IMMORTALITY.

The debt of nature when He makes the claim.
He means

This frame should fall, while yet my thinking

powers

Are strong and clear. and the soul fit to mix
With spirits void of guilt, that never feel
The violence of force, but free as light
Spontaneous move, obsequious to the laws
That rule their being.

Bushe.

IMMORTALITY-Reflections on.

Immortal! Ages past, yet nothing gone!
Morn without eve! A race without a goal!
Unshortened by progression infinite!
Futurity for ever future! Life,

Beginning still, where computation ends!
'Tis the description of a deity!

Immortal! What can strike the sense so strong,
As this the soul? It thunders to the thought,
Reason amazes, gratitude o'erwhelms ;-
No more we slumber on the brink of fate;
Roused at the sound, th' exulting soul ascends,
And breathes her native air, an air that feeds
Ambition high, and fans ethereal fires;
Quick kindles all that is divine within us,
Nor leaves one loit'ring thought beneath the
Young.

stars.

Of all the blessings which are bestowed upon the good there is none perhaps more expedient for us, or more to be requested of God, than a spirit of impartiality with respect to ourselves, together with that accurate discernment, that suspicious severity, that care to distinguish between real probity and the false appearance of it, and that caution not to be imposed upon by hypocrisy and dissimulation, which we usually exert, when we scan the actions and the pretensions of other people. This is the best security against the dangerous illusions of self-love. The lower we place ourselves, the higher we shall rise in the favour of God; and the readier we are to censure our own defects, the nearer we shall be to repentance and amendment. Jortin. IMPATIENCE-dries the Blood.

IMPORTUNITY.

Impatience dries the blood sooner than age
Creon.

or sorrow,

IMMORTALITY-Thoughts on.

Doth this soul within me, this spirit of thought, and love, and infinite desire, dissolve as well as the body? Has Nature, who quenches

our bodily thirst, who rests our weariness, and IMPLACABILITY-Characteristic of. perpetually encourages us to endeavour onwards, prepared no food for this appetite of immortality? Leigh Hunt IMPARTIALITY-Desirableness of.

Implacability is known only to the savage.

Julius Casar.

IMPERTINENCE-Treatment of

Receive no satisfaction for premeditated im pertinence; forget it,-forgive it, but keep him inexorably at a distance who offered it. Lavater.

IMPORTUNITY-Success of.

In general it is not very difficult for little minds to attain splendid situations. It is much more difficult for great minds to attain the place to which their merit fully entitles them. In the first place, elevation of sentiment is almost always an insurmountable obstacle to fortune; it is an effectual barrier against a thousand easy and certain means of advancement; talents are even adverse to advancement, unless they be accompanied with vast intrepidity of soul; with a sort of courage that men of truly honest and upright hearts do not wish to possess. For if, on the one hand, they multiply our means of attaining the proposed end, they, on the other, place before our eyes, in but too forcible a point of view, the obstacles we have to sur mount. This inconvenience is great, and the multiplication of our means is not always an advantage. I am persuaded that in carefully examining the conduct of those who have attained to any extraordinary fortune, we

IMPORTUNITY.

shall be tempted to believe there is nothing so sure of succeeding as not to be overbrilliant, as to be entirely wrapped up in oneself, and endowed with a perseverance which, in spite of all the rebuffs it may meet with, never relaxes in the pursuit of its object. It is incredible what may be done by dint of importunity alone; and where shall we find the man of real talents who knows how to be importunate enough? He is too soon overcome with the disgust inspired by all matters which have interest only for their object, with the desire of perpetual solicitation; he is too much alive to all the little movements visible on the countenance of the person solicited, IMPROVIDENCE-Characteristics of.

and he gives up the pursuit. The fool sees Dope of these things, feels none of these things he pursues his object with unremitted ardour, and at length attains it.

Baron de Grimm.

IMPOSSIBLE.

Impossible is a word only to be found in the dictionary of fools. Napoleon I.

INACTION.

If we estimate at a shilling a day what is lost by the inaction, and consumed in the support of each man chained down to involun

tary idleness by imprisonment, the public loss will rise in one year to three hundred thousand pounds; in ten years, to more than a sixth part of our circulating coin. Johnson.

307

IMPROVEMENT-Alteration an aid to.
Impart it frankly; or make use of mine.
If a better system's thine,

Horace.

