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almost kill a man as kill a good book: who kills a man kills a reasonable creature, God's image; but he who destroys a good book, kills reason itself, kills the image of God as it were, in the eye. J. MILTON

20.

DEFEAT OF THE ATHENIANS BEFORE SYRACUSE. In these extremities, the perverse obstinacy of the Athenians was very strange, who leaving at their backs, and at their own doors, an enemy little less mighty than themselves, did yet send forth another fleet into Sicil, to invade a people no less puissant, which never had offended them. It often happens indeed that prosperous event makes foolish counsel seem wiser than it was, which came to pass many times among the Athenians, whose vain conceits Pallas was said to turn unto the best. But where unsound advice, finding bad proof, is obstinately pursued, neither Pallas nor Fortune can be justly blamed for a miserable issue. This second fleet of the Athenians, which better might have served to convey home the former that was defeated, after some attempts made to small purpose against the Syracusans, was finally (together with the other part of the navy, which was there before) quite vanquished and barred up into the haven of Syracuse, whereby the camp of the Athenians, utterly deprived of all benefit by sea, either for succour or departure, was driven to break up and fly away by land, in which flight they were overtaken, routed and quite overthrown in such wise that scarce any man escaped.

SIR W. RALEIGH

21. IN SUNDRY THE WORKS BOTH OF ART AND NATURE THAT WHICH HATH GREATEST FORCE IN THE THINGS WE SEE IS ITSELF OFTENTIMES NOT SEEN. The stateliness of houses, the goodliness of trees, when we behold them, delighteth the eye: but that foundation which beareth up the one, that root which ministereth unto the other nourishment and life, is in the bosom of the earth concealed; and if there be occasion at any time to search into it, such labour is then more necessary than pleasant, both to them which undertake it and for the lookers-on. In like manner, the use and benefit of good laws, all that live under them may enjoy with delight and comfort, albeit the grounds and first original causes from whence they have sprung, be unknown, as to the greatest part of men they are.

R. HOOKER

22. TERROR-THE RULING PRINCIPLE OF THE SUBLIME. There are many animals, which, though far from being large, are yet capable of raising ideas of the sublime, because they are considered as objects of terror; as serpents and poisonous animals of almost all kinds: and to things of greater dimensions if we annex an adventitious degree of terror, they become without comparison greater. A level plain of a vast extent on land is certainly no mean idea; the prospect of such a plain may be as extensive as a prospect of the ocean, but can it ever fill the mind with any thing so great as the ocean itself? This is owing to the several causes, but it is owing to none more than this, that this ocean is an object of no small terror; indeed terror is in all cases whatever either more openly or latently the ruling principle of the Sublime.

E. BURKE

23. Dux atque imperator vitæ mortalium animus est: qui ubi ad gloriam virtutis via grassatur, abunde pollens potensque et clarus est, neque fortuna eget ; quippe quæ probitatem, industriam aliasque artis bonas neque dare neque eripere cuiquam potest: sin captus pravis cupidinibus, ad inertiam et voluptates corporis pessum datus est, perniciosa lubidine paullisper usus: ubi per socordiam vires, tempus, ingenium defluxere, naturæ infirmitas accusatur: suam quique culpam actores ad negotia transferunt. Quod si hominibus bonarum rerum tanta cura esset, quanto studio aliena ac nihil profutura, multum etiam periculosa petunt: neque regerentur magis quam regerent casus et eo magnitudinis procederent, ubi pro mortalibus gloria æterni fierent.

C. SALVSTIVS CRISPVS

24. A JUST EQUIPOISE OF THE PASSIONS. Every endeavour of our lives, and all the institutions of philosophy should tend to this; not to dissemble an absence of passion, but to repel those which lead to vice, by those which direct to virtue. The soul may be compared to a field of battle, where two armies are ready every moment to encounter; not a single vice but has a more powerful opponent; and not one virtue but may be overborne by a combination of vices. Reason guides the hands of either host, nor can it subdue one passion but by the assistance of another. Thus as a bark on every side beset with storms enjoys a state of rest, so does the mind, when influenced by a just equipoise of the passions, enjoy tranquillity.

25. TAXATION OF HOUSES IN HOLLAND, UNFAIR. In Holland every house is taxed at two and a half per cent. of its value, without any regard either to the rent which it actually pays, or to the circumstance of its being tenanted or untenanted. There seems to be a hardship in obliging the proprietor to pay a tax for an untenanted house, from which he can derive no revenue, especially so very heavy a tax. The valuation, indeed, according to which the houses are rated, is said to be always below the real value. When a house is rebuilt, improved, or enlarged, there is a new valuation, and the tax is rated accordingly.

