Though that remedy is often applied, though this battery is continually playing, yet the peccant humour is not entirely purged off, nor the elatement of spirit totally subdued, till mortality is swallowed up of life.

But pride, that busy sin,

Spoils all that I perform,

Curs'd pride! that creeps securely in,

And swells a haughty worm.

Power of Fashion.

Hervey.

WATTS.

This power is an ideal influenza that spreads with the utmost rapidity, infecting a whole community where it commences, and sometimes extending to distant nations; and it acquires such strength in its progress, that nothing can resist its force. It does not possess the degree of merit attendant upon the excessive love of novelty, which always imagines the object to possess some degree of worth; a circumstance by no means essential to the influence of fashion, whose authority is in general derived from things known to be idle and insignificant. Fashion gives absolute sway to modes, forms, colours, &c. wantonly introduced by the whim of an individual, with whom the majority have not the most distant connexion; concerning whom they are totally ignorant, unless circumstances and situations of notoriety should render their characters either equivocal or unequivocal. It is capable of instantly altering our opinion of the nature and qualities of things, without demanding any painful exertion of the understanding, or requiring the slow process of investigation. With the quickness of a magic wand, it in a moment subverts all those ideas of beauty, elegance, and propriety, we had before cherished. It makes us reject, as odious, what we lately contemplated as most desirable; and raptures are inspired by qualities which we had just considered pernicious and deformed. There are some instances, indeed, in which we endeavour to justify our novel affections. We are assiduous to find out some peculiar excellence or advantage in whatever becomes the idol of the day; and to discover some insufferable defect in the divinity we have discarded. That which was once deemed grand and ma

jestic, in size or form, will now strike the eye as insupportably clumsy; and the regularity we once admired, now renders an object stiff, precise, and formal. Colours, which were yesterday so delicately elegant, will appear to-day faint, faded, and lifeless; and those which were lately much too strong and glaring for our weak optics, become in an instant bright, glowing, and majestic. Fashion will render that particular garb, which we lately thought so warm and comfortable, intolerably sultry; and it makes the slightest covering, contrary to its pristine nature, remarkably pleasant in the depth of winter. The flowing hair, or adjusted ringlets, shall at one period be considered as becoming and elegant, at another be rejected as an insufferable mark of effeminacy, and as demanding a culpable waste of our most precious time; while their close amputation is deemed both manly and commodious.

Fashion has power to influence our ideas of graceful proportions; it elongates or contracts the form of the leg in one sex, or of the waist in the other. At one period it imperiously orders the tightest ligatures to encircle the neck, as if the separation of some excrescence were intended; at another, it recommends the large and swollen cravat, as if it thought a poultice were necessary to assuage the irritation occasioned by the preceding mode; and it benevolently permits the chin to partake of the soothing warmth. It directs decency to excite a blush at being detected without any other bead-dress than that ordained by nature; and it is able to suppress the blush of female delicacy at exposures which scarcely leave any room for the exercise of the most licentious imagination!

The Love of Money.

Monthly Magazine.

The love of money appears to be the almost predominant passion in the mind of every man. Such a thirst for gold, that were all that comes from the Spanish mines dissolved into a liquid, it would scarcely quench the thirst of one individual; and this too, the root of all evil,

Which, while some lusted after, they erred from the faith, and pierced themselves through with many sorrows.

Extol not riches, then, the toil of fools,
The wise man's cumbrance, if not snare, more apt
To slacken virtue, and abate her edge,

Than prompt her to do aught may merit praise.

MILTON.

Having rectified the balance of my judgment according to Scripture, when I would begin to weigh temporal things with spiritual, I find there is no proportion, and so no comparison to be made betwixt them. And will any wise man, then, that pretends to reason, be at a stand which of these to choose, which to esteem the best, or desire the most? Alas! what is there in the world, that can fill the vast desires of my soul, but only He, who is infinitely above me, and my desires too, Will riches do it? No. I may as soon undertake to fill my barns with grace, as my heart with gold, and as easily stuff my bags with virtue, as ever satisfy my desires with wealth. Do I hunt after pleasures? These may, indeed, charm and delight my brutish senses, but can never be agreeable, or proportionate to my spiritual faculties. Do I grasp at honour and popularity? These, again, are as empty and unsatisfying as the former; they may make me look high and great in the eye of the world, turn my head giddy with applause, or puff up my heart with pride; but they can never fill up the measure of its desires. And thus, if I should have the whole world at my command, and could, with Alexander, wield both sword and sceptre over all nations and languages of it, would this content me? or, rather, should I not sit down and weep, with him, that I had not another world to conquer and possess? Bishop Beveridge.