IMPROVEMENT-Moral.

Infinite toil would not enable away a mist; but by ascending a little, you you to sweep may often look over it altogether. So it is with our moral improvement: we fiercely with a vicious habit, which could have wrestle no hold upon us if we ascended into a higher moral atmosphere. Helps.

to keep than to get; for, in the one case, It has always been more difficult for a man fortune aids, which often assists injustice; but in the other case, sense is required. Therefore, we often see a person deficient in cleverness rise to wealth; and then, from want of sense, roll head-over-heels to the bottom. Basil.

IMPUDENCE-How to Avoid.

The way to avoid the imputation of impudence, is, not to be ashamed of what we do, but never to do what we ought to be ashamed of. Tully.

IMPUDENCE-Characteristics of.

We are invited to dinner together,
He and I, by one that came thither to him,-
Sir La Toole.

O that's a precious mannikin.

Do you know him?

Ay, and he will know you too, if e'er he
Saw you but once, though you should meet
him at
Church in the midst of prayers.
He is one
Of the bravery's, though he be none of
The wit's. He will salute a judge upon
The bench, and the bishop in the pulpit,
A lawyer when he is pleading at the
Bar, and a lady when she is dancing
In a masque, and put her out. Ben Jonson
IMPUDENCE-the Effect of Ignorance.

A true and genuine impudence is ever the effect of ignorance, without the least sense of it. Steele.

IMPULSE-Religious.

may be directed by God.
Act upon your impulses, but pray that they
Emerson Tennent.

INACTION-Curse on.

Nature knows no pause in progress and development, and attaches her curse on all inaction. Goethe.

dustry.

To be truly and really independent, is to

Than moulder piecemeal on the rock! Byron. support ourselves by our own exertions.

Porter.

INFANCY.

INFANCY-Mystery of.

There is no sentiment more natural to thoughtful minds than that of reverence for childhood. Many sources, both of mystery and love, meet in the infant life, A being so fresh from non-existence seems to promise us some tidings of the origin of souls; a being so visibly pressing forward into the future makes us think of their tendency. While we look on the "child as the father of the man," yet cannot tell of what kind of man, all the possible varieties of character and fate appear for the moment to be collected into that diminutive consciousness; that which may be the germ of any is felt as though it were the germ of all; the thread of life, which from our hand that holds it runs forward into distant darkness, entwines itself there into a thousand filaments, and leads us over every track and scene of human things; here through passages where poverty crawls, there to the fields where glory has its race; here to the midnight lake where meditation floats between two heavens, there to the arid sands where passion pants and dies. Infancy is so naturally suggestive, it is the representative of such various possibilities, that it would be strange did we not regard it with a feeling of wonder. Martineau.

INFANT-Mother's Address to her.
Look at me, with thy large brown eyes,
Philip, my king!

For round thee the purple shadow lies
Of babyhood's regal dignities,
Lay on my neck thy tiny hand

With love's invisible sceptre laden;
I am thine Esther, to command,

Till thou shalt find thy queen-handmaiden,
Philip my king!

Oh, the day when thou goest a-wooing.
Philip, my king!

When those beautiful lips are suing,
And, some gentle hearts'-bars undoing,
Thou dost enter love-crown'd, and there

Sittest all glorified !-Rule kindly,
Tenderly over thy kingdom fair,

For we that love, ah! we love so blindly,
Philip, my king!

As to one god-throned amidst his peers.

My soul, then thy brethren higher and fairer,

INFANT.

Let me behold thee in coming years!
Yet thy head needeth a circlet rarer,
Philip, my king!

The light upon his eyelids prick'd them wide,
And, staring out at us with all their blue,
As half-perplex'd between the angel-hood
He had been away to visit in his sleep,
And our most mortal presence,-gradually
He saw his mother's face, accepting it
In change for heaven itself, with such a smile

I gaze from thy sweet mouth up to thy brow, As might have well been learnt there,-never

Philip, my king!

Ay, there lies the spirit, all sleeping now,
That may rise like a giant, and make men

bow

moved,

But smiled on, in a drowse of ecstasy,

So happy (half with her and half with Heaven)
He could not have the trouble to be stirr'd,
But siniled and lay there. Like a rose,

I said:

As red and still indeed as any rose,
That blows in all the silence of its leaves,
Content, in blowing, to fulfil its life.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning.