principle, so to regulate the exercise of every power, and limit the indulgence of every appetite, as shall best conduce to one great end. It being the province of wisdom to preside, it sits as umpire on every difficulty, and so gives the final direction and control to all the powers of our nature. Hence it is entitled to be considered as the top and summit of perfection Tt belongs to wisdom to determine when to act, and when o cease; when to reveal, and when to conceal a matter; when to speak, and when to keep silence; when to give, and when to receive; in short, to regulate the measure of all things, as well as to determine the end, and provide the means of obtaining the end pursued in every deliberate course of action. Every particular faculty or skill, besides, should be under the direction of wisdom; for each is quite incapable of directing itself. The art of navigation, for instance, will teach us to steer a ship across the ocean; but it will never teach us on what occasions it is proper to take a voyage. The art of war will instruct us how to marshal an army, or to fight a battle to the greatest advantage; but we must learn from a higher school when it is fitting, just, and proper to wage war or to make peace. The art of the husbandman is to till the earth and bring to maturity its precious fruits; it belongs to another skill to regulate the consumption of these fruits by a regard to our health, fortune, and other circumstances. In short, there is no faculty we can exert, no species of skill we can apply, that does not require a superintending hand-that does not look up, as it were, to some higher principle, for guidance, and this guide is Wisdom. ROBERT HALL. Umpire, a person to whose sole decision a controversy or question between parties is referred.- Deliberate, carefully considering the probable consequences of a step, slow in determining, well-advised or considered, not udden or rash. 58. The Happiest Wife in Rome. Licinia. I AM the happiest wife in Rome, my Livia! The happiest wife in Rome! Livia. I doubt it not; But there's Flaminius' wife, the other day, Scarce from the Forum to her house could pass For salutations, that her husband won The consulate. Licinia. That day, my Caius sat At home with me, and read to me, my Livia.. Little cared I who won the consulate! Livia. And there's Lectorius has obtained a government; His wife will be a queen. Licinia. Well, let her be so. My queendom is, to be a simple wife. This is my government, my husband's house, His knee, than seated in the consul's chair, Livia. Yet his greatness Must needs be thine. Licinia. I do not care for greatness. It is a thing lives too much out of doors; 'Tis any where but at home; you will not find it Once in a week, in its own house, at supper With a family. And ask for it; Knock any hour you choose, nine times in ten, they'll send you He promised to be back again, which is first; I never think of any world without. Livia. Well, then, you are the happiest wife in Rome Licinia. Tell me, and did Flaminius' wife weep, Livia That day that Rome did salutation unto her? Livia. Weep! No. Why should she weep? Licinia. For happiness. Do you see?—I cannot talk of Caius but SHERIDAN KNOWLES 59. The Love of Fame. AMONG the variety of principles by which mankind are actuated, there is one which I scarcely know whether to consider as springing from grandeur and nobility of mind, or from a refined species of vanity and egotism. It is that singular, though almost universal desire of living in the memory of posterity; of occupying a share of the world's attention, long after we have ceased to be susceptible either of its praise or censure. Most of the passions of the mind are bounded by the grave. Sometimes, indeed, an anxious hope or trembling fear will venture beyond the clouds and darkness that rest Egotism, the practice of too frequently using the word I; hence, a speaking or writing much of one's self, self-praise, self-commendation, the act or practice of magnifying one's self, or making one's self of importance. upon our mortal horizon, and expatiate in boundless futurity; but it is only this active love of fame which steadily contemplates its fruition in the applause or gratitude of future ages. Indignant at the narrow limits which circumscribe existence, ambition is forever struggling to soar beyond them; to triumph over space and time, and to bear a name, at least, above the inevitable oblivion in which every thing else that It is ambition which us must be involved. prompts the patriot to his most heroic achievements; which inspires the sublimest strains of the poet, and breathes ethereal fire into the productions of the painter and the sculptor. concerns For this the monarch rears the lofty column; the laurelled conqueror claims the triumphal arch; while the obscure individual. who moved in an humbler sphere, asks but a plain and simple stone to mark his grave, and bear to the next generation this important truth-that he was born, died, and was buried. It was this passion, too, which erected the vast Numidian piles, whose ruins we have so often regarded with wonder, as the shades of evening - fit emblems of oblivion-gradually stole over and enveloped them in darkness. It was this which gave being to those sublime monuments of Saracen magnificence, which nod in mouldering desolation, as the blast sweeps over the deserted plains. How futile are all our efforts to evade the obliterating hand of time! As I traversed the dreary wastes of Egypt, on my journey to Grand Cairo, I stopped my camel for a while, and contemplated, in awful admiration, the stupendous pyramids. An appalling silence prevailed around-such as reigns in the wilderness when the tempest is hushed, and the beasts of prey have retired to their dens. The myriads that had Expatiate, to move at large, to wander in space without restraint, te enlarge in discourse or writing, to be copious in argument or discussion. Fruition, use accompanied with pleasure, corporeal or intellectual enjoy. ment, the pleasure derived from use or possession. once been employed in rearing these lofty mementos of human vanity, whose busy hum once enlivened the solitude of the desert, had all been swept from the earth by the irresistible arm of Death; all were mingled with their native dust, all were forgotten! Even the mighty names which these sepulchres were designed to perpetuate, had long since faded from remembrance; history and tradition afforded but vague conjectures, and the pyramids imparted a humiliating lesson to the candidate for immortality. Alas! alas! said I to myself, how slender are the foundations on which our proudest hopes of future fame are built! He who imagines that he has secured to himself the meed of deathless renown, indulges in deluding visions, which only bespeak the vanity of the dreamer. The storied obelisk the triumphal arch the swelling dome-shall crumble into dust, and often, before these structures have perished, the names they would preserve from oblivion will have passed away. WASHINGTON IRVING 60. On Life, Death, and Immortality. TIRED Nature's sweet restorer, balmy Sleep! Where fortune smiles; the wretched he forsakes; Night, sable goddess! from her ebon throne, |