It is almost impossible for a man to have opportunities, occasions, advantages, suited to his lust and corruption, but he will be entangled. If ambassadors come from the King of Babylon, Hezekiah's pride will cast him into temptation; if Hazael be King of Syria, his cruelty and ambition will make make bim rage savagely against Israel; if the priests come with their pieces of silver to Judas, his covetousness will instantly be at work to sell his master; and many instances of the like kind may, in the days wherein we live, be given. Some men think to play on the hole of the asp, and

not be stung; to touch pitch, and not be defiled; to take fire in their clothes, and not be burned; but they will be mistaken.

Gold! yellow, glittering, precious gold!

Owen.

Gold! that will make black, white; foul, fair; wrong, right;
Base, noble; old, young; coward, valiant;

Ha! you gods! why this

Will buy your priests and servants from your sides,

Pluck stout men's pillows from below their heads!

This yellow slave

Will knit and break religions; bless the accurs'd;
Make the hoar leprosy adored; place thieves,
And give them title, knee, and approbation,

With senators on the bench.

SHAKSPEARE.

There is, indeed, but one broad beaten highway to heaven and immortality, and it certainly is not that way in which we find the multitude rushing in all directions. They scramble who shall get most wealth, and the god of this world blinds their eyes with it.

Beasley.

Again, worldly prosperity is frequently a mischievous evil, because it is apt to make men proud. They come in no misfortune like other folks, says the psalmist, and this is the cause that they are so holden with pride. Prosperity is often a luscious poison. It bloats and puffs up men with an over-weening opinion of themselves. It intoxicates the mind, and makes it drunk with self-conceit. It prompts people to idolize themselves, and contemn others. The intolerable arrogance of the Babylonish monarch, what was it owing to but his vast and uninterrupted successes? He measured bis merit by the length of his purse, and challenged a veneration proportionable to the extent of his dominions. This vile rank weed thrives in the hot-beds of honour, wealth, and carnal pleasure; whereas it might never have reared its head in the colder climate of tribulation or scantiness of circumstances. Blair,

Money being the common scale

Of things by measure, weight, and tale;

In all th' affairs of church and state
Is both the balance and the weight;
For money is the only pow'r

That all mankind fall down before.

HUDIBRAS.

If riches have been your idol, hoarded up in your coffers, or lavished out upon yourselves, they will, when the day of reckoning comes, be like the garment of pitch and brimstone, which is put on the criminal condemned to the flames. Hervey.

It is far more easy to support adversity than prosperity. Fortune is more treacherous and dangerous when she caresses, than when she dismays. How often have we seen those overthrown by good fortune, who could never be shaken by bad!

Sick of his bliss, and bent on new adventures,

Evil he would needs try, nor tried in vain.

Dreadful experiment! destructive measure!

Where the worst thing could happen is success.

Petrarch.

BLAIR.

May the children of this world be warned by the dying words of an unhappy brother, and gather advantage from his misfortune. Why should they pant with such impatient ardour, after white and yellow earth, as if the universe did not afford sufficient for every one to take a little? Why should they load themselves with thick elay, when they are " to run for an incorruptible crown, and press towards the prize of bigh calling?" Why should they overload the vessel, in which their everlasting all is embarked? or fill their arms with superfluities, when they are to swim for their lives? Yet so preposterous is the conduct of those persons, who are all industry to heap up abundance of the wealth that perisheth, but are scarce so much as faintly desirous of being rich towards God.

Hervey.

Turn your eye from all this glare of external pomp and gaiety to his heart, and you will find him rather an object of pity than of envy. There reign the depraved passions of human nature, invested with sovereign power, and confirmed therein by every accession of worldly good. He is full, and takes the name of God in vain. He hath every thing, and yet truly enjoys nothing. He abounds, and