ENVY. no greater feast than a gross mistake. In their censures they are captious, as well as severe, make mountains of mole-hills, and will not pardon the least shadow of a fault, but exaggerate the most trifling omission into a capital blunder. Envy is visible in brute-beasts; horses show it in their endeavors of outstripping one another; and the best spirited will run [BERNARD MANDEVILLE was born at Dordrecht, Hol- another before them. In dogs this passion themselves to death, before they will suffer land, about 1665. He studied medicine and began prac-is likewise plainly to be seen; those who are tice at Rotterdam in 1685, after which he settled in Lon-used to be caressed will never tamely bear don, residing there until his death in 1733. He devot that felicity in another. I have seen a lapdog that would choke himself with victuals rather than leave anything for a competitor of his own kind. ed much attention to literature and published several books, among which are Esop Dressed, or a Collection of Fables; The Fable of the Bees, or Private Vices Public Benefits; and Free Thoughts on Religion, the Church, and Natural Happiness. From The Fable of the Bees (which is composed of numerous pithy discourses suggested by lines in the Fable), we quote as follows:] Envy is a compound of grief and anger. The degrees of this passion depend chiefly on the nearness or remoteness of the objects, as to circumstances. If one who is forced to walk on foot envies a great man for keeping a coach and six, it will never be with that violence, or give him that disturbance which it may to a man, who keeps a coach himself, but can only afford to drive with four horses. The symptoms of envy are as various and as hard to describe as those of the plague. Among the fair the disease is very common, and the signs of it very conspicuous in their opinions and censures of one another. A gentleman well dressed who happens to be dirtied all over by a coach or a cart, is laughed at, and by his inferiors much more than his equals, because they envy him more: they know he is vexed at it, and, imagining him to be happier than themselves, they are glad to see him meet with displeasures in his turn! . . How strangely our passions govern us! We envy a man. for being rich, and then perfectly hate him. But if we come to be his equals, we are calm, and the least condescension in him makes us friends; but if we become visibly superior to him, we can pity his misfortunes. The reason why men of true good sense envy less than others, is because they admire themselves with less hesitation than fools and silly people; for, though they do not show this to others, yet the solidity of their thinking gives them an assurance of their real worth which men of weak understanding can never feel within, though they often counterfeit it. In the rude and unpolished multitude, this passion is very bare-faced; especially when they envy others for the goods of fortune: They rail at their betters, rip up their faults, and take pains to misconstrue their most commendable actions. They murmur at Providence, and loudly complain that the good things of this world are chiefly enjoyed by those who do not deserve them. The grosser sort of them it often affects so violently, that if they were not withheld by the fear of the laws, they would go directly and beat those their envy is levelled at, from no other provocation than what that passion Ye plants and copses, now his loss bewail: suggests to them. The men of letters, laboring under this distemper, discover quite different symptoms. When they envy a person for his parts and erudition they carefully peruse his works, and are displeased with every fine passage they meet with; they look for nothing but his errors, and wish for LAMENT FOR BION. [MoscнUS, a Grecian poet of the third century 8. C.. The following lines were translated by Chas, A. Elton : O forest dells and streams! O Dorian tide! Flowers, from your tufts a sad perfume exhale: Your crimson leaves and wear a blush of woe: Sicilian Muses, pour the dirge of woe: NATURE AS A GREAT THEATRE. 377 Sicilian Muses, pour the dirge of woe; NATURE AS A GREAT THEATRE. BERNARD LE BOVIER DE FONTENELLE was born at Rouen in 1657, and died at Paris, 1757. His first literary efforts, in the department of tragedy, were not alto. gether successful; but his Dialogues of the Dead; Com versations on the Plurality of Worlds; and Éloges Histor iques des Academiciens, gave him high and lasting fame.