the true, nervous flowing eloquence-particularly of the pulpit? Dr. Blair is the Pliny.

EMPLOYMENT.

1. EMPLOYMENT is the best cure for grief; as Tacitus tells us of Agricola, that, when he had lost his son, in luctu bellum inter remedia erat—he resorted to war as a remedy against grief. In Vitâ,

sect. 28.

2. Cheerfulness is the daughter of employment; and I have known a man come home in high spirits from a funeral, merely because he had had the management of it.

3. Anxiety and melancholy are best dispelled and kept at a distance by employment. On the day before the battle of Pharsalia, Plutarch tells us, when dinner was ended in the camp, while others either went to sleep, or were disquieting their minds with apprehensions concerning the approaching battle, Brutus employed himself in writing till the evening, composing an epitome of Polybius.

ENEMIES.

THE use to be made of their revilings, &c. is thus set forth by bishop Taylor: "Our enemies

perform accidentally the office of friends: they "tell us our faults, with all their deformities and

aggravations: they offer us affronts, which exercise our patience, and restrain us from scandalous "crimes, lest we become a scorn and reproof to "them that hate us. And it is not the least of "God's mercies, that he permits enmities among

men, by means of which our failings are reproved

more sharply, and corrected with more severity "and simplicity than they would otherwise be. "The gentle hand of a friend is more apt to bind

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our wounds up, than to probe them and make "them smart."-See Life of Christ, fol. p. 541.

ENVY.

ENVY pines at the applauses which virtue receives; as Plutarch tells us, that when Titus Flaminius, by conquering Philip, had restored the Grecian cities to their freedom, the acclamations of the people assembled at the celebration of the Isthmian games caused the crows, as they were flying over the stage, to drop down dead upon it.-In Vita Flamin.

EPAMINONDAS.

HIS HUMILITY AND PATRIOTISM.

His enemies, jealous of his glory, with a design to affront him, caused him to be elected the city scavenger. He accepted the place with thanks, and declared, that, instead of deriving honour from his office, he would give it dignity in his turn.-I dare say kennels never were so well scoured before.

EVIL.

ORIGIN OF IT.

1. THE philosophers of old saw the world overflowed by a torrent of corruption, as the Egyptians beheld their country every year deluged by the Nile. Both were equally to seek for the spring head and cause of these effects.

2. The ancient philosophers speak of man's degeneracy, with its consequences, in a much better way than many, who pretend to be friends to reason and to Christ, but are so to neither, while they make it their business to extenuate the fall of man, and the corruption introduced thereby into human nature. See some wonderful citations in Orig. Sacr. iii. 3.

EULER.

EULER lived at Petersburgh during the administration of Biron, one of the most tyrannical ministers that ever breathed. On the philosopher's coming to Berlin, after the tyrant's death, the late Queen of Prussia, who could hardly get a word out of him, asked him the reason of his silence.-" Because," said he, "I come from a place where if a man says a word he is hanged."

EURIPIDES.

MANY of the Athenians, during their captivity at Syracuse, owed the good usage they met with to the scenes of Euripides, which they repeated to their captors, who were extremely fond of them. On their return they went and saluted that poet as their deliverer, and informed him of the admirable effects wrought in their favour by his verses. Scarce any circumstance could be more pleasing and flattering than this testimony.

EXERCISE.

THE most common cause of fatness is too great a quantity of food, and too small a quantity of mo

tion; in plain English, gluttony and laziness. I am of opinion, that spare diet and labour will keep constitutions, where this disposition is strongest, from being fat. You may see in an army forty thousand foot soldiers without a fat man amongst them: and I dare affirm, that by plenty and rest twenty of the forty shall grow fat.-Arbuthnot.

FACTION.

WHILE a faction entertain their old principles, it is folly to suppose they will not, when opportunity serves, return to their old practices. Quæro, quid facturi fuissetis? Quanquam quid facturi fueritis non dubitem, cum videam quid feceritis. Cic. pro Ligario. The fine lady will be the cat she was, when a mouse runs before her.

FAITH.

1. IN the affairs of this world, as husbandry, trade, &c. men know little and believe much. In the affairs of another world, they would know every thing, and believe nothing.

2. If we are rationally led, upon clear principles and good evidence, to believe a point, it is no ob