SECTION IV. 47 house, "must I not bear rule in my own family ? Must I not be heard," says the mistress, " andobeyed by my own servants ? Must not the authority of a father appear amonghis children, and the mother demand due honour ?" Yes by all means : And the superior character should always appear and shine bright before the household in the wisdom of the command or reproof, and not by the loud and haughty words or the terrible airs ofthe reprover. The authority of a parent or a master has but a poor sup- port where it is maintained with such unreasonable and noisy resentments. Thus far concerning wrath and tyranny of the violent and sonorous, kind : But pride and híunour in some complexions have their private and sullen airs, as well as in others the sound- ing and: the clamorous ones. The soul may be full of self and the man an intolerable hàmourist, and yet never shake the house, or affright the neighbourhood. Should, you happen to cross his will in a trifling instance, lie puts on a sudden gloom of counte- mance and assumes a forbidding brow without a single word from his lips ; and sometimes it is hard to know what has offended him. Here the haughty and the sullen humours mingle their cursed influences ; the soul is like a prisoner in majesty, the wretch stalks about in dark resentment and super- cilious silence : a short and disdainful sentence full of spite and rancour and fire shall break out at certain intervals and give notice of the hell within. The proud wrath which is pent up in the bosomm as in a close and boiling titmice, must have time to vent itself by slow degrees ; in a day or two, or sometimes more, perhaps the ferment may subside, and the man return to his speech again, and to his hours of business, of food and rest. But after all the poisonous leaven is left still within, and waits only for some new occasion to heave and swell and raise a fresh disturbance. I name the man only, in this cursed and hateful character, if the softer sex should find it working in themselves, I leave them to be their own reprovers. Dread the thoughts, O my heart, of such a frantic and self-punishing iniquity. Suppress all haughty conceits of thy own worth and grandeur, lest meeting with some unhappy fer- ments of blood and "complexion of humours they work up into sucha world of mischief. Have a care of magnifyingthe image of thyself, and thou wilt not become a slave to such unmanly humours, such haughty and sullen airs, or such wild and unruly hurricanes of spirit Let the fond child cry and roar because his play-thing is broken : Let the fool storm or grow sullen because his will is thwarted; let the dog bark, and the ox bellow, when the brutal choler is roused"within them ; but remember thou art a man, a reasonable creature, a christian. It becomes thee well
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