are in reality but mere sounds; but they are sounds which being used on particular occasions wherein we receive some good or suffer some evil, or see others affected with good or evil, or which we hear applied to other interesting things or events; and which being applied in such a variety of cases, that we know readily by habit to what things they belong, they produce in the mind, whenever they are afterwards mentioned, effects similar to those of their occasions. The sounds being often used without reference to any particular occasion, and carrying still their first impressions, they at last utterly lose their connection with the occasions that give rise to them; yet the sound without any annexed notion continues to operate as before. Inquiry into the Sublime and the Beautiful. Pt. v. sec. 2. The Queen of France. 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 inglittering like the morning star, full of life, and splendour, and joy. Oh! what a revolution! and what a heart must I have to contemplate without emotion that elevation and that fall! Little did I dream, when she added titles of veneration to those of enthusiastic, distant, respectful love, that she should ever be obliged to carry the sharp antidote against disgrace concealed in that bosom; little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fallen upon her in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honour 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 chivalry is gone. That of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded; and the glory of Europe is extinguished for ever. Never, never more shall we behold that generous loyalty to rank and sex, that proud submission, that dignified obedience, that subordination of the heart which kept alive, even in servitude itself, the spirit of an exalted freedom. The unbought grace of life, the cheap defence of nations, the nurse of manly sentiment and heroic enterprise is gone! It is gone, that sensibility of prin ciple, that chastity of honour, which felt a stain like a wound, which inspired courage whilst it mitigated ferocity, which ennobled whatever it touched, and under which vice itself lost half its evil by losing all its grossness. Reflections on the Revolution in France. Manners. Manners are of more importance than laws. Upon them in a great measure the laws depend. The law touches us but here and there, and now and then. Manners are what vex or soothe, corrupt or purify, exalt or debase, barbarize or refine us, by a constant, steady, uniform, insensible operation, like that of the air we breathe in. They give their whole form and colour to our lives. According to their quality, they aid morals, they supply them, or they totally destroy them. Letters on a Regicide Peace. Letter 1. The Labouring Poor. The vigorous and laborious class of life has lately got from the bon ton of the humanity of this day the name of the labouring poor.' We have heard many plans for the relief of the labouring poor.' This puling jargon is not as innocent as it is foolish. In meddling with great affairs weakness is never innoxious. Hitherto the name of poor (in the sense in which it is used to excite compassion) has not been used for those who can, but for those who cannot labour-and when we affect to pity as poor those who must labour or the world cannot exist, we are trifling with the condition of mankind. It is the common doom of man that he must eat his bread by the sweat of his brow, that is by the sweat of his body or the sweat of his mind. If this toil was inflicted as a curse, it is-as might be expected from the curses of the Father of all blessings-attempered with many alleviations, many comforts. I cannot call a healthy young man, cheerful in his mind, and vigorous in his arms, I cannot call such a man poor, I cannot pity my kind as kind merely because they are men. This affected pity only tends to dissatisfy them with their condition, and to teach them to seek resources, where no resources are to be found, in something else than their own industry, and frugality, and sobriety. Ib. Letter 3. Vanity. In a small degree and conversant in little things, vanity is of little moment. When full grown it is the worst of vices, and the occasional mimic of them all. It makes the whole mau false. It leaves nothing sincere or trustworthy about him. . . . He has not observed on the nature of vanity who does not know that it is omnivorous; that it has no choice in its food; that it is prone to talk of its own faults and vices as what will excite surprise and draw attention, and what pass at worst for openness and candour. Letter to a Member of the National Assembly. Tyrants seldom want pretexts. Fraud is the ready minister of injustice. An inordinate thirst for variety whenever it prevails is sure to leave very little true taste. Inquiry into the Sublime and the Beautiful. Lord Chatham. ... Another scene has opened and other actors have appeared on the stage. The state, in the condition I have described it, was delivered into the hands of Lord Chatham-a great and celebrated name a name that keeps the name of this country respectable in every other on the globe. . . . Sir, the venerable age of this great man, his merited rank, his superior eloquence, his splendid qualities, his eminent services, the vast space he fills in the eye of mankind, and more than all the rest, his fall from power, which, like death, canonizes and sanctifies a great character, will not suffer me to censure any part of his conduct. I . am afraid to flatter him. I am sure I am not disposed to blame him. Let those who have betrayed him by their adulations insult him with their malevolence. But what I do not presume to censure, I may have leave to lament. For a wise man, he seemed to me at that time [1766] to be governed too much by general maxims. I speak with the freedom of history, and I hope without offence. One or two of those maxims, flowing from an opinion not the most indulgent to our unhappy species, and surely a little too general, led him into measures that were greatly mischievous to himself, and for that reason, among others, perhaps fatal to his country; measures, the effects of which I am afraid are for ever incurable. Speech on American Taxation. Punishment of Rebellion. The body and mass of the people never ought to be treated as criminals. . . . The offences of war are obliterated by peace. ... Where, then, are the objects of justice, and of example, and of future security to the public peace? They are naturally pointed out, not by their having outraged political and civil aws, but by their having rebelled against the law of nature and outraged man as man. Remarks on the Policy of the Allies. The worthy gentleman who has been snatched from us at the moment of the election, and in the middle of the contest, while his desires were as warm, and his hopes as eager as ours, has feelingly told us what shadows we are, what shadows we pursue. Speech at Bristol on declining the Poll, 1780. 184. William Cowper, 1731-1800. (Handbook, par. 218.) William Cowper was born at Great Berkhampstead, Nov. 26, 1731, and died at East Dereham, April 25, 1800. His poetry is distinguished by its naturalness and reality, by its vigour and evangelical tone, by its pathos and tenderness. His hymns appeared about 1772: the first volume of his poems in 1782; and the second, The Task,' which established his fame, in 1785. His translation of Homer-the best of all translations in Wilson's judgment-appeared in 1791. His letters are among our finest specimens of that style of composition. · From the Hymns. The calm retreat, the silent shade, There if thy Spirit touch the soul, And grace her mean abode, Oh! with what peace, and joy, and love She communes with her God! Far from the world, O Lord, I flee. Two stanzas out of six. Lord, I believe thou hast prepared For me a blood-bought free reward, "Tis strung, and tuned, for endless years, And formed by power divine, To sound in God the Father's ears No other name but thine. There is a fountain filled with blood. Two stanzas out of seven. The Cottager and Voltaire. The path to bliss abounds with many a snare, The Frenchman, first in literary fame (Mention him, if you please. Voltaire ?-The same), With spirit, genius, eloquence supplied, Lived long, wrote much, laughed heartily, and died. And fumed with frankincense on every side; Yon cottager, who weaves at her own door, |