signalizing their own bravery, and of malice, in the same coach to the being witnesses of his." We may place where the matter was to be leave the reader to determine, in this decided; and, on the first discharge case, who acted most like a man of sense, of temper, and of true courage. of the pistols, Sir Cholmley was mortally wounded, and died a few days after, lamenting the unhappy occasion, and that none of their friends would be so good as to endeavour to make up the matter before they fought; for it seems some days had elapsed between the challenge and the engagement: nor was Mr. Thornhill less afflicted than his dying friend, for the unfortunate murder which that false notion of honour had incited him to commit on a gentleman in whose defence he would readily have ventured his own life at another time. "I have related this more largely, (says the writer of this article,) that gentlemen, reflecting on this unhappy adventure, may, when passionate words are let fall, deliberate a little before they run headlong to their own destruction. It has been observed, that the Romans, the bravest men that ever ruled the world, gave no encouragement to this practice of duelling. They thought there was more honour in passing by an affront, than resenting it: especially in so outrageous a manner. The highest point of honour among them was, the saving the life of a fellow-citizen; but, among us, no man is thought brave till he has murdered a friend; and shall Christians whose very characSir Cholmley Deering, member of teristic is a forgiving, benevolent, parliament for the county of Kent, temper, become more savage than was killed by his intimate friend, Mr. heathens, by encouraging these barThornhill, in a duel, the 9th of May, barous encounters? The parliament, 1711. These gentlemen, having sat it is true, was so sensible of the too long over a glass of wine, it inhumanity of the practice, that a seems, began to make personal re-bill was brought in, in 1711, to preflections on each other, which pro- vent the infamous practice of duelduced a challenge; and both of them ling; but it was unaccountably were grieved they had quarrelled, dropped, and we have yet no law some time before they fought; but, that sufficiently restrains gentlemen deluded by a false notion of honour, from cutting the throats of their believing their courage would be friends and relations; for that abcalled in question if they did not surd notion still prevails, That he is fight, they armed themselves with a scoundrel who refuses to be di swords and pistols, went, without any murderer." Two friends happening to quarrel at a tavern, one of them, a man of a hasty disposition, insisted that the other should fight him next morning. The challenge was accepted on condition that they should breakfast together at the house of the person challenged, previous to their going to the field. When the challenger came in the morning, according to appointment, he found every preparation made for breakfast, and his friend with his wife and children ready to receive him their repast being ended, and the family withdrawn, without the least intimation of their purpose having transpired, the challenger asked the other if he was ready to attend?" No Sir," said he, "not till we are more on a par: that amiable woman, and those six lovely children, who just now breakfasted with us, depend, under Providence, on my life for subsistence; and, till you can stake something equal, in my estimation, to the welfare of seven persons dearer to me than the apple of my eye, I cannot think we are equally matched." "We are not indeed!" replied the other, giving him his hand. These two persons became firmer friends than ever. EARLY RISING. threats. The day following he employed force; I begged for indulIr cannot be denied that early gence, I bid him be gone, stormed, rising is conducive both to the health but Joseph persisted. I was, thereof the body and the improvement of fore, obliged to comply, and he was the mind. It was an observation of rewarded every day for the abuse Swift, "That he never knew any which he suffered at the moment man come to greatness and eminence when I awoke, by thanks accompaniwho lay in bed of a morning." ed with a crown, which he received Though this observation of an indi- about an hour after. Yes, I am invidual is not received as an universal debted to poor Joseph for ten or a maxim, it is certain that some of the dozen of the volumes of my works." most eminent characters which ever Frederick II. King of Prussia, existed accustomed themselves to rose very early in the morning, and early rising. It seems, also, that in general allowed a very short part people in general rose earlier in for- of his time to sleep. But as age and mer times than now. In the four-infirmities increased upon him, his teenth century, the shops in Paris sleep was broken and disturbed; and were opened at four in the morning; when he fell asleep towards the mornat present a shop-keeper is scarcely ing, he frequently missed his usual awake at seven. The King of France dined at eight in the morning, and retired to his bed chamber at the same hour in the evening. During the reign of Henry VIII. fashionable people in England breakfasted at seven in the morning, and dined at ten in the forenoon. In Elizabeth's time the nobility, gentry, and students, dined at eleven in the forenoon, and supped between five and six in the afternoon. early hour of rising. This loss of Various have been the means made use of to overcome the habit of sleeping long of a morning, Buffon, it is said, always rose with the sun; he often used to tell by what means he had accustomed himself to rise early. "In my youth," says he, "I was very fond of sleep; it robbed me of a great deal of my time; but my poor Joseph (his domestic servant) was of great service in enabling me to overcome