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And when the race is swept away
All to their dusty beds,
Still shall the mellow evening ray
Shine gayly o'er their heads;
While other faces, fresh and new,
Shall occupy the squire's pew.

-JANE TAYLOR

THE PHILOSOPHER'S SCALES.

A MONK, when his rites sacerdotal were o'er,
In the depth of his cell with his stone-covered floor,
Resigning to thought his chimerical brain,

Once formed the contrivance we now shall explain;
But whether by magic's or alchemy's powers
We know not; indeed, 't is no business of ours.

Perhaps it was only by patience and care,
At last, that he brought his invention to bear.
In youth 't was projected, but years stole away,
And ere 't was complete he was wrinkled and gray;
But success is secure, unless energy fails;

And at length he produced THE PHILOSOPHER'S SCALES.

"What were they?" you ask. You shall presently see.
These scales were not made to weigh sugar and tea.
Oh, no; for such properties wondrous had they,
That qualities, feelings, and thoughts they could weigh,
Together with articles small or immense,

From mountains or planets to atoms of sense.

Naught was there so bulky but there it would lay,
And naught so ethereal but there it would stay,
And naught so reluctant but in it must go :
All which some examples more clearly will show.

The first thing he weighed was the head of Voltaire,
Which retained all the wit that had ever been there.
As a weight, he threw in a torn scrap of a leaf,
Containing the prayer of the penitent thief;
When the skull rose aloft with so sudden a spell
That it bounced like a ball on the roof of the cell.

One time he put in Alexander the Great,

With the garment that Dorcas had made, for a weight; And though clad in armor from sandals to crown,

The hero rose up and the garment went down.

A long row of almshouses, amply endowed

By a well-esteemed Pharisee, busy and proud,
Next loaded one scale; while the other was pressed
By those mites the poor widow dropped into the chest:
Up flew the endowment, not weighing an ounce,

And down, down the farthing-worth came with a bounce.

By further experiments (no matter how)

He found that ten chariots weighed less than one plough;
A sword with gilt trapping rose up in the scale,
Though balanced by only a ten-penny nail;
A shield and a helmet, a buckler and spear,
Weighed less than a widow's uncrystallized tear.

A lord and a lady went up at full sail,

When a bee chanced to light on the opposite scale;
Ten doctors, ten lawyers, two courtiers, one earl,
Ten counsellors' wigs, full of powder and curl,
All heaped in one balance and swinging from thence,
Weighed less than a few grains of candor and sense;
A first-water diamond, with brilliants begirt,
Than one good potato just washed from the dirt;
Yet not mountains of silver and gold could suffice

One pearl to outweigh -'t was THE PEARL OF GREAT price.

Last of all, the whole world was bowled in at the grate,
With the soul of a beggar to serve for a weight,

When the former sprang up with so strong a rebuff
That it made a vast rent and escaped at the roof!
When balanced in air, it ascended on high,
And sailed up aloft, a balloon in the sky;
While the scale with the soul in 't so mightily fell
That it jerked the philosopher out of his cell.

-JANE TAYLOR.

JEREMY TAYLOR.

TAYLOR, JEREMY, an English bishop and theologian; born at Cambridge (baptized August 15, 1613); died at Lisburn, Ireland, August 13, 1667. At thirteen he entered Caius College, Cambridge, as a "sizar." He attracted the notice of Archbishop Laud, who placed him at All Souls' College, Oxford, and subsequently nominated him to a Fellowship. In 1637 he was appointed to the rectory of Uppington. During the civil wars he took the Royalist side and his living was sequestered. Upon the restoration of Charles II. he was made Bishop of Down and Connor, in Ireland, where the remaining seven years of his life were passed in the exercise of his episcopal duties. The best edition of his "Works " is that edited by Rev. C. P. Eden (10 vols., 1851). His earliest work was "Episcopacy Asserted" (1642); those by which he is best known are the "Rules and Exercises of Holy Living" and "Rules and Exercises of Holy Dying" (1651).

THE TRUE PROSPERITY.

(From "Faith and Patience of the Saints.")

Is that man prosperous who hath stolen a rich robe, and is in fear to have his throat cut for it, and is fain to defend it with greatest difficulty and the greatest danger? Does not he drink more sweetly that takes his beverage in an earthen vessel, than he that looks and searches into his golden chalices for fear of poison, and looks pale at every sudden noise, and sleeps in armor, and trusts nobody, and does not trust God for his safety, but does greater wickedness only to escape awhile unpunished for his former crimes? "Auro bibitur venenum." No man goes about to poison a poor man's pitcher, nor lays plots to forage his little garden, made for the hospital of two heehives and the feasting of a few Pythagorean herb-eaters. They that admire the happiness of a prosperous, prevailing tyrant know not the felicities that dwell in innocent hearts, and poor cottagers, and small fortunes.

And so have I often seen young and unskilful persons sitting in a little boat, when every little wave sporting about the sides of the vessel, and every motion and dancing of the barge, seemed a danger, and made them cling fast upon their fellows; and yet all the while they were as safe as if they sat under a tree, while a gentle wind shook the leaves into a refreshment and a cooling shade. And the unskilful, inexperienced Christian shrieks out whenever his vessel shakes, thinking it always a danger that the watery pavement is not stable and resident like a rock and yet all his danger is in himself, none at all from without; for he is indeed moving upon the waters, but fastened to a rock faith is his foundation, and hope is his anchor, and death is his harbor, and Christ is his pilot, and heaven is his country. And all the evils of poverty and affronts, of tribunals and evil judges, of fears and sadder apprehensions, are but like the loud wind blowing from the right point, they make a noise, and drive faster to the harbor; and if we do not leave the ship and leap into the sea, quit the interests of religion and run to the securities of the world, cut our cables and dissolve our hopes, grow impatient and hug a wave, and die in its embraces, we are as safe at sea; safer in the storm which God sends us than in a calm wind when we are befriended by the world.

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THE POWER OF ENDURANCE.

(From "Rules and Exercises of Holy Dying.")

If we consider how much men can suffer if they list, and how much they do suffer for great and little causes, and that no causes are greater than the proper causes of patience and sickness, that is, necessity and religion, we cannot, without huge shame to our nature, to our persons, and to our manners, complain of this tax and impost of nature. This experience added something to the old philosophy. When the gladiators were exposed naked to each other's short swords, and were to cut each other's souls away in portions of flesh, as if their forms had been as divisible as the life of worms, they did not sigh or groan it was a shame to decline the blow but according to the just measures of art. The women that saw the wound shriek out, and he that receives it holds his peace. He did not only stand bravely, but would also fall so; and when he was down, scorned to shrink his head when the insolent conqueror came to

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