REFLECTION.

In respect to temporal affairs, they, who pretend to advise what measures are most conducive to the public welfare, are often guided entirely by their own private interest: but whenever they counsel any extraordinary innovations, or endeavour to change any established proceedings long used and approved, we may be almost certain that they have some other design, rather than the promotion of the general good. When new regulations are proposed, we should turn our eyes on those who propose them, and consider with attention, whether they have not some personal motives for their conduct, and we should be particularly cautious not to suffer ourselves to be imposed on by fine speeches and pretended patriotism: for he, who is very solicitous to bring about a scheme, not attended with any visible advantage to the community, must only mean his own benefit; or, like the Fox, when he has been caught himself in one trap, endeavour to catch us in another.

A STORK, that was present at the song of a dying Swan, told her, it was contrary to nature to sing so much out of season; and asked her the reason of it. "Why," says the Swan, "I am now entering into a state where I shall be no longer in danger of either snares, guns, or hunger; and who would not rejoice at such a deliverance?"

REFLECTION.

It is a great folly to fear that which it is impossible to avoid; and it is yet a greater folly to fear the remedy of all evils: for death cures all diseases, and frees us from all cares. It is as great a folly again, not to prepare ourselves, and provide for an inevitable fate. We are as sure to go out of the world, as we are that ever we came into it; and nothing but the conscience

of a good life can support us in that last extremity. The fiction of a Swan's singing at her death does, in the moral, but advise and recommend it to us to make ready for the cheerful entertainment of our last hour, and to consider with ourselves, that if death be so welcome a relief even to animals, barely as a deliverance from the cares, miseries, and dangers of a troublesome life, how much greater blessing ought all good men to account it then, that are not only freed by it from the snares, difficulties, and distractions of a wicked world, but put into possession of an everlasting peace, and the fruition of joys that shall never have an end?

A DOG and a Cock took a journey together: the Dog kenneled in the body of a hollow tree, and the Cock roosted at night upon the branches. The Cock crowed about midnight; which brought a Fox, that was abroad upon the hunt, immediately to the tree; and there he stood licking his lips at the Cock, and fell a wheedling to get him down, he protested he never heard so sweet a voice; and what would not he do now to embrace the creature that had given him so admirable a serenade ! "Pray," says the Cock, speak to the porter below to open the door, and I'll come down to you:" the Fox, little dreaming of the Dog so near, did as he was directed, and the Dog presently seized and destroyed him.

66

REFLECTION.

Experience makes many a wise man of a fool, and security makes many a fool of a wise man. We have an instance of the former in the Cock's over-reaching the Fox; and of the other in the Fox's supine confidence, that made him so intent upon his prey, as to neglect his safety, and to fall himself into the pit that he had digged for another. It is much the same case in the world, when Providence is pleased to confound the presumptuous, the false, the mighty, and the blood-thirsty, by judgments of lice and frogs; that is to say, by the most despicable of instruments; and that frequently at a crisis of time, when they think themselves sure of the success of their mischievous projects.