Who tender confidence repay with love, No. 170.] ADMONITIONS. [TUESDAY. LET the enlargement of your knowledge be one constant view and design in life. From observation of the day and the night, the hours and the flying moments, learn a wise improvement of time. From the vices and follies of other men, observe what is hateful in them; from their virtues, learn something worthy of your imitation. From every appearance in nature, and from every occurrence of life, you may derive natural, moral, and religious observations to entertain your minds, as well as to regulate your life. From your natural powers, sensation, judgment, memory, hands, feet, &c. make this inference: that they were not given you for nothing, but for some useful employment, for the good of your fellow creatures, your own best interest, and final happiness. Nɔ. 171.j [WEDNESDAY. DIFFERENT METHODS OF IMPROVING IN KNOWLEDGE. THERE are five eminent means or methods, whereby the mind is improved in knowledge, and these are, observation, reading, instruction by lectures, conversation, and meditation: the last of which is in a more peculiar manner called study. Each of these five methods has its peculiar advantages, by which it materially assists the others, and its peculiar defects, which need to be supplied by the assistance of the rest. Reading maketh a full man, conference a ready man, and writing an exact man. No. 172.1 READING. [THURSDAY. THERE is, perhaps, nothing that has a greater tendency to decide favourably or unfavourably respecting a man's future intellect than the question, whether or not he be impressed with an early taste for reading. Books are the depository of every thing that is most honourable to man. He that loves reading has every thing within his reach. He has but to desire, and he may possess himself of every species of wisdom to judge, and power to reform. Books gratify and excite our curiosity in innumerable ways. They force us to reflect; they present direct ideas of various kinds, and they suggest indirect ones. No. 173.] NOVELS. [FRIDAY. NOVELS, are, in general, the most insignificant and trifling of all literary performances: they are either the flimsy productions of those who write for bread, or the offspring of vanity in the idle and illiterate, or poor imitations of more successful compositions that have gone before them. It were well if the reading of novels were nothing more than the loss of time; but it has generally a bad effect upon the mind, and, in some instances, a fatal one upon the morals and fortune. Novels do not only corrupt the manners, but vitiate the taste of their readers; as strong liquors vitiate the stomach, and hurt the constitution: they fly above nature and reality; their characters are all overcharged, and their incidents overflow with improbabilities and absurdities. Nothing, therefore, can be more dangerous to the understanding, to the morals and the taste, than an attachment to the reading of the generality of these fictitious productions. They glide into the heart through the imagination, and, under the taste of honey, often infuse the strongest poison. No. 174.] RULES FOR READING. [SATURDAY. If the books which you read are your own, mark with a pen, or a pencil, the most considerable things in them which you desire to remember. Thus you may read that book the second time over K with half the trouble, by your eye running over the paragraphs which your pencil has noticed. This advice of writing, marking, and reviewing your remarks, refers chiefly to those occasional notions you meet with either in reading or in conversation; but when you are directly or professedly pursuing any subject of knowledge in a good system, the system itself is your common-place book, and must be entirely reviewed. The same may be said concerning any treatise which closely, succinctly, and accurately handles any particular theme. No. 175.] THE BOOK OF JOB. [SUNDAY. We should learn from this excellent book not to judge and condemn others, because they are poor, or sick, or under any calamity. Afflictions are no proof of a man's being wicked and forsaken of God. Whom the Lord loveth, he chasteneth, and scourgeth every son whom he receiveth. The example of Job teacheth us to employ ourselves and our wealth in doing good to others, according to their various necessities. They who are rich in this world, should be rich in good works, ready to give, glad to distribute. It teaches also to resign ourselves patiently to our afflictions, and to bend our wills to the divine will; still to rely upon God with full trust and confidence, and not only to justify, but to glorify him in all that is brought upon us. No. 176.] POVERTY. [MONDAY. HAVE the courage to appear poor and you disarm poverty of its sharpest sting. Affluence may give us respect, in the eyes of the vulgar, but it will not recommend us to the wise and good. A good and well cultivated mind, is greatly preferable to rank or riches. Happy would the poor man think himself, if he could enter on all the treasures of the rich and happy for a short time he might be; but before he had long contemplated and admired his state, his possessions would seem to lessen, and his cares would grow. No. 177.] TRUE HAPPINESS. [TUESDAY. True happiness is not the gentle growth of earth; The toil is fruitless if you seek it here, 'Tis an exotic of celestial birth, And never blooms, but in celestial air, Sweet plant of Paradise! thy seeds are sown, In here and there, a mind of heavenly mould; It rises slow, and blooms-but ne'er was known To ripen here the climate is too cold. No. 178.] ENGLISH PROVERBS. [WEDNESDAY. "If you trust before you try You may repent before you die." UNDER this proverbial distich is couched a good lesson of caution and circumspection; not |