privileg'd than grain, on which he feeds? Ibid.

Still seems it strange, that thou shouldst live for ever?
Is it less strange, that thou shouldst live at all?
This is a miracle; and that no more.

Ibid, n. 7.

Possession, why, more tasteless than pursuit ?
Why is a wish far dearer than a crown ?
That wish accomplish'd, why, the grave of bliss?
Because, in the great future bury'd deep,

Beyond our plans of empire, and renown,
Lies all that man with ardor should pursue;

And He who made him, bent him to the right. Ibid.

INDEPENDENCE.

Hail! Independence, hail! Heaven's next best gift, To that of life and an immortal soul !

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