Each crime that once estranges from the virtues Doth make the memory of their features daily More dim and vague, till each coarse counterfeit Can have the passport to our confidence Sign'd by ourselves. And fitly are they punish'd, Who prize and seek the honest man but as A safer lock to guard dishonest treasures. Grant me a patron, gracious Heaven! whene'er My unwash'd follies call for penance drear: But when more hideous guilt this heart infects, Instead of fiery coals upon my pate, O let a titled patron be my fate;-- That fierce compendium of Egyptian pests! Right reverend dean, right honourable squire, Lord, marquis, earl, duke, prince,--or if aught higher, However proudly nicknamed, he shall be Anathema Maránatha to me! A SOBER STATEMENT OF HUMAN LIFE, OR THE TRUE MEDIUM. [*] A chance may win what by mischance was lost; The net that holds not great, takes little fish: In somethings all, in all things none are crost; Few all they need, but none have all they wish: Unmingled joys to no one here befall; Who least, hath some; who most, hath never all! OMNIANA. 1812 THE FRENCH DECADE. I have nothing to say in defence of the French revolutionists, as far as they are personally concerned in this substitution of every tenth for the seventh day as a day of rest. It was not only a senseless outrage on an ancient observance, around which a thousand good and gentle feelings had clustered; it not only tended to weaken the bond of brotherhood between France and the other members of Christendom; but it was dishonest, and robbed the labourer of fifteen days of restorative and humanizing repose in every year, and extended the wrong to all the friends and fellow labourers of man in the brute creation. Yet when I hear Protestants, and even those of the Lutheran persuasion, and members of the church of England, inveigh against this change as a blasphemous contempt of the fourth commandment, I pause, and before I can assent to the verdict of condemnation, I must prepare my mind to include in the same sentence, at least as far as theory goes, the names of several among the most revered reformers of Christianity. Without referring to Luther, I will begin with Master Frith, a founder and martyr of the church of England, having witnessed his faith amid the flames in the year 1533. This meek and enlightened, no less than zealous and orthodox, divine, in his "Declaration of Baptism" thus expresses himself: Our forefathers, which were in the beginning of the Church, did abrogate the sabbath, to the intent that men might have an example of Christian liberty. Howbeit, because it was necessary that a day should be reserved in which the people should come together to hear the word of God, they ordained instead of the Sabbath, which was Saturday, the next following which is Sunday. And although they might have kept the Saturday with the Jew as a thing indifferent, yet they did much better.