not finish with
them: men of an untoward, turbulent, and licentious disposition, gladly
embraced it. It spread so wide that the succeeding emperors were obliged
to institute new laws; and individuals were allowed to seize on these
mendicants for their slaves and perpetual vassals: a powerful
preservative against this disorder. It is observed in almost every part
of the world but ours; and prevents that populace of beggary which
disgraces Europe. China presents us with a noble example. No beggars are
seen loitering in that country. All the world are occupied, even to the
blind and the lame; and only those who are incapable of labour live at
the public expense. What is done _there_ may also be performed _here_.
Instead of that hideous, importunate, idle, licentious poverty, as
pernicious to the police as to morality, we should see the poverty of
the earlier ages, humble, modest, frugal, robust, industrious, and
laborious. Then, indeed, the fable of Plato might be realised: Poverty
might be embraced by the god of Riches; and if she did not produce the
voluptuous offspring of Love, she would become the fertile mother of
Agriculture, and the ingenious parent of the Arts and Manufactures.

SOLOMON AND SHEBA.

A Rabbin once told me an ingenious invention, which in the Talmud is
attributed to Solomon.

The power of the monarch had spread his wisdom to the remotest parts of
the known world. Queen Sheba, attracted by the splendour of his
reputation, visited this poetical king at his own court; there, one day
to exercise the sagacity of the monarch, Sheba presented herself at the
foot of the throne: in each hand she held a wreath; the one was composed
of natural, and the other of artificial, flowers. Art, in the labour of
the mimetic wreath, had exquisitely emulated the lively hues of nature;
so that, at the distance it was held by the queen for the inspection of
the king, it was deemed impossible for him to decide, as her question
imported, which wreath was the production of nature, and which the work
of art. The sagacious Solomon seemed perplexed; yet to be vanquished,
though in a trifle, by a trifling woman, irritated his pride. The son of
David, he who had written treatises on the vegetable productions "from
the cedar to the hyssop," to acknowledge himself outwitted by a woman,
with shreds of paper and glazed paintings! The honour of the monarch's
reputation for divine sagacity seemed diminished, and the whole Jewis