ALAIN-RENE. LE SAGE, 1688--1747.

I wish you all sorts of prosperity with a little more taste. Gil Bias. Book vii. Ch. 4.

BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. 1706-1790.

God helps them that help themselves.

Poor Richard.

Dost thou love life, then do not squander time,

for that is the stuff life is made of.

Ibid.

Three removes are as bad as a fire.

Ibid.

Vessels large may venture more,

But little boats should keep near shore.

Ibid.

He has paid dear, very dear, for his whistle. Ibid.

When I see a merchant over-polite to his customers, begging them to take a little brandy and throwing his goods on the counter, thinks I, that man has an axe to grind.

Here Skugg

Ibid.

Lies snug,
As a bug

In a rug.

From a Letter to Miss Georgiana Shipley, on the Loss of her American Squirrel.

SIR RICHARD STEELE. 1671-1729.

(Lady Elizabeth Hastings.) Though her mien carries much more invitation than command, to behold her is an immediate check to loose behavior; to love her was a liberal education.*

The Tatler. No. 49.

SIR WILLIAM BLACKSTONE. 1723-1780.

The royal navy of England hath ever been its greatest defence and ornament; it is its ancient and natural strength, — the floating bulwark of Commentaries. Vol. i. p. 418.

our island.

SIR ROBERT WALPOLE. 1717-1797.

Flowery oratory he despised. He ascribed to the interested views of themselves or their relatives, the declarations of pretended patriots, of whom he said, All those men have their price.†

From Coxe's Memoirs of Walpole. Vol. iv. p. 369.

*Leigh Hunt incorrectly ascribes the expression, to love her was a liberal education, to Congreve.

†The political axiom, All men have their price, is commonly ascribed to Walpole.

LAURENCE STERNE. 1713-1768.

Go, poor devil, get thee gone; why should I hurt thee? This world surely is wide enough to hold

both thee and me.

Tristram Shandy. Vol. ii. Ch. xii.

Great wits jump.*

Vol. iii. Ch. ix.

Our armies swore terribly in Flanders, cried my uncle Toby, but nothing to this.

Vol. iii. Ch. xi.

The accusing spirit, which flew up to heaven's chancery with the oath, blushed as he gave it in; and the recording angel, as he wrote it down, dropped a tear upon the word and blotted it out forever.

Vol. vi. Ch. viii.

"They order," said I, "this matter better in France." Sentimental Journey. Page 1.

I pity the man who can travel from Dan to Beersheba, and

cry, 'T is all barren.

Ibid. In the Street. Calais

* A proverbial phrase.

Disguise thyself as thou wilt, still, Slavery, said

I, still thou art a bitter draught.

Ibid. The Passport. The Hotel at Paris.

The iron entered his soul.*

Ibid. The Captive. Paris.

God tempers the wind to the shorn lamb.†

Ibid. Maria.

EDMUND BURKE ‡ 1730-1797.

The swinish multitude.

On the French Revolution.

It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the Queen of France, then the Dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision.

I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she just began to move in; glittering like the morning star, full of life, and splendor, and joy. Little did

I dream that I should have lived to see such dis

*Psalm cv. 18. Book of Common Prayer.

HENRI ES

† Dieu mesure le froid à la brebis tondue. TIENNE. Prémices, etc., p. 47, a collection of Proverbs, published in 1594.

To a close shorn sheep God gives wind by measure.

HERBERT. Jacula Prudentum.

Rev. Robert Hall in his Apology for the Freedom of the Press, says of Mr. Burke, "His imperial fancy has laid all nature under tribute, and has collected riches from every scene of the creation and every walk of art."

asters fallen upon her in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers. I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards to avenge even a look that threatened her with insult. But the age of chiv

alry is gone.

On the French Revolution.

The cheap defence of nations, the nurse of manly sentiment and heroic enterprise, is gone.

Ibid.

Vice itself lost half its evil, by losing all its grossness.

Ibid.

Kings will be tyrants from policy when subjects are rebels from principle.

Ibid.

You had that action and counteraction, which in the natural and in the political world, from the reciprocal struggle of discordant powers, draws out the harmony of the universe.*

Ibid.

The worthy gentleman who has been snatched from us at the moment of the election, and in the middle of the contest, whilst his desires were as warm, and his hopes as eager as ours, has feelingly

* Mr. Breen, in his Modern English Literature, says: 'This remarkable thought, Alison, the historian, has turned to good account; it occurs so often in his disquisitions, that he seems to have made it the staple of all wisdom and the basis of every truth."