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stowal; but the divine approbation is the result of knowledge and of equity; and it will announce its plaudit, "Well done, good and faithful servant," after the honours of fame have died away, and "the great globe itself, and all that it inherit, shall be dissolved." How trifling in our estimation would seem the praise of man, did we allow ourselves more constantly to believe that to love it more than the praise of God is the greatest crime, and that its possession at a future period cannot prevent the wicked from rising to shame and to everlasting contempt.

If praise then with religious awe

From the sole perfect judge be sought,
A nobler aim, a purer law,

Nor priest, nor bard, nor sage hath taught.

With which, in character the same,
Though in an humbler sphere it lies,
I count that soul of human fame,-

The suffrage of the good and wise.

The basis of an imperishable fame must be the testimony of a good conscience, and the approbation of our great and moral Governor. This is to be obtained, not in the pursuit of the praise of men, but in the faithful performance of our duty: it is to be enjoyed, not by making the opinions of our fellowmortals the rule of our actions, and the aim of our conduct, but by a constant regard to His high authority who has the first claim to the deference of our judgments, and to the obedience of our lives.

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But the religious actions of the just

Smell sweet in death, and blossom in the dust.

SECTION IV.-The Desire of Power.

The next of our desires which I shall notice, is that of power. This principle has a wide influence over the thoughts and actions of man; and will sufficiently account for many parts of his conduct, the cause of which we cannot otherwise so easily trace. The existence of this principle discovers itself at a very early period of life. The first effect of which we consider ourselves the authors, gives us a sensible pleasure; and the pleasure is in general proportioned to the greatness of the effect, compared to the smallness of our exertion. The infant, while still on the breast, delights in exerting its little strength upon every object it meets with; and is mortified, when any accident convinces it of its own imbecility. The pastimes of the boy are, almost without exception, such as suggest to him the idea of his power; and the same remark may be extended to the active sports and the athletic exercises of youth and of manhood.

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In some minds the love of power is so strong, that ease, and innocence, and happiness are sacrificed to its gratification. Wealth, and honour, and rank are pursued only on account of the influence or power with which their possession is attended. At length, this desire is cherished with all the ardour of passion; and the individual under its control, is hurried away from the attainment of one degree of influence to another, till he begins to aim at a point of elevation which he cannot reach without deep criminality. Nor is its powerful operation, even in this its darkest hue,

confined to our sex; never did the principle of ambition gain a more complete ascendency over any heart, or more entirely subdue every suggestion of conscience, every gentler emotion of humanity, than in the poet's Lady Macbeth. The deliberate sacrifice of all other considerations to the gaining "sole sovereign sway and masterdom," by the murder of Duncan, is forcibly expressed in her invocation on hearing of his fatal entrance under her battlements:

Come all you spirits

That tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here:
And fill me, from the crown to th' toe, top-full
Of direst cruelty; make thick my blood,
Stop up the access and passage to remorse,
That no compunctious visitings of nature
Shake my fell purpose, nor keep peace between
The effect and it. Come to my woman's breasts,
And take my milk for gall, you murthering ministers,
Wherever in your sightless substances

You wait on nature's mischief. Come, thick night!
And pall thee in the dunnest smoke of hell,
That my keen knife see not the wound it makes,
Nor heaven peep thro' the blanket of the dark,
To cry, hold, hold !–

There are some striking passages illustrative of ambition, and of the guilt and misery to which it leads in Milton's Paradise Lost. The gorgeous description which the poet gives of the daring of the arch-fiend, of his towering attitude above his peers, of his firm resolves, and of his sentiments as suited to a created being of the most exalted and most depraved nature, presents the principle of ambition to our view in connexion with all that is evil, and thus exhibits to the imagination a picture full of what is at once horrible and sublime.

Hail, horrors, hail,

Infernal world, and thou, profoundest hell,
Receive thy new possessor; one who brings
A mind not to be chang'd by place or time:
The mind is its own place, and in itself
Can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven.
What matter where, if I be still the same,
And what I should be; all but less than he
Whom thunder hath made greater?
Here we may reign secure, and, in my choice,
To reign is worth ambition, though in hell.

It is interesting to trace the different ways in which different individuals acquire an ascendency over others. And as all the gifts of rank, and fortune, and intellect, as well as of moral goodness, may be made in some way or other subservient to this end, they are all the objects of pursuit for the sake of the notice which they attract, and the power which they communicate. The boy who acquired the superiority over his fellows, by the performance of daring feats, and the exertion of muscular strength, gradually aims, as he arrives at manhood, at extending his influence over others, by the superiority of fortune and of situation, or by the still more flattering superiority of intellectual endowments;-by the force of his understanding; by the extent of his information; by the arts of persuasion, or accomplishments of address. In no case is the power of man over man more wonderful, and in general more enviable, than in the influence which the orator exercises over the thoughts and passions of a great multitude; while without the force or the splendour of rank, he moves their will, and bends their desire to the accomplishment of his own purposes. This is a power far more elevated than that which only reaches

to the bodies of men; it extends to the affections and intentions of the heart; and seems as if it were capable of arresting the trains of our ideas, and of awakening or of creating the feelings that are suited to its desigus. The conscious possession of a power so vast and so peculiar is accompanied with a degree of pleasure proportionably great; and it may be supposed that the pleasure will prompt to the frequent and the more extended exercise of the superiority from which it springs.

It has been noticed, that our desire of power is closely connected with our desire of knowledge, and comes, in the progress of reason and of experience, to act as an auxiliary to this desire. "Knowledge is power;" and by an accumulation of knowledge, or by acquiring a ready command of a great stock of knowledge to which we had not access before, our power becomes enlarged. Perhaps our desire of communicating our knowledge may in a great measure be traced to the combined influence of the desires of

power, superiority, and society. Even in communicating to others intelligence of a very ordinary description, we feel that we have some ground of superiority, however trifling; though it should consist in nothing more than the accidental priority of our information.

In this way it is easy to account for our attachment to property and the manner in which the love of money is created, and in which it gradually assumes an ascendency over the mind. Money becomes the sign and the constant concomitant of the advantages which it procures, and the miser has dwelt so long on this

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