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could neither subdue nor humble, blasted his triumphs. His whole soul was shaken with a storm of passion. Wrath, pride, and desire of revenge, rose into fury. With difficulty he restrained himself in public; but as soon as he came to his own house, he was forced to disclose the agony of his mind. He gathered together his friends and family, with Zeresh his wife." He told them of the glory of his riches, and the multitude of his children, and of all the things wherein the King had promoted him; and how he had advanced him above the princes and servants of the King. He said, moreover, "Yea, Esther the queen suffered no man to come in with the King, to the banquet that she had prepared, but myself; and tomorrow also am I invited to her with the King." After all this preamble, what is the conclusion? "Yet all this availeth me nothing, so long as I see Mordecai the Jew sitting at the King's gate."

The sequel of Haman's history I shall not now pursue. It might afford matter for much instruction, by the conspicuous justice of God in his fall and punishment. But contemplating only the singular situation, in which the expressions just quoted present him, and the violent agitation of his mind which they display, the following reflections naturally arise: How miserable is vice, when one guilty passion creates so much torment! how unavailing is prosperity, when, in the height of it, a single disappointment can destroy the relish of all its pleasures! how weak is human nature, which, in the absence of real, is thus prone to form to itself imaginary woes!

SECTION IV.

Ortogrul; or, the Vanity of Riches.

BLAIR.

As Ortogrul of Basa was one day wandering along the streets of Bagdat, musing on the varieties of merchandise which the shops offered to his view; and observing the different occupations which busied the multitudes on every side, he was awakened from the tranquillity of meditation, by a crowd that obstructed his passage. He raised his eyes, and saw the chief vizier, who, having returned from the divan, was entering his palace.

Ortogrul mingled with the attendants; and being supposed to have some petition for the vizier, was permitted

to enter. He surveyed the spaciousness of the apartments, admired the walls hung with golden tapestry, and the floors covered with silken carpets; and despised the simple neatness of his own little habitation.

"Surely," said he to himself, "this palace is the seat of happiness; where pleasure succeeds to pleasure, and discontent and sorrow can have no admission. Whatever nature has provided for the delight of sense, is here spread forth to be enjoyed. What can mortals hope or imagine, which the master of this palace has not obtained? The dishes of luxury cover his table; the voice of harmony lulls him in his bowers; he breathes the fragrance of the groves of Java, and sleeps upon the down of the cygnets of Ganges. He speaks, and his mandate is obeyed; he wishes, and his wish is gratified; all whom he sees obey him, and all whom he hears flatter him. How different, Ortogrul, is thy condition, who art doomed to the perpetual torments of unsatisfied desire; and who hast no amusement in thy power, that can withhold thee from thy own reflections! they tell thee that thou art wise; but what does wisdom avail with poverty? None will flatter the poor; and the wise have very little power of flattering themselves. That man is surely the most wretched of the sons of wretchedness, who lives with his own faults and follies always before him; and who has none to reconcile him to himself by praise and veneration. I have long sought content, and have not found it; I will from this moment endeavor to be rich."

Full of his new resolution, he shut himself in his chamber for six months, to deliberate how he should grow rich. He sometimes purposed to offer himself as a counsellor to one of the Kings of India; and sometimes resolved to dig for diamonds in the mines of Golconda. One day, after some hours passed in violent fluctuation of opinion, sleep insensibly seized him in his chair. He dreamed that he was ranging a desert country, in search of some one that might teach him to grow rich; and as he stood on the top of a hill, shaded with cyprus, in doubt whither to direct his steps, his father appeared on a sudden standing before him." Ortogrul," said the old man, "I know thy perplexity; listen to thy father; turn thine eye on the opposite mountain." Ortogrul looked, and saw a torrent

tumbling down the rocks, roaring with the noise of thurtder, and scattering its foam on the impending woods."Now," said his father, "behold the valley that lies between the hills." Ortogrul looked, and espied a little well, out of which issued a small rivulet. "Tell me now," said his father, "dost thou wish for sudden affluence, that may pour upon thee like the mountain torrent; or for a slow and gradual increase, resembling the rill gliding from the well" "Let me be quickly rich," said Ortogrul; "let the golden stream be quick and violent." "Look round thee," said his father, "once again. Ortogrul looked, and perceived the channel of the torrent dry and dusty; but following the rivulet from the well, he traced it to a wide lake, which the supply, slow and constant, kept always full. He awoke, and determined to grow rich by silent profit and presevering industry.

