Talents are the wings which enable man to cleave the depths of wisdom, and bring up thence the powers which astonish and illuminate the world: by them, he crosses the immeasurable flood of time, and converses with sages who are translated to eternity: by them, he soars to heaven, and, led by the seraph, Contemplation, kneels before the very throne of Deity: By them, he unites past, present, and to come and by them, he becomes immortal. Allow them to lie still, and, though they were the plumes of an angel, the possessor would be (effectually) as inanimate as a clod of clay; and as ignorant as the peacock who, spreading his feathers to the sun, exults in a transitory splendour. But it is not enough, with the noble Sidney, that man should cultivate his mind; he must take care that the plantation is weeded of its tares. He sanctions no education, which does not terminate in virtue: to this temple all the avenues of the arts and sciences must tend: they point to the sun, round which they revolve, and from which alone they can, respectively, derive either light, warmth, or brilliancy.

Every other path of study is vain and erratic; it wanders to right and left without any determined end; and loses itself at length, in a wilderness of doubt, dissipation, and disappointment. Man must seek to find. The fruits of Parnassus will not bear to be neglected; they must be reaped as well as sowed, else the harvest will perish where it grew. Neither must the teacher of youth overburthen the mind which he labours to instruct; nor render his lessons odious, by a conduct that contradicts the loveliness of his precepts. He must display living as well as dead examples of the virtues which he wishes to inculcate; for who can see the fruits of knowledge in the man who, presuming on his mental superiority, dares to be as severe and unamiable as he wills? No tyranny is more iron than that of genius, unaccompanied with goodness: and it is a fortunate circumstance for the world, that, though it may dazzle men by its glare, unless it enlightens with its wisdom, it fails of attraction. Such demagogues may have pupils and parasites, but they never make scholars nor friends. Man must love what he

admires, before his heart yields voluntary obe

dience.

REASON AND WISDOM.

1.

GIVE tribute, but not oblation, to human wisdom.

2.

Reason cannot shew itself more reasonable, than to leave reasoning on things above rea

son.

3.

Man's reason is so far off from being the measurer of religious faith, which far exceedeth nature, that it is not so much as the measurer of nature, and of the least creatures, which lie far beneath man.

4.

Thinking nurseth thinking.

5.

The glory and increase of wisdom stands in exercising it.

6.

Reason! How many eyes thou hast to see evils, and how dim, nay, blind, thou art in preventing them!

7.

To call back what might have been, to a man of wisdom and courage, carries but a shadow of discourse.

8.

There is no man that is wise, but hath, in whatsoever he doth, some purpose whereto he directs his doings; which, so long he follows, till he sees that either that purpose is not worth the pains, or that another doing carries with it a better purpose.

9.

Learned men have learnedly thought, that where once reason hath so much over-mastered passion, as that the mind hath a free desire to do well, the inward light each mind hath in itself is as good as a philosopher's book; since in nature we know that it is well to do well, and what is good and what is evil, although not in the words of art, which philosophers bestow upon us; for out of natural conceit

(which is the very hand-writing of God) the philosophers drew it. But to be moved to do that which we know; or to be moved with desire to know,-hoc opus, hic labor est.

10.

Some busy themselves so much about their pleasures, that they can never find any leisure, not, to mount up unto God, but only so much as to enter into themselves. So thoughtless are they, that they be more strangers to their own nature, to their own souls, and to the things which concern them most nearly and peculiarly, than they be either to the desarts of Inde, or to the seas that are worst to be haunted and least known.

Remark.

By mixing much with the world, and directing our desires, our thoughts, and our actions, towards the attainment of those honours which embellish civilized society, we insensibly forget that there is any thing beyond them. Our senses are so employed in the contemplation of visible rewards, that we have no time to spare,