In whom vice sanctifies, whose precepts teach Zeal without truth, religion without virtue, Who ne'er preach heaven but with a downward eye

That turns your souls to dross; who shouting loose

The dogs of hell upon us, thefts and rapes, Sack'd towns and midnight howlings through the realm,

Receive your sanction. Oh! 'tis glorious mischief

When vice turns holy, puts religion on,
Assumes the robe pontifical; the eye
Of saintly elevation blesseth sin,

And makes the seal of sweet offended Heaven
A sign of blood, a label for decrees
That hell would shrink to own.

Brooke.

And, for unfelt imaginations,

They often feel a world of reckless cares :
So that, between their titles, and low name,
There's nothing differs but the outward fame.
Shakspeare.
PRINCES-not Esteemed.

It is the fault of princes if they are not esteemed, as they always have it in their power to procure the love of their subjects. Philip of Macedon. PRINCES-never without Flatterers. Princes are never without flatterers to seduce them, ambition to deprave them, and Plato. desires to corrupt them.

PRINCES-Instruction to.

Let truth and virtue be their earliest teachers;
Keep from their ear the siren-voice of flattery,
Keep from their eye the harlot-form of vice,
Who spread, in every court, their silken snares,
And charm, but to betray. Betimes instruct
them,

Superior rank demands superior worth;
Pre-eminence of valour, justice, mercy;
But chief, that though exalted o'er mankind,
They are themselves but men-frail suffering
dust;

From no one injury of human lot

Exempt; but fever'd by the same heat, chill'd By the same cold, torn by the same disease, That scorches, freezes, racks, and kills the beggar. Mallet.

PRINCES-True Pursuits of.
'Tis war that forms the prince; 'tis hardship,
toil,-

Tis sleepless nights, and never-resting days,—
'Tis pain. 'tis danger, 'tis affronted death,-
Tis equal fate for all, and changing fortune,
That rear the mind to glory, that inspire
The noblest virtues, and the gentlest manners.
Thomson.

PRINCIPLES-to be Rightly Applied.
Right principles will by no means suit
wrong practices.
Spinckes.

PRINTING-Art of.

New shape and voice the immaterial thought Takes from the invented speaking page sublime,

The ark which mind has for its refuge wrought
Its floating archive down the floods of time.
Schiller.

PRISON-of the Condemned.
Apart from hence, involved in deeper gloom,
Frowns in dark state, "Fate's dreaded ante-
room!"

But oh what hand can raise the sable screen

PRISON.

That veils the horrors of the "final scene;"
To the shock'd sight the dismal cells expose,
Where death-doom'd felons wait life's awful

close?

Where, as the night-clock strikes, the culprits hear

The tread of death, at every stroke more near;
And with the daybreak, startled fancy eyes
Before their view the fatal scaffold rise!
Yet deem not vainly, in these dreary cells,
With guilt that sorrow or contrition dwells;
Or through the conscious walls, as Echo flies,
Her voice repeats repentant groans or sighs!
Oh no! e'en here by terrors unsubdued,
By death unawed Vice pens her blackest brood;
Here the short hours, which penitence should
claim,

Are blindly wasted in some sinful game.
Gaming, of fraud and infamy the source,
By long indulgence gains resistless force;
While "sentenced wretches" hug the insatiate
vice,

And madly stake their souls upon the dice !
Here "demon fury" every sense appals,
And shakes with impotence of rage the walls,
To swell the dreadful scene, while all around
The clanking chains in mournful concert sound.
Halloran.

PRISON-like to a Grave.

How like

A prison's to a grave! when dead, we are With solemn pomp brought thither, and our heirs,

Masking their joy in false dissembled tears, Weep o'er the hearse: but the earth no sooner

covers

The earth brought thither, but they turn away With inward smiles, the dead no more remember'd:

So enter'd into a prison.

PROCRASTINATION.

A nauseous sepulchre, whose craving womb
Hourly inters poor mortals in its tomb.
Tom Brown.

PRISONER-Trials of a.

His

A prisoner is an impatient patient, lingring under the rough hands of a cruell phisitian: who hauing come at his disease, knowes his complainte, and hath power to cure him, but takes more pleasure to kill him. He is like Tantalus, who hath freedome running by his doore, yet cannot enjoy the least benefit thereof. greatest griefe is that his credit was so good and now no better. His land is drawne within the compasse of a sheepe's skin, and his owne hand the fortification that barres him of entrance hee is fortunes tossing-bal, an object that would make mirth melancholy to his friends an abject, and a subject of nine dayes' wonder in euery barber's shop, and a mouthfull of pitty (that he had no better fortune) to midwiues and talkatiue gossips; and all the content that this transitory life can give him seems but to flout him, in respect the restraint of liberty barres the true use. To his familiars hee is like a plague, whom they dare scarce come nigh for feare of infection; he is a monument ruined by those which raysed him; he spends the day with a hei mihi! va miserum! and the night with a nullis est medicabilis herbis. Sir Thomas Overbury.

