Councillor, if you should neglect your Castle, and refuse to eat of those fruits, and sit down, and whine, and wish you were a Privy Councillor, do you think the King would be pleased with you?

PRAYER

"God hath given gifts unto men." General Texts prove nothing: let him shew me John, William, or Thomas in the Text, and then I will believe him. If a man hath a voluble Tongue, we say, He hath the gift of Prayer. His gift is to pray long,- that I see; but does he pray better?

We take care what we speak to men, but to God we may say any thing.

Prayer should be short, without giving God Almighty Reasons why he should grant this or that: he knows best what is good for us. If your Boy should ask you a Suit of Cloaths, and give you Reasons, "otherwise he cannot wait upon you, he cannot go abroad, but he shall discredit you," would you endure it? You know it better than he: let him ask a Suit of Cloaths.

PREACHING

THE main Argument why they would have two Sermons a day, is, because they have two Meals a Day; the Soul must be fed as well as the Body. But I may as well argue, I ought to have two Noses because I have two Eyes, or two Mouths because I have two Ears. What have Meals and Sermons to do one with another?

PREFERMENT

WHEN the Pageants are a coming there's a great thrusting and a riding upon one another's backs, to look out at the Window: stay a little, and they will come just to you; you may see them quietly. So 'tis when a new Statesman or Officer is chosen: there's great expectation and listening who it should be; stay a while, and you may know quietly.

REASON

THE Reason of a Thing is not to be inquired after, till you are sure the Thing it self be so. We commonly are at "What's

the Reason of it?" before we are sure of the Thing. 'Twas an excellent Question of my Lady Cotten, when Sir Robert Cotten was magnifying of a Shooe which was Moses's or Noah's, and wondring at the strange Shape and Fashion of it: But Mr. Cotten, says she, are you sure it is a Shooe?

RELIGION

MEN say they are of the same Religion for Quietness's sake; but if the matter were well Examin'd, you would scarce find Three any where of the same Religion in all Points.

Disputes in Religion will never be ended, because there wants a Measure by which the Business would be decided. The Puritan would be judged by the Word of God: if he would speak clearly, he means himself, but he is ashamed to say so; and he would have me believe him before a whole Church, that has read the Word of God as well as he. One says one thing, and another another; and there is, I say, no Measure to end the Controversie. 'Tis just as if Two men were at Bowls, and both judg'd by the Eye: one says 'tis his Cast, the other says 'tis my Cast; and having no Measure, the Difference is Eternal. Ben Jonson Satyrically express'd the vain Disputes of Divines by Inigo Lanthorne, disputing with his Puppet in a Bartholomew Fair: It is so; It is not so; It is so; It is not so,-crying thus one to another a quarter of an Hour together.

'Tis to no purpose to labor to Reconcile Religions, when the Interest of Princes will not suffer it. 'Tis well if they could be Reconciled so far that they should not cut one another's Throats.

THANKSGIVING

AT FIRST we gave Thanks for every Victory as soon as ever 'twas obtained; but since we have had many now we can stay a good while. We are just like a Child: give him a Plum, he makes his Leg; give him a second Plum, he makes another Leg; at last when his Belly is full, he forgets what he ought to do: then his Nurse, or somebody else that stands by him, puts him in mind of his Duty- Where's your Leg?

WIFE

HE THAT hath a handsome Wife, by other men is thought happy; 'tis a pleasure to look upon her and be in her company: but the Husband is cloy'd with her. We are never content with what we have.

You shall see a Monkey sometime, that has been playing up and down the Garden, at length leap up to the top of the Wall, but his Clog hangs a great way below on this side; the Bishop's Wife is like that Monkey's Clog,- himself is got up very high, takes place of the Temporal Barons, but his wife comes a great way behind.

'Tis reason a man that will have a Wife should be at the charge of her Trinkets, and pay all the scores she sets on him. He that will keep a Monkey, 'tis fit he should pay for the Glasses he breaks.

WISDOM

NEVER tell your Resolution before hand; but when the Cast is thrown, Play it as well as you can to win the Game you are at. 'Tis but folly to study how to Play Size-ace, when you know not whether you shall throw it or no.

