Miscellaneous Pieces, in Prose

Various are the methods which art and ingenuity have invented to exhibit a picture of human life and manners. These have differed from each other, both in the mode of representa...

I immediately found myself in a vast extended plain, in the middle of which arose a mountain higher than I had before any conception of. It was covered with a multitude of peopl...

“What is more reasonable, than that they who take pains for any thing, should get most in that particular for which they take pains? They have taken pains for power, you for rig...

And where, indeed, could the precious remains of classical learning, and the divine monuments of ancient taste, have been safely lodged amidst the ravages of that age of ferocit...

That the exercise of our benevolent feelings, as called forth by the view of human afflictions, should be a source of pleasure, cannot appear wonderful to one who considers that...

Methinks heroic poesie till now Like some fantastique fairy-land did show; Gods, Devils, Nymphs, Witches, and Giant’s race, And all but Man, in man’s best work had place. Thou,...

From scenes of rage and tumult the poet then leads us to the quiet shades of philosophy in the house of Astragon. This change is not better calculated for the reader’s relief, t...

I would likewise observe, that if an author would have us feel a strong degree of compassion, his characters must not be too perfect. The stern fortitude and inflexible resoluti...

Another species of ridicule to be avoided, is that kind of sneer often thrown upon those whose hearts are giving way to honest emotion. There is an extreme delicacy in all the f...

There remains only to add, lest the preceding view of Sects and Establishments should in any degree be misapprehended, that it has nothing to do with the _truth_ of opinions, an...