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began now to think all the time I had spent with the best heathen writers was little more than labour lost for however pleasant and delightful their lessons may be, or however adequate to the right regulation of our conduct with respect to this world only, yet, when compared with the glory revealed in Scripture, their highest documents will appear as trifling, and of as little consequence as the rules by which children regulate their childish little games and pastime. True it is, that philosophy makes us wiser, but Christianity makes us better men. Philosophy elevates and steels the mind, Christianity softens and sweetens it. The former makes us the objects of human admiration, the latter of divine love. That insures us a temporal, but this an eternal happiness.

I had spent about four years in the most delightful manner to myself, totally given up to contemplation, and entirely unembarrassed with the affairs of the world, when I lost the best of fathers, and one whom I so entirely loved, that my grief at his loss exceeds all description. I now abandoned my books, and gave myself up for a whole month to the efforts of melancholy and despair. Time, however, the best physician of the mind, at length brought me relief. I then betook myself again to my former studies, which I may say perfected my cure for philosophy and religion may be called the exercises of the mind, and, when this is disordered, they are as wholesome as exercise can be to a distempered body. They do indeed produce similar effects with exercise: for they strengthen and confirm the mind; till man becomes, in the noble strain of Horace,

Fortis, et in seipso totus teres atque rotundus,
Externi ne quid valeat per laeve morari:

In quem manca ruit semper Fortuna.

198. Tobias George Smollett. 1721-1771. (Manual, p. 341.)

THE SOLDIER'S RETURN.

We set out from Glasgow, by the way of Lanark, the county town of Clydesdale, in the neighbourhood of which the whole river Clyde, rushing down a steep rock, forms a very noble and stupendous cascade. Next day we were obliged to halt in a small borough, until the carriage, which had received some damage, should be repaired; and here we met with an incident which warmly interested the benevolent spirit of Mr. Bramble. As we stood at the window of an inn that fronted the public prison, a person arrived on horseback, genteelly though plainly dressed in a blue frock, with his own hair cut short, and a gold-laced hat upon his head. Alighting, and giving his horse to the landlord, he advanced to an old man who was at work in paving the street, and accosted him in these words-"This

is hard work for such an old man as you." So saying, he took the instrument out of his hand, and began to thump the pavement. After a few strokes, "Had you never a son," said he, "to ease you of this labour?" "Yes, an' please your honour,” replied the senior, "I have three hopeful lads, but at present they are out of the way." "Honour not me," cried the stranger; "it more becomes me to honour your gray hairs. Where are those sons you talk of ?" The ancient paviour said, his eldest son was a çaptain in the East Indies, and the youngest had lately enlisted as a soldier, in hopes of prospering like his brother. The gentleman desiring to know what was become of the second, he wiped his eyes, and owned he had taken upon him his old father's debts, for which he was now in the prison hard by.

The traveller made three quick steps towards the jail; then turning short, "Tell me," said he, “has that unnatural captain sent you nothing to relieve your distresses?" "Call him not unnatural," replied the other, "God's blessing be upon him! he sent me a great deal of money, but I made a bad use of it; I lost it by being security for a gentleman that was my landlord, and was stripped of all I had in the world besides." At that instant a young man, thrusting out his head and neck between two iron bars in the prisonwindow, exclaimed, "Father! father! if my brother William is in life, that's he." "I am! I am!" cried the stranger, clasping the old man in his arms, and shedding a flood of tears; "I am your son Willy, sure enough!" Before the father, who was quite confounded, could make any return to this tenderness, a decent old woman, bolting out from the door of a poor habitation, cried, "Where is my bairn? where is my dear Willy?" The captain no sooner beheld her than he quitted his father, and ran into her embrace.

I can assure you, my uncle who saw and heard everything that passed, was as much moved as any one of the parties concerned in this pathetic recognition. He sobbed, and wept, and clapped his hands, and holloed, and finally ran down into the street. By this time the captain had retired with his parents, and all the inhabitants of the place were assembled at the door. Mr. Bramble, nevertheless, pressed through the crowd, and entering the house, "Captain," said he, "I beg the favour of your acquaintance. I would have travelled a hundred miles to see this affecting scene; and I shall think myself happy if you and your parents will dine with me at the public house." The captain thanked him for his kind invitation, which, he said, he would accept with pleasure; but in the mean time he could not think of eating or drinking while his poor brother was in trouble. He forthwith deposited a sum equal to the debt in the hands of the magistrate, who ventured to set his brother at liberty without further process; and then the whole family repaired to the inn with my

uncle, attended by the crowd, the individuals of which shook their townsman by the hand, while he returned their caresses without the least sign of pride or affectation.

This honest favourite of fortune, whose name was Brown, told my uncle that he had been bred a weaver, and about eighteen years ago had, from a spirit of idleness and dissipation, enlisted as a soldier in the service of the East India Company; that in the course of duty he had the good fortune to attract the notice and approbation of Lord Clive, who preferred him from one step to another till he had attained the rank of captain and paymaster to the regiment, in which capacities he had honestly amassed twelve thousand pounds, and at the peace resigned his commission. He had sent several remittances to his father, who received the first only, consisting of one hundred pounds; the second had fallen into the hands of a bankrupt; and the third had been consigned to a gentleman in Scotland, who died before it arrived, so that it still remained to be accounted for by his executors. He now presented the old man with fifty pounds for his present occasions, over and above bank notes for one hundred, which he had deposited for his brother's release. He brought along with him a deed, ready executed, by which he settled a perpetuity of fourscore pounds upon his parents, to be inherited by the other two sons after their decease. He promised to purchase a commission for his youngest brother; to take the other as his own partner in a manufacture which he intends to set up to give employment and bread to the industrious; and to give five hundred pounds to the poor of the town where he was born, and feasted all the inhabitants without exception.

