Man Seems The Only Growth That Dwindles

There Is Probably No Country So Barbarous That Would Not Disclose All It Knew, If It Received Equivalent Information; And I Am Apt To Think That A Person Who Was Ready To Give More Knowledge Than He Received Would Be Welcome Wherever He Came.

Processions, Cavalcades, And All That Fund Of Gay Frippery, Furnished Out By Tailors, Barbers, And Tire-women, Mechanically Influence The Mind Into Veneration; An Emperor In His Nightcap Would Not Meet With Half The Respect Of An Emperor With A Crown.

Let Schoolmasters Puzzle Their Brain, With Grammar, And Nonsense, And Learning, Good Liquor, I Stoutly Maintain, Gives Genius A Better Discerning.

What Cities, As Great As This, Have... Promised Themselves Immortality! Posterity Can Hardly Trace The Situation Of Some. The Sorrowful Traveller Wanders Over The Awful Ruins Of Others... Here Stood Their Citadel, But Now Grown Over With Weeds; There Their Senate-house, But Now The Haunt Of Every Noxious Reptile; Temples And Theatres Stood Here, Now Only An Undistinguished Heap Of Ruins.

Sweet Was The Sound, When Oft, At Evening's Close, Up Yonder Hill The Village Murmur Rose; There As I Passed, With Careless Steps And Slow, The Mingling Notes Came Soften'd From Below; The Swain Responsive As The Milkmaid Sung, The Sober Herd That Low'd To Meet Their Young; The Noisy Geese That Gabbled O'er The Pool, The Playful Children Just Let Loose From School; The Watch-dog's Voice That Bay'd The Whispering Wind, And The Loud Laugh That Spoke The Vacant Mind; These All In Sweet Confusion Sought The Shade, And Fill'd Each Pause The Nightingale Had Made.