} I always picture to myself nature as a great theatre, resembling that of the opera. From the spot where you are seated in the opera, you do not see the theatre quite as it is; the decorations and machinery are placed so as to produce a good effect from a distance, and they conceal from your sight those wheels and counter-weights which cause the movements. Thus you do not trouble yourself with guessing how it is all And mourns those lips that waked their sweetest sound. brought about. It is only perhaps some O that, as Orpheus, in the days of yore, Ulysses, or Alcides, passed before, I could descend to Pluto's house of night, THE SEVEN WISE MEN OF GREECE. But machinist concealed in the pit who dis- whose names make so much noise in our "I'll tell the names and sayings and the places of their not know how the back scenes of the thea. birth, Of the Seven great ancient Sages, so renowned on Grecian earth: The Lindian Cleobulus said 'The mean was still the best': The Spartan Chilo, 'Know thyself,' a heav'n-born phrase confessed: Corinthian Periander taught, 'Our anger to command': Too much of nothing,' Pittacus, from Mitylene's strand: Athenian Solon this advised, 'Look to the end of life': And Bias from Prienè showed, Bad men are the most rife': tre were arranged. One of them might say: "It is a certain secret virtue which carries up Phaethon." Another: "Phæthon is composed of certain numbers which raise him up." Another: "Phaethon has a certain liking for the high parts of the theatre he is not at his ease when he is not there.' Another: "Phæthon is not made for flying, but he likes better to fly than to leave the upper part of the theatre empty," and a hundred other reveries that make me feel astonished that they did not altogether de Milesian Thales urged that 'None should e'er a surety stroy the reputation of antiquity. be': Few were their words, but if you look, you'll much in little see." ANONYMOUS, from the Greek. ONE sin another doth provoke. SHAKSPEARS. EXCESS OF HAPPINESS OVER MISERY. [WILLIAM PALEY, D. D., born at Peterborough, Eng land, July, 1743; died May 25, 1805. He was tutor and lecturer on Moral Philosophy and Divinity in Christ's Church College, Cambridge, and Archdeacon of Carlisle. He published Principles of Moral and Political Economy (1785); Horæ Paulina (1790); View of the Evi dences of Christianity (1794); and Natural Theology (1802).] Throughout the whole of life, as it is dif. fused in nature, and so far as we are acquainted with it, looking to the average of sensations, the plurality and the preponderancy is in favor of happiness by a vast excess. In our own species, in which, perhaps, the assertion may be more questionable than in any other, the prepollency of good over evil, of health, for example, and ease, over pain and distress, is evinced by the very notice which calamities excite. What inquiries does the sickness of our friends produce; what conversation their misfortunes! This shows that the common course of things is in favor of happiness; that happiness is the rule, misery the exception. Were the order reversed our attention would be called to examples of health and competency, instead of disease and want. One great cause of our insensibility to the goodness of the Creator is the very extensiveness of his bounty. We prize but little what we share only in common with the rest or with the generality of our species. When we hear of blessings, we think forthwith of successes, of prosperous fortunes, of honors, of riches, preferments, i. e., of those advantages and superiorities over others, which we happen either to possess, or to be in pursuit of, or to covet. The common benefits of our nature entirely escape us. Yet these are the great things. These constitute what most properly ought to be accounted blessings of Providence; what alone, if we might so speak, are worthy of its care. Nightly rest and daily bread, the ordinary use of our limbs, and senses, and understandings, are gifts which admit of no comparison with any other. Yet because almost every man we meet with possesses these, we leave them out of our enumeration. They raise no sentiment, they move no gratitude. Now herein is our judgment perverted by our selfishness. A blessing ought in truth to be the more satisfactory-the bounty at least of the donor is rendered more conspicuous-by its very diffusion, its commonness, its cheapness; by its falling to the lot and forming the happiness of the great bulk and body of our when we do not possess it, it ought to be species, as well as of ourselves. Nay, even matter of thankfulness that others do. But we have a different way of thinking. We court distinction. That is not the worst; we see nothing but what has distinction to recommend it. This necessarily contracts our views of the Creator's beneficence within a narrow compass, and most unjustly. It is in those things which are so common as to be no distinction, that the amplitude of the Divine benignity is perceived. THE CAUCASIAN RACE. [GEORGE