CREECH.


NONE of the axioms of wisdom which recommend
the ancient sages to veneration, seem to
have required less extent of knowledge or
perspicacity of penetration, than the remarks of Bias,
that oi pleones cacoioe, "The majority are wicked."

The depravity of mankind is so easily
discoverable, that nothing but the desert or the cell can
exclude it from notice. The knowledge of crimes
intrudes uncalled and undesired. They whom their
abstraction from common occurrences hinders from
seeing iniquity, will quickly have their attention
awakened by feeling it. Even he who ventures not
into the world, may learn its corruption in his closet.
For what are treatises of morality, but persuasives
to the practice of duties, for which no arguments
would be necessary, but that we are continually
tempted to violate or neglect them ? What are all
the records of history, but narratives of successive
villanies, of treasons and usurpations, massacres
and wars?

But, perhaps, the excellence of aphorisms
consists not so much in the expression of some rare
and abstruse sentiment, as in the comprehension of
some obvious and useful truths in a few words. We
frequently fall into errour and folly, not because