XXV-The World compared to a Stage.

ALL the world is a stage;

AS YOU LIKE IT.

And all the men and women, merely players.
They have their exits and their entrances ;
And one man, in his time, plays many parts,
His acts being seven ages. At first, the Infant;
Mewling and puking in the nurse's arms.
And then, the whining Schoolboy; with his satchel,
And shining morning face, creeping like a snail,
Unwillingly to school. And, then the Lover,
Sighing like furnace; with a woful ballad
Made to his Mistress' eyebrow. Then, a Soldier;
Full of strange oaths, and bearded like the pard;
Jealous in honor ; sudden and quick in quarrel;
Seeking the bubble reputation,

Even in the cannon's mouth. And then, the Justice;
In fair round belly, with good capon lin'd;
With eyes severe, and beard of formal cut;
Full of wise saws and modern instances:
And so he plays his part. The sixth age shifts
Into the lean and slipper'd pantaloon;
With spectacles on nose, and pouch on side;
His youthful hose well sav'd, a world too wide
For his shrunk shank; and his big manly voice,
Turning again toward childish treble, pipes
And whistles in his sound. Last scene of all,
That ends this strange eventful history,
Is second Childishness, and mere Oblivion;
Sans teeth, sans ey$s> sans taste, sans every thing:

112

APPENDIX.

CONCISE PASSAGES, EXEMPLIFYING CERTAIN PARTICULARS, ON THE PROPER EXPRESSION OF wHICH, THE MODULATION AND MANAGEMENT OF THE VOICE. IN READING AND SPELLING PRINCIPALLY DEPEND.

1.-Examplet of Antithesis; or, the Opposition of Words or Sentiments.

1.

T

HE manner of speaking is as important as the matter.-
Chesterfield.

2. Cowards die many times; the valiant never taste of death but once. Shaiespeare.

3. Temperance, by fortifying the mind and body, leads to happiness; intemperance, by enervating the mind and body, ends generally in misery. -Art of Thinking.

4. Title and ancestry render a good man more illustrious; but an ill one more contemptible. Vice is infamous, though in a prince; and virtue honorable, though in a peasant. Spectator.

5. Almost every object that attracts our notice, has its bright and its dark side. He who habituates himself to look at the displeasing side, will sour his disposition, and, consequently, impair his happiness; while he who constantly beholds it on the bright side, insensibly ameliorates his temper, and, in consequence of it, improves his own happiness, and the happiness of all around him. - World.

6. A wise man endeavors to shine in himself; a fool to outshine others. The former is humbled by the sense of his own infirmities; the latter is lifted up by the discovery of those which he observes in others. The wise man considers what he wants; and the fool what he abounds in. The wise man is happy when he gains his own approbation; and the fool, when he recommends himself to the applause of those about him.Spectator.

7. Where opportunities of exercise are wanting, temperance may in a great measure supply its place. If exercise throws off all superfluities, temperance prevents them; if exercise clears the vessels, temperance neither satiates nor overstrains them ;— exercise raises proper ferments in the humors, and promotes the circulation of the blood, temperance gives nature her full play, and enable* her to exert herself in all her force and vigor; if exercise dissipates a growing distemper, temperance starves it. Spectator.

8. I have always preferred cheerfulness to mirth. The latter I consider as an act, the former as a habit of the mind. Mirth is abort and transient, cheerfulness fixed and permanent. Those are often raised into the greatest transports of mirth, who are subject to the greatest depressions of melancholly. On the contrary, cheerfulness, though it does not give the mind such an exquisite gladness, prevents us from falling into any depths of sorrow. Mirth is like a flash of lightning, that breaks through a gloom of clouds, and glitters for a moment; cheerfulness Keeps up a kind of daylight in the mind, and fills it with a steady and perpetual serenity. - Spectator.

;. At the same time that I think discretion the most useful talent * man can be master of, I look upon cunning to be the ac• Complishment of little, mean, ungenerous minds. Discretion points out the noblest ends to us, and pursues the most proper and laudable methods of attaining them; cunning has only private, selfish aims, and sticks at nothing which may make them succeed; discretion has large and extended views, and like a well formed eye, commands a whole horizon; cunning is a kind of shortsightedness, that discovers the minutest objects, which are near at hand, but is not able to discern things at a distance.