ÉTIENNE PIVERT DE SENANCOUR

(1770-1846)

NE work of Senancour's has lived. The others- moral and philosophical treatises, and one feeble novel, 'Isabelle,' written in his old age as a sequel to his famous 'Obermann’. are now forgotten. "But Obermann,' > >> says Matthew Arnold, "has qualities which make it permanently valuable to kindred minds." Arnold himself, while suffering the spiritual isolation there portrayed, did not go off alone to suffer; but did a great and practical work in the world of men. Other noble minds have sympathized with Obermann, among them George Sand and Sainte-Beuve; but for most people, such writing, however noble and eloquent, must needs be somewhat futile. It must after all be healthy instinct which guides men as well as children to turn from abstractions to accounts of positive achievement. Heroic action is far more thrilling than even its prompting impulse, unfulfilled. It is so much more satisfactory to receive some practical lesson in living, some stimulus to richer sensation, than to be disheartened by the wailings of failure.

Senancour early showed a want of adaptability to existing social conditions. He was born at Paris in November 1770, of a noble family, to whom the Revolution brought ruin. Sickly from childhood, he was destined to the Church. Obliged by his father to enter St. Sulpice, he rebelled against the monastic constraint, and aided by his mother, escaped to Switzerland. There he married, and lived till toward the end of the century; when, after his wife's death, he returned to Paris.

'Obermann' appeared in 1804. It is a treatise on disillusion and hopelessness, lacking in vitality; and although noble in tone, has not been widely appreciated. It is less a novel than an exposition, in a series of letters, of Senancour's own point of view. Obermann, the hero, is Senancour in very slight disguise. He is "a man who does not know what he is, what he likes, what he wants; who sighs without cause; who desires without object; and who sees nothing except that he is not in his place: in short, who drags himself through empty space and in an infinite tumult of vexations."

'Obermann' is valuable and interesting as a pathological study; as a reflection of the spirit of revolt and discouragement which swept over Europe, and spurred on Rousseau, Byron, and many others.

Senancour strongly felt himself a product of his time. Voltairean cynicism struggled in him with Rousseauesque sensibility, the latter augmenting a longing to believe, while the former made faith impossible. He had the terrible controlling self-consciousness which prevented a moment's escape from his own unsatisfied desires. He was too noble, too much of an idealist, to enjoy what was petty and possible; but there are envious tones in Obermann, who sometimes seems half to despise himself that he cannot do and feel like other

men.

The strong note of Senancour's character was an uncompromising need of sincerity. He detested hypocrisy in himself and others. He sought truth at the price of all pleasant illusion. His work evidences Rousseau's influence; but unlike Rousseau, he never posed. His confidences are genuinely unreserved. His constant unhappiness-as George Sand pointed out in an appreciation which prefaces the later editions of 'Obermann'—was caused by want of proportion between his power of conception and his capacity to perform. He had a lifelong realization of failure. He was akin to Amiel, but less scholarly; more emotional and less intellectual.

In love of nature he found perhaps his keenest satisfaction. He is eloquent in description of the Alpine summits with their fair cold. austerity, and the pleasant valleys, the mountain streams, and the green pastures, upon which he loved to look down.

Senancour was always oppressed by poverty. Forced to write for his living for half a century, and unable to win favor, he fell into want in his old age. His friends' efforts, especially those of Thiers and Villemain, obtained for him a small pension from Louis Philippe, which rendered him comfortable until his death at St. Cloud in 1846.

ALPINE SCENERY

From Obermann'

MAGINE a plain of white and limpid water. It is vast but circumscribed; in shape oblong and somewhat circular, it stretches toward the winter sunset. From lofty summits, majestic chains close it in on three sides. You are seated on the slope of the mountain, above the northern strand which the waves alternately quit and then recover. Perpendicular rocks are behind you. They rise to the region of clouds. The sad polar wind has never breathed upon this happy shore. At your left open the mountains: a tranquil valley stretches along their