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Sweet rose! whose hue, angry and brave,
Bids the rash gazer wipe his eye,
Thy root is ever in its grave,

And thou must die.

Sweet spring! full of sweet days and roses,
A box where sweets compacted lie,
Thy music shows ye have your closes,
And all must die.

Only a sweet and virtuous soul,

Like seasoned timber, never gives;

But, though the whole world turn to coal,
Then chiefly lives.

EDMUND WALLER.

Edmund Waller was born in 1605, and died in 1687. He inherited an ample fortune, and was long in public service, and, having no fixed principles, was on both sides of the great contest between the King and Commons. Nothing in his character or career calls for much attention from the student. His poems are now little read; for smooth versification is not so rare as it was two centuries ago, and mere polish is a poor substitute for manly feeling and noble thought.

A SONG.

Go, lovely rose !

Tell her that wastes her time and me,

That now she knows,

When I resemble her to thee,

How sweet and fair she seems to be.

Tell her, that's young,

And shuns to have her graces spied,
That, hadst thou sprung
In deserts, where no men abide,
Thou must have uncommended died.

Small is the worth

Of beauty from the light retired;
Bid her come forth,

Suffer herself to be desired,

And not blush so to be admired.

Then die! that she

The common fate of all things rare

May read in thee,

How small a part of time they share
That are so wondrous sweet and fair!

OLD AGE AND DEATH.

THE seas are quiet when the winds give o'er ;
So calm are we when passions are no more.
For then we know how vain it was to boast
Of fleeting things, too certain to be lost.
Clouds of affection from our younger eyes
Conceal that emptiness which age descries.

The soul's dark cottage, battered and decayed,
Lets in new light through chinks that time has made:
Stronger by weakness, wiser men become,

As they draw near to their eternal home.

Leaving the old, both worlds at once they view,
That stand upon the threshold of the new.

JEREMY TAYLOR.

He died in

Jeremy Taylor, probably the brightest ornament of the English church, was the son of a barber at Cambridge; born in 1613; was educated at Caius College, and was advanced to places of dignity on account of his brilliant talents and pure and noble life. Ireland, in 1667, having been appointed Bishop of Down and Dromore upon the Restoration. His sermons, which are numerous, are still read with delight by the clergy, and by all educated men. They abound in felicitous images and apt quotations, and show an unaffected piety, a lively sensibility to the beauties of nature, together with a marvellous sense of melody in the construction of his exquisitely balanced sentences. But the many unworthy similes, the many forced allusions, and the too profuse display of Greek learning, that are visible in almost every sermon, are sufficient to deter all but resolute readers. The work by which he is most widely known in the Christian world is entitled "Holy Living and Dying."

ON PRAYER.

PRAYER is an action of likeness to the Holy Ghost, the spirit of gentleness and dove-like simplicity; an imitation of the Holy Jesus, whose spirit is meek, up to the greatness of the biggest example; and a conformity to God, whose anger is always just, and marches

slowly, and is without transportation, and often hindered, and never hasty, and is full of mercy: prayer is the peace of our spirit, the stillness of our thoughts, the evenness of recollection, the seat of meditation, the rest of our cares, and the calm of our tempest: prayer is the issue of a quiet mind, of untroubled thoughts; it is the daughter of charity, and the sister of meekness; and he that prays to God with an angry, that is, with a troubled and discomposed spirit, is like him that retires into a battle to meditate, and sets up his closet in the out-quarters of an army, and chooses a frontier garrison to be wise in. Anger is a perfect alienation of the mind from prayer, and therefore is contrary to that attention which presents our prayers in a right line to God. For so have I seen a lark rising from his bed of grass, and soaring upwards, singing as he rises, and hopes to get to heaven, and climb above the clouds; but the poor bird was beaten back with the loud sighings of an eastern wind, and his motion made irregular and inconstant, descending more at every breath of the tempest, than it could recover by the libration and frequent weighing of his wings, till the little creature was forced to sit down, and pant, and stay till the storm was over; and then it made a prosperous flight, and did rise and sing, as if it had learned music and motion from an angel, as he passed sometimes through the air, about his ministries here below. So is the prayer of a good man: when his affairs have required business, and his business was matter of discipline, and his discipline was to pass upon a sinning person, or had a design of charity, his duty met with the infirmities of a man, and anger was its instrument; and the instrument became stronger than the prime agent, and raised a tempest, and overruled the man; and then his prayer was broken, and his thoughts were troubled, and his words went up towards a cloud; and his thoughts pulled them back again, and made them without intention; and the good man sighs for his infirmity, but must be content to lose that prayer, and he must recover it when his anger is removed, and his spirit is becalmed, made even as the brow of Jesus, and smooth like the heart of God; and then it ascends to heaven upon the wings of the holy dove, and dwells with God, till it returns, like the useful bee, loaden with a blessing and the dew of heaven.

SIR THOMAS BROWNE.