CHRÉTIEN LEOPOLD FREDERIC DAGOBERT, BARON CUVIER, the celebrated French naturalist, was born at Montbéliard, Aug. 23, 1769; died May 13, 1832. His enthusiasm for natural history was manifested at an early age. In 1795 he became Professor of Comparative Anatomy in the Museum of Natural History, Paris; in 1796 he was made a member of the Institute, and in 1818 a member of the Academy. He was also Chancellor of the University of Paris. Among his best known works are The Animal Kingdom and Natural His tory of Fishes. He was created a peer of France in 1831.] The name Caucasian has been affixed to the race from which we descend, because tradition and the filiation of nations seems to refer its origin to that group of mountains situated between the Caspian and Black Seas, whence it has apparently extended by radiating all around. The nations of the Caucasus, or the Circassians and Georgians, are even now considered as the handsomest on earth. The principal ramifications of this race may be distinguished by the analogies of language. The Armenian and Syrian branch, spreading southward, produced the Assyrians, the Chaldeans, the hitherto untamable Arabs, who, after Mahomet, expected to become masters of the world; the Phoenicians, the Jews, the Abyssinians, which were Arabian colonies, and most probably the Egyptians. It is from this branch, always inclined to mysticism, that have sprung the most widely-extended forms of religion. Science and literature have sometimes flourished among its nations, TRADITIONS OF THE CREATION. 379 but always in a strange disguise and figurative style. The Indian, German, and Pelasgic branch is much more extended, and was much earlier divided, notwithstanding which, the most numerous affinities have been recognized between its four principal languages:The Sanscrit, the present sacred language of the Hindoos, and the parent of the greater number of the dialects of Hindostan; the ancient language of the Pelasgi, common parent of the Greek, Latin, many tongues that are extinct, and of all those of the South of Europe; the Gothic or Teutonic, from which are derived the languages of the North and North-west of Europe, such as the German, Dutch, English, Danish, Swedish, and their dialects; and finally, the Sclavonian, from which are descended those of the North-east, the Russian, Polish, Bohemian, and that of the Vandals. It is by this great and venerable branch of the Caucasian stock, that philosophy, the arts and sciences, have been carried to their present state of advancement; and it has continued to be the depository of them for thirty centuries. SAYINGS OF TERENCE. [TERENCE (PUBLIUS TERENTIUS AFEE), the famous Latin poet, was born in Carthage about B. c. 195; the date of his death is uncertain. He was once a slave, and was freed on account of his talents. Six of his comedies have been preserved.] Obsequiousness begets friends, Truth, TRADITIONS OF THE CREATION. [JOHN WILLIAM DAWSON, LL. D., an eminent geologist, born at Pictou, Nova Scotia, October 1820. Besides numerous contributions to periodicals and to the proceedings of the Geological Society of London, he has published a Hand book of the Geography and Natural History of Nova Scotia; The Story of the Earth and Man, and other works. Since 1850 he has been Principal of Magill College, Montreal.] A strange and startling confirmation of the antiquity of the old Chaldæo-Turanian legends, and of their wide distribution, comes from the traditions of the American tribes, which everywhere include ideas of the crea tion of the world and of man, often most crude and grotesque, but in almost every case retaining some of the features of the Chaldæan Genesis. No one can believe that the scribe who reduced to writing the Popul Vuh, the sacred book of the Ancient Quichés of Central America, had access to the tablets recently deciphered by Mr. Smith, yet he has the same order and sequence of creation, and the same ideas of cosmological gods, and of the introduction of man upon the earth. . . . It has been customary to throw doubt on the American traditions of the Creation and Deluge, as probably in part borrowed from Christian sources; but their relationship to the old Chaldæan theogony and cosmogony is so striking, that it seems necessary to regard these traditions as a common inheritance of the great Turanian race on both continents. What shall we say of these traditions in their ultimate source? They are not histhey relate to what preceded the advent of tory in the ordinary sense of the term, for man. We can scarcely believe that they I take it to be a principal rule of life, not are the dim memories of past states of a be to be too much addicted to any one thing.ing, who, in the lapse of geological time