hese two excellences: first, that it
offers to every man, the most selfish and the most exalted, his peculiar
inducement to good. It says to the former, 'Serve mankind, and you serve
yourself;' to the latter, 'In choosing the best means to secure your
own happiness, you will have the sublime inducement of promoting the
happiness of mankind.'"

"The second excellence of Knowledge is that even the selfish man, when
he has once begun to love Virtue from little motives, loses the motives
as he increases the love; and at last worships the deity, where before
he only coveted the gold upon its altar."

"And thus I learned to love Virtue solely for its own beauty. I said
with one who, among much dross, has many particles of ore, 'If it be not
estimable in itself, I can see nothing estimable in following it for the
sake of a bargain.' [Lord Shaftesbury.]

"I looked round the world, and saw often Virtue in rags and Vice in
purple: the former conduces to happiness, it is true, but the happiness
lies within and not in externals. I contemned the deceitful folly
with which writers have termed it poetical justice to make the good
ultimately prosperous in wealth, honour, fortunate love, or successful
desires. Nothing false, even in poetry, can be just; and that pretended
moral is, of all, the falsest. Virtue is not more exempt than Vice from
the ills of fate, but it contains within itself always an energy
to resist them, and sometimes an anodyne to soothe,--to repay your
quotation from Tibullus,--

'Crura sonant ferro, sed canit inter opus!'"
["The chains clank on its limbs, but it sings amidst its tasks."]

"When in the depths of my soul I set up that divinity of this nether
earth, which Brutus never really understood, if, because unsuccessful in
its efforts, he doubted its existence, I said in the proud prayer with
which I worshipped it, 'Poverty may humble my lot, but it shall not
debase thee; Temptation may shake my nature, but not the rock on which
thy temple is based; Misfortune may wither all the hopes that have
blossomed around thine altar, but I will sacrifice dead leaves when the
flowers are no more. Though all that I have loved perish, all that I
have coveted fade away, I may murmur at fate, but I will have no voice
but that of homage for thee! Nor, while thou smilest upon my way, would
I exchange with the loftiest and happiest of thy foes! More bitter than
aught of what I then dreamed have been my trials, but I hav