it. I promised to give Joseph a crown every time that he Czar Peter, the famous philosopher, could make me get up at six. Next who honoured London so long with morning he did not fail to awake me, his residence, whom Muscovy enand to torment me, but he only re-joyed so many years, and whose ceived abuse. The next day after he memory will ever be the admiration did the same, with no better success; of Europe, used constantly to rise and I was obliged at noon to confess before day; and when he saw the that I had lost my time. I told him morning break, would express his that he did not know how to manage wonder that men should be so stupid his business; that he ought to think not to rise every morning to behold of my promise, and not to mind my one of the most glorious sights in the universe. "They take a delight," said he, "in gazing on a picture, the trifling work of a mortal, and at the same time neglect one painted by the hand of the Deity himself. For my part," added he, "I am for making my life as long as I can, and therefore sleep as little as possible." ly bodies have moved on; the great. wheels of nature have none of them stood still; vegetation is advanced; the season is come forward: fleets: have continued sailing; councils have been held; and, on the opposite side of the world, in broad noon day, business and pleasure, amusements, battles and revolutions, have taken. place, without my concurrence, con-sent, or knowledge. Great God! what am I in the world? An insect, nothing! Dr. W. Gouge was very conscionable in spending his time, from his youth to his very death. He used to rise very early both winter and summer. In the winter, he constant-a ly rose long before day-light; and in the summer time, about four o'clock in the morning; by which means he had done half a day's work before others had begun their studies. If he heard any at work before he got to his study, he would say (as Demosthenes did concerning the smith,) "That he was much troubled that any should be at their calling before he was at his." Dr. Doddridge, in his Exposition of Rom. xiii. and 13 verse, has these words: "I will here record the observation which I have found of great use to myself, and to which I may say that the production of this work, and most of my other writings, is owing; viz. that the difference between rising at five and at seven of the clock in the morning, for the space of 40 years, supposing a man to go to bed at the same hour at night, is nearly equivalent to the addition of ten years to a man's life, of which (supposing the two hours in question to be spent) eight hours, every day, should be spent in study and devotion." "How many of my fellow-creatures have spent the whole night in. praying, in vain, for ten minutes sleep; how many, in racking pain,. crying, "Would God it were morning! How many in prison! How many in the commission of great crimes! How many have been burnt. out of house and home! How many have been shipwrecked at sea, or lost in untrodden ways in the land! How many have been robbed and murder-ed; how have died unpremany pared, and are now lifting up their eyes in torment! And here stand I, a monument of mercy, the living, the living, to praise God.' O Lord, thou patient and merciful Being, unto, thee will I look up: I will bemoan the vices and sympathize with the distresses of my fellow-creatures: I will try this day to show my gratitude to my Preserver, by taking care not. to offend him." ་ EMINENT PERSONS RAISED FROM LOW SITUATIONS. THIS article perhaps will not be found superfluous, when we consider that its tendency is to encourage merit obscured by indigent cireumstances, and to suppress pride and vanity in any who, though arrived at the summit of prosperity, have for. gotten the humble valley through. which they once traversed. "The solemn stillness of the morning, just before break of day, (says a good author,) is fit and friendly to the cool and undisturbed recollection of a man just risen from his bed, fully refreshed, and in perfect health. Let him compare his condition with that of half the world, and let him feel an indisposition to Archbishop Abbot was educated admire and adore his Protector, if he and maintained by public charity. can. How many great events have Tillotson's father was a weaver, and come to pass since I have slept! I does not appear to have been in cir feel my insignificance. The heaven-cumstances sufficient to provide for his: son. Pope Sixtus V. while he was a boy keeping a neighbour's hogs, a Franciscian friar, who had lost his way, applied to him for direction, which he gave with so good a grace, and at the same time offered his services so earnestly to attend him as a waiting boy, provided he would teach him to read, that the friar took him home to his convent. Such was his first step to the road of preferment, which he pursued so steadily, that he was admitted to make his profession at fourteen years of age; was ordained a priest, by the name of Father Montalto, and at last arrived at the honour of the Popedom. crown, may bear constantly in mind that I have nothing whereof to be proud." John Prideaux, Bishop of Worcester, was originally very poor. Be fore he applied himself to learning, he stood candidate for the office of parish clerk at Ugborow, in Devonshire, and to his great mortification another was chosen into that place. Such was his poverty on his first coming to Oxford, that he was employed in servile offices in the Kitchen of Exeter College for his support. He has been often heard to say, that if he had been elected clerk of Ugborow, he should never have been a bishop. He was so far from being ashamed of his former poverty, that he kept the leather breeches which he wore at Oxford as a memorial of it.. He died 29th July, 1650, aged seventy-two. On his elevation to the tiara, he used to say, in contempt of