THE ORDER OF NOBILITY. 227 He turned to an old worm-eaten chest, And then it shone like the clouds of the With the sun in their splendor hid: And he counted and counted them o'er and In many a glittering pile. Why comes the flush to his pallid brow, While his eyes like his diamonds shine? Why writhes he thus in such torture now? What was there in the wine? To crawl to his nest he tried; T THE ORDER OF NOBILITY. EDMUND BURKE. O be honored and even privileged by the laws, opinions, and inveterate usages of our country, growing out of the prejudice of ages, has nothing to provoke horror and indignation in any man. Even to be too tenacious of those privileges is not absolutely a crime. The strong struggle in every individual to preserve possession of what he has found to belong to him, and to distinguish him, is 228 THE FRIEND OF HUMANITY AND THE KNIFE-GRINDER. one of the securities against injustice and despotism implanted in our nature. It operates as an instinct to secure property, and to preserve communities in a settled state. What is there to shock in this? Nobility is a graceful ornament to the civil order. It is the Corinthian capital of polished society. Omnes boni nobilitati semper favemus, was the saying of a wise and good man. It is, indeed, one sign of a liberal and benevolent mind to incline to it with some sort of partial propensity. He feels no ennobling principle in his own heart who wishes to level all the artificial institutions which have been adopted for giving a body to opinion and permanence to fugitive esteem. It is a sour, malignant, and envious disposition, without taste for the reality, or for any image or representa-, tion of virtue, that sees with joy the unmerited fall of what had long flourished in splendor and in honor. I do not like to see anything destroyed, any void produced in society, any ruin on the face of the land. THE FRIEND OF HUMANITY AND THE KNIFE-GRINDER. GEORGE CANNING. N FRIEND OF HUMANITY. EEDY knife-grinder! whither are Tell me, knife-grinder, how came you to grind knives? Did some rich man tyrannically use you? Rough is the road; your wheel is Was it the squire? or parson of the parish? Who in their coaches roll along the turnpike- (Have you not read the Rights of Man, by road, Tom Paine?) What hard work 't is crying all day "Knives Drops of compassion tremble on my eyelids, and Scissors to grind O!" Ready to fall as soon as you have told your Pitiful story. I told you before 'twas a stormy night I'll have that mouse," said the biggest When these two little kittens began to fight; cat. You'll have that mouse, we'll see about that." The old woman seized her sweeping-broom And swept the two kittens right out of the room. The ground was covered with frost and snow, And the two little kittens had nowhere to go, So they laid them down on the mat at the door, While the old woman finished sweeping the floor. Then they both crept in, as quiet as mice, For they found it was better, that stormy night, To lie down and sleep, than to quarrel and fight. MOTHERHOOD. Y neighbor's house is not so high Nor half so nice as mine; I often see the blind ajar, And tho' the curtain's fine, 'Tis only muslin, and the steps Are not of stone at all, And yet I long for her small home To give mine all in all. H BURKE ON THE DEATH OF HIS SON AD it pleased God to continue to me the hopes of succession, I should have been, according to my mediocrity, and the mediocrity of the age I live in, a sort of founder of a family; I should have left a son, who, in all the points in which personal merit can be viewed, in science, in erudition, in genius, in taste, in honor, in generosity, in humanity, in every liberal sentiment, and every liberal accomplishment, would not have shown himself inferior to the Duke of Bedford, or to any of those whom he traces in his line. His Grace very soon would have wanted all plausibility in his attack upon that provision which belonged more to mine than to me. He would soon have supplied every deficiency, and symmetrized every disproportion. It would not have been for that successor to resort to any stagnant wasting reservoir of merit in me, or in any ancestry. He had in himself a salient living spring of generous and manly action. Every day he lived, he would have purchased the bounty of the crown, and ten times more, if ten times more he had received. He was made a public creature, and had no enjoyment whatever but in the performance of some duty. At this exigent moment the loss of a finished man is not easily supplied. But a Disposer, whose power we are little able to resist, and whose wisdom it behooves us not at all to dispute, has ordained it in another manner, and-whatever my querulous weakness might suggest a far better. The storm has gone over me, and I lie like one of those oaks which the late hurricane has scattered about me. I am stripped of all my honors; I am torn up by the roots, and lie prostrate on the earth! There, and prostrate there, I most unfeignedly recognize the divine justice, and in some degree submit to it. But whilst I humble myself before God, I do not know that it is forbidden to repel the attacks of unjust and inconsiderate men. The patience of Job is proverbial. After some of the convulsive struggles of |