He was educated at WinAfter graduation, he trav

Sir Thomas Browne was born in London, October 19, 1605. chester School, and afterwards at Pembroke College, Oxford. elled on the continent, studied medicine at Montpellier and Padua, and took his degree of doctor of physic at Leyden, in Holland. Many events of his life are in obscurity; and conjecture must be relied upon in many important matters.

His first work, Religio Medici, -the Religion of a Physician, is supposed to have been written in 1634; it was read extensively in manuscript, and was printed (probably without the author's consent) in 1642. In 1646 appeared his famous treatise, Enquiries into Vulgar Errors. The discovery of Roman urns in Norfolk was the occasion of his writing a learned essay on Urn Burial, in 1658. He wrote also a treatise on Christian Morals, and several posthumous papers. He was a zealous royalist, and received the honor of knighthood from Charles II. He was happily married; but of his numerous children, only four survived him. He died October 19, 1682. The male line in descent from him was soon extinct; but in the female line he had distinguished inheritors of his blood, among whom was the famous Lord Erskine.

He had a clear and powerful intellect, scholarly tastes, and a singularly well-balanced judgment. But it is a noticeable fact that the assailant of Vulgar Errors should have lent the weight of his great professional reputation as an expert against two miserable women, tried and convicted before Sir Matthew Hale for witchcraft- the last victims of that superstition in England. It is a further check to the pride of scientific men that he was among the upholders of the Ptolemaic system of astronomy. In fact, an edition of his exposure of Vulgar Errors would require more notes than the text itself to make it conform to the present state of knowledge. His style is Latinized to a painful degree. If a word is wanted, he coins one; and few, except accomplished Latin scholars, can read the simplest of his productions without a lexicon at hand. But his reading was so extensive, his illustrations so ready and apt, his thought so clear, and his moral tone so high, that, with all the errors of fact, and the frequent obscurity of expression, his works are still cherished by scholars, and his name is fairly inscribed among the classic authors of England. When the characteristics of the author and of his learned style are considered, it will appear quite appropriate that his life should have been written, and his works annotated by the antithetic and pedantic Dr. Johnson. Behind every formally-poised sentence the reader can hear the elephantine tread of the great lexicographer.

[From Christian Morals.]

Be substantially great in thyself, and more than thou appearest unto others; and let the world be deceived in thee, as they are in the lights of heaven. Hang early plummets upon the heels of pride, and let ambition have but an epicycle 1 and narrow circuit in thee. Measure not thyself by thy morning shadow, but by the extent of thy grave and reckon thyself above the earth, by the line thou must be contented with under it. Spread not into boundless expansions either of designs or desires. Think not that mankind liveth but for

An epicycle is a small revolution made by one planet in the wider orbit of another planet. The meaning is, "Let not ambition form thy circle of action, but move upon other principles; and let ambition only operate as something extrinsic and adventitious.”—Dr. J.

a few; and that the rest are born but to serve those ambitions, which make but flies of men, and wildernesses of whole nations. Swell not into vehement actions which imbroil and confound the earth; but be one of those violent ones which force the kingdom of heaven. If thou must needs rule, be Zeno's king,' and enjoy that empire which every man gives himself. He who is thus his own monarch contentedly sways the sceptre of himself, not envying the glory of crowned heads and elohims of the earth. Could the world unite in the practice of that despised train of virtues which the divine ethics of our Saviour hath so inculcated upon us, the furious face of things must disappear: Eden would be yet to be found, and the angels might look down, not with pity, but joy upon us.

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If thy vessel be but small in the ocean of this world, if meanness of possessions be thy allotment upon earth, forget not those virtues which the great Disposer of all bids thee to entertain from thy quality and condition; that is, submission, humility, content of mind, and industry. Content may dwell in all stations. To be low, but above contempt, may be high enough to be happy. But many of low degree may be higher than computed, and some cubits above the common commensuration; for in all states, virtue gives qualifications and allowances, which make out defects. Rough diamonds are sometimes mistaken for pebbles; and meanness may be rich in accomplishments, which riches in vain desire. If our merits be above our stations, if our intrinsical value be greater than what we go for, or our value than our valuation, and if we stand higher in God's than in the censor's book,3 it may make some equitable balance in the inequalities of this world, and there may be no such vast chasm or gulf between disparities as common measures determine. The divine eye looks upon high and low differently from that of man. They who seem to stand upon Olympus, and high mounted unto our eyes, may be but in the valleys and low ground unto his; for he looks upon those as highest who nearest approach his divinity, and upon those as lowest who are farthest from it.

Value the judicious, and let not mere acquests in minor parts of learning gain thy pre-existimation. 'Tis an unjust way of compute, to magnify a weak head for some Latin abilities; and to undervalue

1 That is, "the king of the Stoics," whose founder was Zeno, and who held that the wise man alone had power and royalty. - Dr. J.

2 An error in form, since elohim is plural, like cherubim. It is from the Hebrew, and signifies "the lords," or "the gods."

3 The book in which the census, or account of every man's estate, was registered among the Romans. - Dr. J.

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