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The Miscellaneous Works of Oliver Goldsmith
The Miscellaneous Works of Oliver Goldsmith Author:David Masson, Oliver Goldsmith Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: ing friends, and your master's esteem, it has reduced thee to want, persecution, and, still worse, to our mighty monarch's displeasure. Want of prudence is too f... more »requently the want of virtue; nor is there on earth a more powerful advocate for vice than poverty. As I shall endeavour to guard thee from the one, so guard thyself from the other; and still think of me with affection and esteem. Farewell. LETTER VII. From Lien Chi Altangi to Fum Hoani, First President of the Ceremonial Academy at Pekin, in China.' A Wife, a daughter, carried into captivity to expiate my offence; a son, scarce yet arrived at maturity, resolving to encounter every danger in the pious pursuit of one who has undone him—these indeed are circumstances of distress : though my tears were more precious than the gem of Golconda, yet would they fall upon such an occasion. But I submit to the stroke of Heaven: I hold the volume of Confucius in my hand, and, as I read, grow humble, and patient, and wise. We should feel sorrow, says he, but not sink under its oppression. The heart of a wise man should resemble a mirror, which reflects every object without being sullied by any. The wheel of fortune turns incessantly round; and who can say within himself, I shall to-day be uppermost? We should hold the immutable mean that lies between insensibility and anguish ; our attempts should not be to extinguish nature, but to repress it; not to stand unmoved at distress, but endeavour to turn every disaster to our own advantage. Our greatest glory is, not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall. ' The editor thinks proper to acquaint the reader, that the greatest part of the following letter seems to him to be little more than a rhapsody of sentences borrowed from Confucius, the Chinese philosopher. ...« less