SIR W. TEMPLE

26. THE SPIRIT OF MAN AND THE SPIRIT OF THE WORLD. It is not credible what a troop of fictions and idols the reduction of the operations of nature to the similitude of human actions hath brought into philosophy. The Epicurean needed not to have asked why God should have adorned the heavens with stars and lights, as if he had been an ædile one that should have set forth some magnificent shows or plays: for if that great workman had conformed himself to the imitation of an ædile, he would have cast the stars into some pleasant and beautiful works, and orders, like the curious roofs of palaces: whereas one can scarce find, in such an infinite number of stars, any regular postures in squares, triangles, or right lines.-So little of Harmony there is between the spirit of Man and the spirit of the World.

27. STORY OF ARISTOMENES. There was a deep natural cave into which the Spartans used to cast headlong such as were condemned to die for the greatest offences. To this punishment were Aristomenes and his companions adjudged. All the rest of these poor men died with their falls: Aristomenes (howsoever it came to pass) took no harm. Yet was it harm enough to be imprisoned in a deep dungeon, among dead carcasses, where he was like to perish through hunger and stench.. But after a while he perceived by some small glimmering of light (which perhaps came in at the top) a fox that was gnawing upon a dead body. Hereupon he bethought himself that this beast must needs know some way to enter the place and get out. For which cause he

made shift to lay hold upon it, and catching it by the tail with one hand, saved himself from biting with the other hand, by thrusting his coat into the mouth of it. So letting it creep whither it would, he followed, holding it as his guide, until the way was too strait for him; and then dismissed it. The fox, being loose, ran through a hole at which came in a little light; and there did Aristomenes delve so long with his nails, that at last he clawed out his passage.

SIR W. RALEIGH

28. ORIGINAL RIGHTS OF MAN IN CIVIL SOCIETY. If civil society be made for the advantage of man, all the advantages for which it is made become his right. It is an institution of beneficence; and law itself is only beneficence acting by a rule. Men have a right to live by that rule; they have a right to justice; as between their fellows, whether their fellows are in politic function or in ordinary occupation. They have a right to the fruits of their industry, and to the means of making their industry fruitful. Whatever each man can separately do, without trespassing upon others, he has a right to do for himself; and he has a right to a fair portion of all which society, with all its combinations of skill and force, can do in his favour. But as to the share of power, authority, and direction which each individual ought to have in the management of the state, that I must deny to be amongst the direct original rights of man in civil society. It is a thing to be settled by convention.

29.

E. BURKE

HOMAGE PAID TO VIRTUE. The will of men may be sometimes so depraved that dissolute persons wantonly and heedlessly may scoff at, and seem to disparage goodness; that good men, by very bad men, may be envied and hated -but the understanding of men can hardly be so corrupted that piety, charity, justice, temperance, meekness, can in good earnest considerately by any man be disallowed, or that persons apparently practising them can be despised; but rather in spite of all contrary prejudice and disaffections such things and such persons cannot but in judgment and heart be esteemed by all men. The lustre of them by a natural and necessary efficacy dazzleth the sight and charmeth the spirits of all men living; the more they are observed the more useful and needful they appear for the good

of men, all the fruits which grow from the observance of them being to all men's taste very pleasant, to all men's experience very wholesome.

30. MARY, QUEEN OF SCOTS, HER RELUCTANCE AT LEAVING FRANCE, A.D. 1561. Besides her natural prepossessions in favour of a country in which she had been educated from her earliest infancy, and where she had borne so high a rank, she could not forbear both regretting the society of that people, so celebrated for their humane disposition, and their respectful attachment to their sovereign, and reflecting on the disparity of the scene which lay before her. It is said that, after she was embarked at Calais, she kept her eyes fixed on the coast of France, and never turned them from that beloved object, till darkness fell and intercepted it from her view. She then ordered a couch to be spread for her in the open air; and charged the pilot, that if in the morning the land were still in sight, he should awake her, and afford her one parting view of that country in which all her affections were centered. The weather proved calm, so that the ship made little way in the night-time: and Mary had once more an opportunity of seeing the French coast. She sat upon her couch, and still looking towards the land, often repeated these words: Farewell, France, farewell: I shall never see thee more.

W. ROBERTSON

31. XENOPHON, HIS RETREAT WITH THE TEN THOUSAND. This Xenophon at that time was very young, and never had seen the wars before; neither had any command in the army, but only followed the war as a volunteer, for the · love and conversation of Proxenus his friend. He was present when Falinus came in message from the great king to the Grecians, after that Cyrus was slain in the field, and they a handful of men left to themselves in the midst of the king's territories, cut off from their country by many navigable rivers, and many hundred miles. The message imported that they should deliver up their arms and submit themselves to the king's mercy. To which message before answer was made, divers of the army conferred familiarly with Falinus, and amongst the rest Xenophon happened to say: Why, Falinus, we have now but these two things left,

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