compense for what you resign, dismiss your scruples this instant, and be a slave-merchant, a director, or-what you please. THE VIRTUOUS SPENDING OF YOUTH. (Fordyce.) He who, in his youth, improves his intellectual powers in the search of truth and useful knowledge, and refines and strengthens his moral and active powers by the love of virtue, for the service of his friends, his country, and mankind; who is animated by true glory, exalted by sacred friendship for social, and softened by virtuous love for domestic life; who lays his heart open to every other mild and generous affection, and who, to all these, adds a sober masculine piety, equally remote from superstition and enthusiasm; that man enjoys the most agreeable youth; and lays in the richest fund for honourable action, and happy enjoyment of the succeeding periods of life. SELECTIONS. OUR HAPPY ISLE. (Dyer.) Hail, noble Albion ! See the sun gleams; the living pastures rise, How beautiful! How blue the ethereal vault, And ports magnific add, and stately ships in numerous. PITY. Teach me to soothe the helpless orphan's grief, With timely aid the widow's woes assuage, To misery's moving cries to yield relief, And be the sure resource of drooping age. So when the genial spring of life shall fade, And sinking nature owns the dread decay, Some soul congenial then may lend its aid, And gild the close of life's eventful day. R. BLINDNESS. (Milton.) Thus with the year Seasons return; but not to me returns Of Nature's works, to me expung'd and ras'd, Shine inward, and the mind through all her powers Irradiate, there plant eyes, all mist from thence THE DIVINE BENEVOLENCE. (Pope.) Has God, thou fool! work'd solely for thy good, Th' extensive blessing of his luxury. That very He saves from famine, from the savage saves ; Nay, feasts the animal he dooms his feast, REFLECTIONS ON A FUTURE STATE. (Thomson.) Tis done!-dread Winter spreads his latest glooms, And reigns tremendous o'er the conquered year. How dead the vegetable kingdom lies! How dumb the tuneful! Horror wide extends His desolate domain. Behold, fond man! See here thy pictured life: pass some few years, Thy flow'ring Spring, thy Summer's ardent strength. Thy sober Autumn fading into age, And pale concluding Winter comes at last, And shuts the scene. Ah! whither now are fled Lost between good and ill, that shar'd thy life? |