Imagini ale paginilor
PDF
ePub

Gods, as in actions of benificence."* With the truly generous are associated those liberal sentiments, those endearing affections, and all those noble exertions, which constitute the happiness and dignity of our nature, and most eminently distinguish the good and the great, from the disingenuous and contemptible!

[ocr errors]

To banish from the world the deeds of the generous, would be to deprive us of the cheerful sun. Every age and every nation have extolled this virtue, and even the narrow and contracted, though they have not the courage to embark in her cause, cannot but yield to it the reluctant sigh of private admiration!

From this celestial impulse is propelled, as it were, from heart to heart, every thing that can mitigate the sufferings of distress, wipe

from

• Nulla re homines propius accedunt ad Deos, quàm salutem hominibus dando.CIC.

from the eye the tears of penitence, encourage the diffident, support the good, and reclaim the profligate! Nor can the generous, even to open enemies, refuse the claims of candour and humanity.

Animating are the proofs of ancient and modern greatness, in the delicate but generous treatment of distinguished warriors to the vanquished foe. Whatever has been conciliating in words, or soothing in manmers, the brave, who are always generous, have been eager to concede!

[ocr errors]

"The opportunity of making happy," observes Rousseau, "is more scarce than we imagine; the punishment of missing it, bis never to meet with it again; and the use we make of it, leaves us an eternal sentiment of satisfaction or repentance."

i

"From this alone," says another admired writer, "proceeds the noble disinterested

friendship,

friendship, the melting love, the generous sentiment, the ardent gratitude, the soft compassion, the candid opinion, and all those strong energies of a good mind."

[ocr errors]
[ocr errors]

"Dear sensibility!" exclaims the celebrated Sterne," source inexhausted of all that's precious in our joys, or costly in our sorrows! thou chainest thy martyr down upon his bed of straw, and it is thou who liftest him up to Heaven. Eternal fountain of our feelings! It is here I trace thee, and this is thy divinity which stirs within me: not, that in some sad and sickening moments, my soul shrinks back upon herself, and startles at destruction'-mere pomp of words !—but that I feel some generous joys and generous cares beyond myself-all comes from thee, great Sensorium of the world! which vibrates, if a hair of our head but falls upon the ground, in the remotest desert of thy creation."

If

If generosity thus ennobles and amplifies the soul, and stands in direct opposition to every thing that is base; if even barbarians reverenced the name of generosity, and those who despised the laws of civility esteemed those of friendship, be not outdone in virtue by them, O Reader! if thou dost aspire to the Christian name; and if thou art desirous of the favour of thy Maker, the esteem of thy fellow-creature, and the applause of thy own conscience,-Be generous!

ESSAY XII.

TEMPERANCE.

IF from no better motives than personal comforts, men were to determine their different habits of life, those of order and regularity offer them by far the greatest bribes; and it will be only to compare with, what shall be hereafter said on excess, to set a true estimation on temperance.

A sober and temperate mode of living, besides acquring that commendation it deserves; in a very great degree secures to us the most desirable of all human blessings, which

[ocr errors]
« ÎnapoiContinuă »