A prison is in all things like a grave,
Where we no better privileges have
Than dead men; nor so good. The soul, once
fled,

Lives freer now than when she was cloister'd
In walls of flesh; and though the organs want
To act her swift designs, yet all will grant
Her faculties more clear, now separate,
Than if conjunction, which of late
Did marry her to earth, had stood in force,
Incapable of death or of divorce:

But an imprison'd mind, though living, dies,
And at one time feels two captivities:
A narrow dungeon, which her body holds,
But narrower body which herself enfolds.
PRISON-Miseries of a.

Bishop King.

A prison! heavens, I loathe the hated name; Famine's metropolis,-the sink of shame,

PROBITY-Characteristics of.

The mark of a man of probity is in his keeping reason at the head of practice; in being easy in his condition; to live in a crowd of objects, without suffering either in his sense, his virtue, or his quiet; to have a good understanding at home, and to be governed by that divine principle that is within him; to be all truth in his words; and justice in his actions. Antonimus.

PROCRASTINATION-Dangers of. To-morrow, didst thou say?

Methought I heard Horatio say to-morrow. Go to, I will not hear of it-To-morrow! "Tis a sharper, who stakes his penury

PROCRASTINATION.

PROFLIGACY.

The injury of prodigality leads to this, that he that will not economize will have to agonize. Confucius.

PROFANENESS-Irrationality of.

If there are hypocrites in religion, there are also, strange as it may appear, hypocrites in impiety, men who make an ostentation of more irreligion than they possess. An ostentation of this nature, the most irrational in the records of human folly, seems to lie at the root of profane swearing.

66

It may not be improper to remind such as indulge this practice, that they need not insult their Maker to show that they do not fear Him: that they may relinquish this vice without danger of being supposed to be devout, and that they may safely leave it to other parts of their conduct to efface the smallest suspicion of their piety. To view this practice in the most favourable light, it indicates, as has been observed by a great writer, a mind over which religious considerations have little influence." It also sufficiently accounts for that propensity to ridicule piety, which is one of our national peculiarities. It would be uncandid to suppose, that at the best times there was more piety on the Continent than here; be this as it may, it never appears to have exposed its possessors to contempt; nor was the sublime devotion of Fenelon and of Pascal ever considered as forming a shade to their genius. The reverence for religion had not been worn away but for the familiar abuse of its peculiar Robert Hall.

terms.

PROFESSION AND CONDUCT.

A right profession aggravates the condemnation of a wrong conduct; and a wrong

The covetous man never has money,
And the prodigal will have none shortly!
Ben Jonson.

PRODIGALITY-Evil Results of.

If any man by prodigality squanders his ewn money, he cannot be entrusted with the money of the state.

Solon.

Prodigality and dissipation, at last bring a man to the want of the necessaries of life; he falls into poverty, misery, and abject disgrace; so that even his acquaintance, fearful of being obliged to restore to him what he has squandered with them, or upon them, fly from him as a debtor from his creditors, and he is left abandoned by all the world. Volney.

profession. Indeed, the bare profession of that which is good, carries with it an explicit censure upon every thing that is bad.

PROFLIGACY-Evils of.

Knowles.

To burn away, in mad waste, the divine aromas and plainly celestial elements from our existence; to change our holy-of-holies into a place of riot; to make the soul itself hard, impious, barren! Surely a day is coming, when it will be known again what virtue is in purity and continence of life; how divine is the blush of young human cheeks; how high, beneficent, sternly inexorable, if forgotten, is the duty laid, not on women only, but on every creature, in regard to these particulars? Well; if such a day never come again, then I perceive much else will never come. Magna

one by one,

Than that earth should stand at gaze like

Joshua's moon in Ajalon!

Not in vain the distance beacons. Forward, forward, let us range,

Let the great world spin for ever down the

ringing grooves of change. Through the shadow of the globe we sweep into the younger day:

Better fifty years of Europe than a cycle of Cathay. Tennyson.

PROJECTORS-not equally Rewarded. Projectors in a state are generally rewarded above their deserts; projectors in the republic of letters, never: if wrong, every inferior dunce thinks himself entitled to laugh at their disappointment; if right, men of superior talents think their honour engaged to oppose, since every new discovery is a tacit diminution of their own pre-eminence.