Having sold his patrimony, he engaged in merchandize; and in twenty years purchased lands, on which he raised a house, equal in sumptuousness to that of the vizier, to which he invited all the ministers of pleasure, expecting to enjoy all the felicity which he had imagined riches able to afford. Leisure soon made him weary of himself, and he longed to be persuaded that he was great and happy.→→ He was courteous and liberal; he gave all that approached him hopes of pleasing him, and all who should please him hopes of being rewarded. Every art of praise was tried, and every source of adulatory fiction was exhausted. Ortogrul heard his flatterers without delight, because-he found himself unable to believe them. His own heart told him his frailties; his own understanding reproached him. with his faults." How long," said he, with a deep sigh, "have I been laboring in vain to amass wealth, which at last is useless! Let no man hereafter wish to be rich, who is already too wise to be flattered !"

SECTION V.
Lady Jane Grey.

DR. JOHNSON.

THIS excellent personage was descended from the royal line of England by both her parents.

She was carefully educated in the principles of the reformation; and her wisdom and virtue rendered her a shin ing example to her sex. But it was her lot to continue

only a short period on this stage of being; for, in early life, she fell a sacrifice to the wild ambition of the duke of Northumberland; who promoted a marriage between her and his son, lord Guilford Dudley; and raised her to the throne of England, in opposition to the rights of Mary and Elizabeth. At the time of their marriage, she was only about eighteen years of age, and her husband was also very young: a season of life very unequal to oppose the interested views of artful and aspiring men ; who, instead of exposing them to danger, should have been the protectors of their innocence and youth.

This extraordinary young person, besides the solid endowments of piety and virtue, possessed the most engaging disposition, the most accomplished parts; and being of an equal age with king Edward VI, she had received all her education with him, and seemed even to possess a greater facility in acquiring every part of manly and classical literature. She had attained a knowledge of the Roman and Greek languages, as well as of several modern tongues; had passed most of her time in an application to learning; and expressed a great indifference for other occupations and amusements usual with her sex and station. Roger Ascham, tutor to the lady Elizabeth, having at one time paid her a visit, found her employed in reading Plato, while the rest of the family were engaged in a party of hunting in the park; and upon his admiring the singularity of her choice, she told him that she "received more pleasure from that author, than the others could reap from all their sport and gaity." Her heart, replete with this love of literature and serious studies, and with tenderness towards her husband, who was deserving of her affection, had never opened itself to the flattering allurements of ambition; and the information of her advancement to the throne was by no means agreeable to her. She even refused to accept of the crown; pleaded the preferable right of the two princesses; expressed her dread of the consequences attending an enterprize so dangerous, not to say so criminal; and desired to remain in that private station in which she was born. Overcome at last with the entreaties, rather than reasons, of her father and father-inlaw, and, above all, of her husband, she submitted to their will, and was prevailed on to relinquish her own

judgment. But her elevation was of very short continuance. The nation declared for queen Mary; and the lady Jane, after wearing the vain pageantry of a crown during ten days, returned to a private life, with much more satisfaction than she felt when the royalty was tendered to her.

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Queen Mary, who appears to have been incapable of generosity or clemency, determined to remove every person, from whom the least danger could be apprehended. Warning was, therefore, given to lady Jane to prepare for death; a doom which she had expected, and which the innocence of her life, as well as the misfortunes to which she had been exposed, rendered no unwelcome news to her. The queen's bigoted zeal, under color of tender mercy to the prisoner's soul, induced her to send priests, who molested her with perpetual disputation; and even a reprieve of three days was granted her, in hopes that she would be pursuaded, during that time, to pay, by a timely conversion to popery, some regard to her eternal welfare. Lady Jane had presence of mind, in those melancholy circumstances, not only to defend her religion by solid arguments, but also to write a letter to her sister, in the Greek language; in which, besides sending her a copy of the scriptures in that tongue, she exhorted her to maintain, in every fortune, a like steady perseverance. On the day of her execution, her husband, lord Guilford, desired permission to see her; but she refused her consent, and sent him word, that the tenderness of their parting would overcome the fortitude of both; and would too much unbend their minds from that constancy, which their approaching end required of them. Their separation, she said, would be only for a moment; and they would soon rejoin each other in a scene, where their affections would be forever united; and where death, disappointment, and misfortunes, could no longer have access to them, or disturb their eternal felicity.

It had been intended to execute the lady Jane and lord Guilford together, on the same scaffo d, at Tower hill; but the council, dreading the compassion of the people for their youth, beauty, innocence, and noble birth, changed their orders, and gave directions that she should be beheaded within the verge of the Tower. She saw her husband

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