Shot up their spires; the bellying sheet between The boat, light-skimming, stretch'd its oary wings; From bank to bank increas'd; whence ribb'd with oak, To bear the British thunder, black and bold, 16. Ten thousand thousand fleet ideas, such Of tyrant pride; the fearless great resolve; ; 17. At thirty, man suspects himself a fool; Resolves, and re-resolves, then-dies the same. 18. The cloud-capp'd towers, the gorgeous palaces, The solemn temples, the great globe itself, SUSPENSION, OR A DELAYING OF THE SENSE.1 1. As beauty of person, with an agreeable carriage, pleases the eye, and that pleasure consists in observing that all the parts have a certain elegance, and are proportioned to each other; so does decency of behaviour obtain the approbation of all with whom we converse, from the order, consistency, and moderation of our words and actions. 2. Since it is certain that our hearts deceive us in the love of the world, and that we cannot command ourselves enough to resign it, though we every day wish ourselves disengaged from its allurements; let us not stand upon a formal taking of leave, but wean ourselves from them, while we are in the midst of them. 3. To hear a judicious and elegant discourse from the pulpit, which would in print make a noble figure, murdered by him who had learning and taste to compose it, but, having been neglected as to one important part of his education, knows not how to deliver it otherwise than with a tone between singing and saying, or with a nod of his head, to enforce, as with a hammer, every emphatical word, or with the same unanimated monotony in which he was used to repeat Quæ genus at Westminster school; what can be imagined more lamentable? yet what more common! 4. The causes of good and evil are so various and uncertain, so often entangled with each other, so diversified by various relations, and so much subject to accidents which cannot be foreseen; that he who would fix his condition upon incontestable reasons of preference, must live and die inquiring and deliberating. 5. Besides the ignorance of masters who teach the first rudiments of reading, and the want of skill, or negligence in that article, of those who teach the learned languages; 1 In all such cases the voice should be kept suspended till the sense has been completed.—See Rule I., page 51, and the Notes and Examples under it. besides the erroneous manner which the untutored pupils fall into, through the want of early attention in masters to correct small faults in the beginning, which increase and gain strength with years; besides bad habits contracted from imitation of particular persons, or the contagion of example, from a general prevalence of a certain tone or chaunt in reading or reciting, peculiar to each school, and regularly transmitted from one generation of boys to another: besides all these, which are fruitful sources of vicious elocution, there is one fundamental error in the method universally used in teaching to read, which at first gives a wrong bias, and leads us ever after blindfolded from the right path, under the guidance of a false rule. 6. If reason teaches the learned, necessity the barbarian, common custom all nations in general; and if even nature itself instructs the brutes to defend their bodies, limbs, and lives, when attacked, by all possible methods; you cannot pronounce this action criminal without determining at the same time, that whoever falls into the hands of a highwayman must of necessity perish either by his sword or your decisions. Had Milo been of this opinion, he would certainly have chosen to fall by the hands of Clodius, who had more than once, before this, made an attempt upon his life, rather than be executed by your order, because he had not tamely yielded himself a victim to his rage. But if none of you are of this opinion, the proper question is, not whether Clodius was killed? for that we grant: but whether justly or unjustly? an inquiry of which many precedents are to be found. 7. When the gay and smiling aspect of things has begun to leave the passages to a man's heart thus thoughtlessly unguarded; when kind and caressing looks of every object without, that can flatter his senses, has conspired with the enemy within, to betray him and put him off his defence; when music likewise hath lent her aid, and tried her power upon the passions; when the voice of singing men, and the voice of singing women, with the sound of the viol and the lute, have broken in upon his soul, and in some tender notes have touched the secret springs of rapture,—that moment let us dissect and look into his heart ;—see how vain, how weak, how empty a thing it is! 8. Seeing then that the soul has many different faculties or, in other words, many different ways of acting; that it can be intensely pleased or made happy by all these different faculties, or ways of acting; that it may be endowed with several latent faculties, which it is not at present in a condition to exert; that we cannot believe the soul is endowed with any faculty which is of no use to it; that whenever any one of these faculties is transcendently pleased, the soul is in a state of happiness; and in the last place, considering that the happiness of another world is to be the happiness of the whole man, who can question but that there is an infinite variety in those pleasures we are speaking of; and that this fulness of joy will be made up of all those pleasures which the nature of the soul is capable of receiving? 9. In that soft season, when descending showers 10. He who through vast immensity can pierce, What varied beings people every star, May tell why heav'n has made us as we are. 11. Peace to all such! but were there one whose fires True genius kindles, and fair fame inspires ; Blessed with each talent and each art to please, Should such a man, too fond to rule alone, 12. If ever you have looked on better days; If ever been where bells have knoll'd to church; If ever sat at any good man's feast; If ever from your eyelids wiped a tear, Restore us, and regain the blissful seat, 14. Sweet is the breath of morn, her rising sweet, |