ion which attends it, but especially they insisted
upon its intrinsic excellency, its dignity and beauty, and
agreeableness to reason and nature, and its self sufficiency to
happiness, which many of them, especially the stoics,--the most rigid
moralists among them,--carried to a very high degree. Cicero, in his
Offices, and those excellent philosophers, Epictetus and Marcus
Antoninus, in their works, which seem to be the best moral treatises
pagan antiquity has left us, go upon this scheme. They were
sensible, indeed that, in order to recommend virtue to the esteem of
mankind, and engage them to pursue it, it was necessary to show that
it would be for their own highest advantage.--_Ed._]

207 [The Sun and the Wind had once a dispute which of them could soonest
prevail with a certain traveller to part with his cloak. The Wind
began the attack and assaulted him with much noise and fury; but the
man, wrapping his cloak still closer about him, doubled his efforts
to keep it, and went on his way. And now the Sun silently darted his
warm insinuating rays which, melting our traveller by degrees at
length obliged him to lay aside that cloak which all the rage of the
Wind could not compel him to resign. _Learn_ hence, said the Sun
_that soft and gentle means will often accomplish what force and
fury can never effect_. (Fable of the Sun and the Wind. Boreas et
Sol.) This is one of forty two fables ascribed to AEsop, which
Avienus, a Latin poet who lived in the age of Theodosius turned into
elegiac verse. The employment of apologues, which is sanctioned by
scripture, seems to be a natural mode of imparting instruction.
These arrest the attention, disarm prejudice, give to unwelcome
truths a pleasing form and imprint deeply on the memory the lesson
that is intended to be conveyed. It is mentioned by Vincent of
Beauvais, who wrote in the middle of the thirteenth century, that
the preachers of his age were accustomed to quote the fables of AEsop
in order to rouse the indifference and relieve the languor of their
hearers. Special Hist. lib. iii. cap. viii. p. 31. Ven. 1391, ap.
Warton's Diss. on Gesta Romanorum p. i.--_Ed_]

208 [That is united or interwoven.--_Ed._]

209 [Or available.--_Ed._]

210 [Mr. Binning had the authority of Jerome f