has hatred. Can they be the results of a prehistoric scibeen developed up from a protozoan to man. ence or philosophy? Must they not, rather, be regarded as the traces of an early revelation, from the Creator himself, to the first intelligent beings placed upon the earth? The least that we can say is, that far back before the great flood of Noah or Sisit, in the beginning of human history, perhaps there lived some seer or sage, so gifted with divine insight that he could say or sing the story of Creation, in such terms that it fixed itself, as a primary article of faith, in the religion of every people; and, handed down 380 THE LOVE OF COUNTRY. to us through the oldest line of monotheistic | tions of their indulgent grandfathers, and reformers, still molds our beliefs, lies at the the like. foundation of our creeds, and in its few bold outline touches of the plan of the Creation, challenges comparison with the revelations of modern geology. SHE IS NOT FAIR TO OUTWARD VIEW. She is not fair to outward view, As many maidens be; Her loveliness I never knew Until she smiled on me: O, then I saw her eye was bright,— But now her looks are coy and cold; Her very frowns are better far HARTLEY COLERIDGE, 1796-1849. THE LOVE OF COUNTRY. [JACQUE HENRI BERNARDIN DE SAINT-PIERRE was born at Havre, France, Jan. 19, 1737. He studied engineering, and for a time practised that profession, with intervals of soldiering. In 1771 he devoted himself to literature. In 1773 he produced Voyage to the Isle of France, and subsequently, Studies of Nature (1784), Paul and Virginia (1788), etc. The work last named has been translated into every European language and still retains all its popularity. He died Jan. 21, 1814. We quote from "Studies of Nature":] The love of country seems to strengthen in proportion as it is innocent and happy. For this reason savages are fonder of their country than polished nations are; and those who inhabit regions rough and wild. such as mountaineers, than those who live in fertile countries and fine climates. Never could the Court of Russia prevail upon a single Samöiède to leave the shores of the Frozen Ocean, and settle at St. Petersburg. Some Greenlanders were brought, in the course of the last century, to the Court of Copenhagen, where they were entertained with a profusion of kindness, but soon fretted themselves to death. Several of them were drowned in attempting to return to their country in an open boat. They beheld all the magnificence of the Court of Denmark with extreme indifference; but there was one in particular, whom they observed to weep every time he saw a woman with a child in her arms; hence they conjectured that this unfortunate man was a father. The gentleness of domestic education, un-doubtedly, thus powerfully attaches those poor people to the place of their birth. It was this which inspired the Greeks and Romans with so much courage in the defence of their country. The sentiment of innocence strengthens the love of it, because it brings back all the affections of early life, pure, sacred, and incorruptible. But among nations with whom infancy is rendered miserable, and is corrupted by irksome, ferocious and unnatural education, there is no more love of country than there is of innocence. This is one of the causes which sends so many Europeans a rambling over the world, and which accounts for our having so few modern monuments in EuThey have in Switzerland, an ancient rope, because the next generation never musical air, and extremely simple, called the fails to destroy the monuments of that ranz des vaches. This air produces an which preceded it. This is the reason that effect so powerful, that it was found neces- our books, our fashions, our customs, our sary to prohibit the playing of it in Holland ceremonies, our languages, become obsolete and in France, before the Swiss soldiers, so soon, and are entirely different this age because it set them all deserting, one after from what they were in the last; whereas, another. I imagine that the ranz des vaches all these particulars continue the same must imitate the lowing and bleating of the among the sedentary nations of Asia, for cattle, the repercussion of the echoes, and a long series of ages together; because other local associations, which made the children brought up in Asia with much blood boil in the veins of those poor soldiers, gentleness, remain attached to the estabby recalling to their memory the valleys, lishments of their ancestors, out of gratitude the lakes, the mountains of their country, to their memory and to the places of their and at the same time, the companions of birth, from the recollection of their happitheir early life, their first loves, the recollec-ness and innocence. |