66 As a Fly was crawling leisurely up one of the columns of St. Paul's Cupola, she often stopped, surveyed, examined, and at last broke forth into the following exclamation: 66 Strange! that any one, who pretended to be an artist, should ever leave so superb a structure with so many roughnesses unpolished!" Ah, my friend," said a very learned architect, who hung in his web under one of the capitals, "you should never decide of things beyond the extent of your capacity. This lofty building was not erected for such diminutive animals as you or I; but for a certain sort of creatures, who are at least ten thousand times as large: to their eyes, it is very possible, these columns may seem as smooth, as to you appear the wings of your favourite mistress." REFLECTION. We should never estimate things beyond our reach, by the narrow standard of our own capacities. A SHEEP, during a severe storm, wandered into a thicket for shelter, and lay there so snug and warm, that he soon fell fast asleep. The clouds clearing away, and the wind returning to rest, inclined the Sheep to return to his pasture, but ah! what was his situation; a Bramble had laid such a firm hold of his fleece, that it was left as a forfeit, for the protection the thicket had given him. REFLECTION. This fable strongly recommends a due consideration of the thicket of law, before we go into it, for although judgment and sentence are passed in our favour, still we may be fleeced to the skin. A Fox and a Goat travelling together in a very sultry day, found themselves exceedingly thirsty; when looking round the country in order to discover a place where they might probably meet with water, they at length descried a clear spring at the bottom of a pit. They both eagerly descended; and having sufficiently allayed their thirst, began to consider how they should get out. Many expedients for that purpose were mutually proposed, and rejected. At last the crafty Fox cried out with great joy, "I have a thought just struck into my mind, which I am confident will extricate us out of our difficulty: do you," said he to the Goat, "only rear yourself up upon your hinder legs, and rest your forefeet against the side of the pit. In this posture, I will climb up to your head, from whence I shall be able, with a spring, to reach the top: and when I am once |