My uncle was so charmed with the character of Captain Brown, that he drank his health three times successively at dinner. He said he was proud of his acquaintance; that he was an honour to his country, and had in some measure redeemed human nature from the reproach of pride, selfishness, and ingratitude. For my part I was as much pleased with the modesty as with the filial virtue of this honest soldier, who assumed no merit from his success, and said very little of his own transactions, though the answers he made to our inquiries were equally sensible and laconic.

199. Laurence Sterne. 1713-1768. (Manual, p. 344.)
FROMTRISTRAM SHANDY.'

DEATH OF LE FEVRE.

a fortnight or three weeks, added my uncle Toby, might march.

He will never march, an' please your

honour, in this world, said the corporal.

off:

He will march, said my uncle Toby, rising up from the side of the bed with one shoe An' please your honour, said the corporal, he will never march but to his grave: He shall march, cried my uncle Toby, marching the foot which had a shoe on, though without advancing He cannot stand

an inch, - he shall march to his regiment. it, said the corporal.

Toby.

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He shall be supported, said my uncle He'll drop at last, said the corporal, and what will He shall not drop, said my uncle Toby,

become of his boy?

firmly. — Ah welladay, maintaining his point,

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by G-d! cried my uncle Toby.

The Accusing Spirit, which flew up to Heaven's chancery with the oath, blush'd as he gave it in and the Recording Angel, as he wrote it down, dropp'd a tear upon the word, and blotted it out

for ever.

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My uncle Toby went to his bureau put his purse into his breeches' pocket, and having ordered the corporal to go early in the morning for a physician he went to bed, and fell asleep.

--

The sun look'd bright the morning after to every eye in the village but le Fevre's, and his afflicted son's; the hand of Death pressed heavy upon his eyelids, and hardly could the wheel at the cistern turn round its circle, when my uncle Toby, who had rose up an hour before his wonted time, entered the lieutenant's room, and without preface or apology, sat himself down upon the chair by the bed-side, and, independently of all modes and customs, opened the curtain in the manner an old friend and brother officer would have done it, and asked him how he did - how he had rested in the night what was his complaint where was his pain - and what he could do to help him? — and without giving him time to answer any one of the inquiries, went on, and told him of the little plan which he had been concerting with the corporal the night before for him.

You shall go home directly, le Fevre, said my uncle Toby, to my house and we'll send for a doctor to see what's the matter and we'll have an apothecary, and the corporal shall be your

nurse, and I'll be your servant, le Fevre.

There was a frankness in my uncle Toby, not the effect of familiarity, but the cause of it, which let you at once into his soul, and showed you the goodness of his nature; to this, there was something in his looks, and voice, and manner, superadded, which eternally beckoned to the unfortunate to come and take shelter under him; so that before my uncle Toby had half finished the kind offers he was making to the father, the son had insensibly pressed up close to his knees, and had taken hold of the breast of his coat, and was pulling it towards him. The blood and spirits of le Fevre,

which were waxing cold and slow within him, and were retreating

to their last citadel, the heart, rallied back, eyes for a moment,

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he looked up wistfully in my uncle Toby's

face then cast a look upon his boy, it was, was never broken.

Nature instantly ebb'd again,

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Oliver Goldsmith. 1728-1774. (Manual, p. 347.)

200. THE DISABLED SOLDIER.

No observation is more common, and at the same time more true, than that one half of the world are ignorant how the other half lives. The misfortunes of the great are held up to engage our attention; are enlarged upon in tones of declamation; and the world is called upon to gaze at the noble sufferers; the great, under the pressure of calamity, are conscious of several others sympathizing with their distress, and have at once the comfort of admiration and pity.

There is nothing magnanimous in bearing misfortunes with fortitude when the whole world is looking on: men in such circumstances will act bravely, even from motives of vanity; but he who, in the vale of obscurity, can brave adversity; who, without friends to encourage, acquaintances to pity, or even without hope to alleviate his misfortunes, can behave with tranquillity and indifference, is truly great: whether peasant or courtier, he deserves admiration, and should be held up for our imitation and respect.

While the slightest inconveniencies of the great are magnified into calamities, while tragedy mouths out their sufferings in all the strains of eloquence, the miseries of the poor are entirely disregarded; and yet some of the lower ranks of people undergo more real hardships in one day, than those of a more exalted station suffer in their whole lives. It is inconceivable what difficulties the meanest of our common sailors and soldiers endure without murmuring or regret; without passionately declaiming against Providence, or calling their fellows to be gazers on their intrepidity. Every day is to them a day of misery, and yet they entertain their hard fate without repining.

With what indignation do I hear an Ovid, a Cicero, or a Rabutin, complain of their misfortunes and hardships, whose greatest calamity was that of being unable to visit a certain spot of earth, to which they had foolishly attached an idea of happiness! Their distresses

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