the pasquinades that were made upon his birth, that he was domus natus illustri, born of an illustrious house; because the sunbeams, passing through We are told of this great man, that, the broken walls and ragged roof, towards the latter end of his life, he illustrated every corner of his father's suffered so much from plundering hut. The poor people of Italy, till and sequestration, that he was reduof late, have been accustomed to ex-ced to his original state of poverty. cite in their children an application to study, by relating to them the story of this pope. Pope Benedict XII. was the son of a miller, whence he came to be called the White Cardinal. He never forgot his former condition; and when he was upon marrying his niece, he refused to give her to the great lord who sued for her, and married her to a tradesman. A friend coming to see him, and saluting him in the common form of "How doth your lordship do?" "Never better in my life (said he,) only I have too great a stomach; for 1 have eaten that little plate which the sequestration left me, I have eaten a great library of excellent books, 1 have eaten a great deal of linen, much of my brass, some of my pewter, and now I am come to eat iron; and what will come next I know not." Libussa, princess of Bohemia, first ennobled, and then married, Primaslaus, who before was a plain hus- Isaac Maddox, a famous English bandman. In remembrance of his prelate, who was born of obscure paformer condition, he preserved a pair rents, whom he lost while he was of wooden shoes. Being asked the young, was taken care of by an aunt, cause of his doing so, he made the who placed him in a charity school, following answer:-"I have brought and afterwards put him on trial to these shoes with me for the purpose a pastry cook; but before he was of setting them up as a monument in bound apprentice, the master told the Castle of Visegrade, and of ex- her that the boy was not fit for trade; hibiting them to my successors, that that he was continually reading books all may know that the first prince of of learning above his (the master's) Bohemia was called to his high digni- comprehension; and therefore advis ty from the cart and the plough; and ed that she should take him away, that I myself, who, am elevated to a land send him back to school, to fol low the bent of his inclination. He was therefore sent to one of the universities of Scotland; from thence he went to Cambridge, and rose from one degree to another, until he was made successively the Bishop of Asaph and Worcester. his brother Smerdis out of envy, because he could draw a stronger bow than himself, or any of his followers; and the monster Caligula slew his brother, because he was a beautiful young man. "Dionysius, the tyrant, (says Plutarch,) out of envy, punished Philoxenius, the musician, because he could sing; and Plato, the philosopher, because he could dispute better than himself." Mutius, a citizen of Rome, was The names of Parker, Whitgift, noted to be of such an envious and Grindal, Potter, and a vast number malevolent disposition, that Publius, of others, might here be subjoined, one day, observing him to be very who rose from humble situations in sad, said, "Either some great evil is life; but the above must suffice. happened to Mutius, or some great Let me, however, add, that no kind good to another." of calumny or disrespect whatever should be attached to such characters, whose piety or talents have rendered them conspicuous in the world; for, "It is no uncommon thing," says one, "in the dispensations of the only wise God, to keep those persons hidden for a time under the veil of obscurity, whom he intends shall make the most illustrious appearance on earth; and that those whom Infinite Wisdom hath appointed for the emancipation or redemption of others, as preparatory to that, shall themselves experience the hardships of bondage, toil, and labour, so that, like the rising sun, they may more visibly shed their light upon, and sensibly communicate their usefulness to a benighted world." ENVY. When Aristides, so remarkable for his inviolable attachment to justice, was tried by the people at Athens, and condemned to banishment, a peasant, who was unacquainted with the person of Aristides, applied to him to vote against Aristides. "Has he done you any wrong," said Aristides," that you are for punishing him in this manner?" "No," replied the countryman, "I don't even know him; but I am tired and angry with hearing every one call him the just." Let us watch against the first rising of this base spirit, and learn rather to be thankful for what we are, than envy others because we are inferior to them; remembering that we also have our place and excellence in the scale of being. "It should help to keep us from envying others," says Henry, "when we consider how many there are above whom we are placed. Instead of fretting that any are preferred before us in honour, power, estate, or interest, in gifts, "ENVY," says Johnson, "is, above all other vices, inconsistent with the character of a social being, because it sacrifices truth and kindness to very weak temptations. He that plunders a wealthy neighbour, gains as much as he takes away, and may improve his own condition in the same proportion as he impairs another's; but he that blasts a flourishing re-graces, or usefulness, we have reason putation, must be content with a the least, are not put hindmost.” to bless God, if we, who are less than small dividend of additional fame, so small as can afford very little consolation to balance the guilt by which it is obtained." "Base envy withers at another's joy, "And hates that excellence it cannot reach." Cambyses, King of Persia, slew ETERNITY. "WHEN I endeavour to represent eternity to, myself," says Saurin, "I avail myself of whatever I can con ceive most long and durable. I heap. |