Providence may clearly be perceived in this proceeding. The motions of the sun and moon; in short, the whole system of the universe, as far as philosophers have been able to discover and observe, are in the utmost degree of regularity and perfection; but wherever God has left to man the power of interposing a remedy by thought or labour, there he has placed things in a state of imperfection, on purpose to stir up human industry, without which life would stagnate, or indeed rather could not subsist at all: Curis acuunt mortalia coraa.

Praise is the daughter of present power.

How inconsistent is man with himself!

I have known several persons of great fame for wisdom in public affairs and councils, governed by foolish servants:

I have known great ministers, distinguished for wit and learning, who preferred none but dunces:

I have known men of great valour, cowards to their wives:

I have known men of the greatest cunning, perpetually cheated:

I knew three great ministers, who could exactly compute and settle the accompts of a kingdom, but were wholly ignorant of their own economy.

The preaching of divines helps to preserve wellinclined men in the course of virtue, but seldom or never reclaims the vicious.

Princes usually make wiser choices than the servants whom they trust for the disposal of places I have known a prince, more than once, choose an able minister: but I never observed that minister to use his credit in the disposal of an employment to a person whom he thought the

fittest for it. One of the greatest in this age owned, and excused the matter, from the violence of parties, and the unreasonableness of friends.

Small causes are sufficient to make a man uneasy, when great ones are not in the way: for want of a block he will stumble at a straw.

Dignity, high station, or great riches, are in some sort necessary to old men, in order to keep the younger at a distance, who are otherwise too apt to insult them upon the score of their age.

Every man desires to live long; but no man would be old.

Love of flattery, in most men, proceeds from the mean opinion they have of themselves; in women, from the contrary.

If books and laws continue to increase as they have done for fifty years past, I am in some concern for future ages, how any man will be learned, or any man a lawyer.

Kings are commonly said to have long hands; I wish they had as long ears.

Princes in their infancy, childhood, and youth, are said to discover prodigious parts and wit, to speak things that surprise and astonish: strange, so many hopeful princes, and so many shameful kings! If they happen to die young, they would have been prodigies of wisdom and virtue: if they live, they are often prodigies indeed, but of another sort.

Politics, as the word is commonly understood, are nothing but corruptions, and consequently of no use to a good king, or a good ministry: for which reason all courts are so full of politics.

Silenus, the foster-father of Bacchus, is always

* Harley.

carried by an ass, and has horns on his head. The moral is, that drunkards are led by fools, and have a great chance to be cuckolds.

Venus, a beautiful good-natured lady, was the goddess of love; Juno, a terrible shrew, the goddess of marriage: and they were always mortal

enemies.

Those who are against religion, must needs be fools; and therefore we read that of all animals, God refused the first born of an ass.

A very little wit is valued in a woman, as we are pleased with a few words spoken plain by a parrot.

A nice man is a man of nasty ideas.

Apollo was held the god of physic, and sender of diseases. Both were originally the same trade, and still continue.

Old men and comets have been reverenced for the same reason; their long beards, and pretences to foretel events.

A person was asked at court, "what he thought of an ambassador, and his train, who were all embroidery and lace, full of bows, cringes, and ges tures?" He said, "it was Solomon's importation, gold and apes."

There is a story in Pausanias of a plot for betraying a city discovered by the braying of an ass; the cackling of geese saved the capitol; and Catiline's conspiracy was discovered by a whore. These are the only three animals, as far as I remember, famous in history as evidences and informers.

Most sorts of diversion in men, children, and other animals, are in imitation of fighting.

Augustus meeting an ass with a lucky name, foretold himself good fortune. I meet many asses, but none of them have lucky names.

ر

If a man makes me keep my distance, the comfort is, he keeps his at the same time.

Who can deny that all men are violent lovers of truth, when we see them so positive in their errors, which they will maintain out of their zeal to truth, although they contradict themselves every day of their lives?

That was excellently observed, say I, when I read a passage in an author, where his opinion agrees with mine. When we differ, there I pronounce him to be mistaken.

Very few men, properly speaking, live at present, but are providing to live another time.

As universal a practice as lying is, and as easy a one as it seems, I do not remember to have heard three good lies in all my conversation, even from those who were most celebrated in that faculty.

THOUGHTS ON VARIOUS SUBJECTS.

CONTINUED 1726.

LAWS penned with the utmost care and exactness, and in the vulgar language, are often perverted to wrong meanings; then why should we wonder that the Bible is so?

Although men are accused for not knowing their weakness, yet perhaps as few know their own strength.

A man seeing a wasp creeping into a vial filled with honey, that was hung on a fruit tree, said thus: "Why, thou sottish animal, art thou mad

of

to go into the vial, where you see many hundred your kind dying before you?"-"The reproach is just," answered the wasp, "but not from you men, who are so far from taking example by other people's follies, that you will not take warning by your own. If after falling several times into this vial, and escaping by chance, I should fall in again, I should then but resemble you.'

An old miser kept a tame jackdaw, that used to steal pieces of money and hide them in a hole; which the cat observing, asked, "Why he would hoard up those round shining things that he could make no use of ?"-" Why," said the jackdaw, my master has a whole chest full, and makes no more use of them than I."

Men are contented to be laughed at for their wit, but not for their folly.

If the men of wit and genius would resolve never to complain in their works of critics and detractors, the next age would not know that they ever had

any.

After all the maxims and systems of trade and commerce, a stander-by would think the affairs of the world were most ridiculously contrived.

There are few countries, which, if well cultivated, would not support double the number of their inhabitants, and yet fewer where one third part of the people are not extremely stinted even in the necessaries of life. I send out twenty barrels of corn, which would maintain a family in bread for a year, and I bring back in return a vessel of wine, which half a dozen good fellows would drink in less than a month, at the expense of their health and reason.

A motto for the Jesuits:

Quæ regio in terris nostri non plena laboris ?