The British Essayists Volume 43 (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated.1808 Excerpt: ... N" 62. SATURDAY, JULY 20. Manus manum frkat. Give Me that warmth which hands impart, That, join'd, convey from heart to heart The glow which gratitude conceives, And pity, genuine pity, gives; The fire that's borrow'd from above, And only heaven-taught bosoms prove. In an age and in a country wherein the tones of every thing are stretched to their utmost, and in which the thirst of refinement has carried our virtues to the very confines of vice, it is an useful service to distinguish between the just measure and the excess, the pretended and the real, the solid and the superficial. There is a period in the progress of society, when virtues and vices seem to draw towards each other with a mutual approach; a period in which a certain delicacy of appetite, and fastidiousness of feeling, shapes our vicious indulgences to something like a virtuous elegance, and overstrains our virtues to so unnatural a pitch, as to destroy their efficacy, and diistort their appearance. The noble pre-eminence to which this country has raised itself in the present cri sis, by a catholic spirit of charity, which no enmities, no hostilities, no national difficulties can repress, should, methinks, make us the more solicitous to preserve this lustre of character from the tarnish of ostentatious and hypocritical sensibility. V-L. XLIII. M Nothing has a greater tendency to lower the price of real virtues, than the progress of these imitations. When it is found that the boast succeeds as well as the practice, and that loud and loquacious feeling raises our credit higher than the quiet tenour of good actions, the imbecility of our minds is overcome by this union of ease and splendour, and we are content to take the honour without its pains and sacrifices. It is the lot of some imposto...