Spectator.

10. Nothing is more amiable than true modesty, and nothing more contemptible than the false. The one guards virtue; the other betrays it. True modesty is ashamed to do any thing that is repugnant to the rules of right reason; false modesty is ashamed to do any thing that is opposite to the humor of the company. True modesty avoids every thing that is criminal; false modesty every thing that is unfashionable. The latter is only a general undetermined instinct; the former is that instinct, limited and circumscribed by the rules of prudence and relig

ion. Spectator.

it. How different is the view of past life, in the man who is grown old in knowledge and wisdom, from that of him who is grdwn old in ignorance and folly! The latter is like the owner Tof a barren country, that fills his eye with the prospect of naked hiill and plains, which produces nothing either profitable or br namental; the former beholds a beautiful and spacious landskipi divided into delightful gardens, green meadows, fruitful fields; and can scarce cast his eye on a single spot of his possessions, that is not covered with some beautiful plant or flower-Specwisdom, which in his sight, is foolishness. Of this worldly wisdom, the characters are given in the scriptures, and placed in contrast with those of the wisdom which is from above. The one is the wisdom of the crafty; the other, that of the upright: The one terminates in selfishness; the other in charity: The one, full of strife, and bitter envying; the other, of mercy and good fruits. Blair.

13. True honor, though it be a different principle from religion, is that which produces the same effects. The lines of action though drawn from different parts, terminate in the same point. Religion embraces virtue, as it is enjoined by the law of God; honor, as it is graceful and ornamental to human nature. The religious man fears, the man of honor scorns, to do an ill action. The latter considers vice as something that is beneath him; the former, as something that is offensive to the Divine Being; the one, as what is unbecoming; the other, as what is forbidden. Guardian.

14. Where is the man that possesses, or indeed can be requir ed to possess, greater abilities in war, than Pompey? One who has fought more pitched battles, than others have maintained. personal disputes! Carried on more wars than others have acquired knowledge of by reading! Reduced more provinces than others have aspired to, even in thought! Whose youth was!. trained to the profession of arms, not by precepts derived from others, but by the highest offices of command! Not by personal mistakes in war, but by a train of important victories; not by a series of campaigns, but by a succession of triumphs.—Cicero.

15. Two principles in human nature reign,
Selflove to urge, and reason to restrain;
Nor this a good, nor that a bad we call,
Each works its end to move or govern all. Pope.

16. In point of sermons, 'tis oonfess'd

Our English clergy make the best;
But this appears, we must confess,
Not from the pulpit, but the press.
They manage, with disjointed skill,
The matter well, the manner ill;
And, what seems paradox at first,
They make the best, and preach the worst. Byram.

17. Know, Nature's children all divide her care;
The fur that warms a monarch warm'd a bear.
While man exclaims, "See all things for my use?"
pamper'd goose :

See man for mine!" replies the the par

And just as short of reason he must fall,
Who thinks all made for one, not one for all. --Pope.

18. O thou goddess,

Thou divine Nature! How thyself thou blazon'st

In these two princely boys! They ar< as gentle

1

:

As zephyrs blowing below the violet,
Not wagging his sweet head; and yet as rough
{Their royal blood enchaf'd) as the rod'st wind
That by the top doth take the mountain pine,
And make them stoop to the vale. Shaketpeare.

19. True ease in writing comes from aft, not chance,
As those move easiest who have learn'd to dance.
'Tis not enough no harshness gives offence;
The sound must seem an echo to the sense.
Soft is the strain when zephyr gently blows,
And the smooth stream in smoother numbers flows;
But when loud surges lash the sounding shore,
The hoarse rough verse should like the torrent roar.
When Ajax strives some rock's vast weight to throw,
The line, too, labors, and the words move slow :

Not so when swift Camilla scours the plain,

Flies o'er th' unbending corn, and skims along the main.— Pope.

20. Good name in man and woman

Is the immediate jewel of their souls. Who steals my purse, steals trash; 'tis something, nothing; 'Twas mine, 'tis his, and has been slaves to thousands.

But he that filches from me my good name,

Robs me of that which not enriches him,

And makes me poor indeed. Shakespeare.

II.—Examples of ENUMERAtioN; or the mentioning of