Goldsmith.

PROMISES-Caution in making.

He who is most slow in making a promise, is the most faithful in the performance of it. Rousseau.

PROMISES-Divine.

Every promise is built upon four pillars:— God's justice or holiness, which will not suffer

PROPERTY-Evil of Possessing. O property! what art thou but a weight To crush all soul, and paralyze all strength, And grind all heart and action out of man. Smythe PROPERTY-Pleasures of Possessing. Property communicates a charm to whatever is the object of it. It is the first of our abstract ideas: it cleaves to us the closest and thing, to the peasant his cottage, to the landthe longest. It endears to the child its playprospect and scenery. Instead of coveting the It supplies the place of beauty of distant situations, it teaches every man to find it in his own. It gives boldness colouring to clays and fallows. and grandeur to plains and fens, tinge and Paley. PROPERTY-Rights and Duties of.

holder his estate.

Those whose fortune it is to possess land and rank in this country, cannot be too often or too earnestly reminded of the fact, that the possession of such advantages constitutes, in every case whatever, a retaining fee on the part of the nation. Neither God, nor nature, nor society, contemplates the existence of an idler as that which ought to be. The country gentleman, the peer, and the prince, have their professions fixed on them: let them surrender the fee if they mean to shrink from the work; let the sinecure be a sine-salary. The mighty majority must, in all times and places, earn their living literally by the sweat of their brow, and the only principle on which any are exempted from the literal application of the great primary condition of our human existence is, that there are services essential to the intellectual, moral, political, and religious well-being and advancement of the whole, as a whole, which could not be effectually secured for them, were not some so exempted. The question is not whether a great man could

Certainly a landed estate is "an animal with its mouth always open." But compare the physical perception and enjoyment of landed wealth with that of consols and securities. Can I get me rosy cheeks, health, and good humour, riding up and down my Peruvian bonds? Can I go out shooting upon my parchment, or in summer sit under the shadow of my mortgage-deed, and bob for commas and troll for semicolons in my river of ink, that meanders through my meadow of sheep-skin? Wherefore I really think that land will always tempt even the knowing ones, until some vital change shall take place in society; for instance, till the globe makes its exit in smoke, and the blue curtain comes down on the creation. Reade.

PROSE AND POETRY-Definitions of.

When honest plainness knows not how to live. Shirley.

PROSPERITY-Signs of.

Where spades grow bright, and idle words grow dull;

Where jails are empty, and where barns are full;

Where church paths are with frequent feet outworn;

Law court-yards weedy, silent and forlorn;

Where doctors foot it, and where farmers ride;
Where age abounds and youth is multiplied;
Where these signs are, they clearly indicate
A happy people and well-governed State.
Confucius.
PROSPERITY-Wins Smiles.
If ye are fair,
Mankind will crowd around you, thick as when
The full-faced moon sits silver in the sea,
The eager waves lift up their gleaming heads,
Each shouldering for her smile!

Alexander Smith. PROSPERITY AND ADVERSITY. The mind that is much elevated and insolent with prosperity, and cast down with adversity, Epicurus. is generally abject and base.

Whilst you are prosperous you can number many friends; but when the storm comes you are left alone. Ovid.

PROTESTANTISM-True Meaning of.

At first view, it might seem as if Protestantism were entirely destructive to this that we call hero-worship, and represent as the basis of all possible good, religious or One often hears it said social, for mankind. that Protestantism introduced a new era, radically different from any the world had ever seen before: the era of "private judgment," as they call it. By this revolt against the pope, every man became his own pope; and learnt, among other things, that he must never trust any pope, or spiritual hero-captain, any more! Whereby, is not spiritual union, all hierarchy and subordination among men, henceforth an impossibility? So we hear it said. Now I need not deny that Protestantism was a revolt against spiritual sovereignties; popes and much else. Nay, will grant that English Puritanism, revolt against earthly sovereignties, was the second act of it; that the enormous French Revolution itself was the third act, whereby all sovereignties, earthly and spiritual, were, as might seem, abolished, or made sure of abolition. Protestantism is the grand root from which our whole subsequent European history branches out; for the spiritual will always body itself forth in the temporal history of men; the spiritual is the beginning of the temporal And now, surę enough, the cry is everywhere for liberty and equality, independence, and so forth; instead of kings, ballot-boxes, and electoral suffrages. It seems made out that any hero-sovereign, or loyal obedience of men to a man, in things temporal or things spiritual, has passed away