358 MISCELLANEOUS THOUGHTS. Publish the wonder, fame.* But O! forbear T' approach the palace and the royal ear, Lest her impatient love and wishing eye Seek the dear image, gaze, arid mourn and die. Or stay: The royal mourner will believe Her George restored, and so to-get to grieve. What cannot Chrysis do ? 'Those artful hands Shall raise the hero : Lo, in arms he stands ;' Fairbourn4- and Leakj- submissive shall espy War on brow, and orders in his eye, Auspicious, jest, and wise: The fleet obeys, And the French pirates flee the British seas. XXXI. To Velina, on the Death of several young Children. I HAVE a comely fruit-tree in the summer season, with the. branches of it promising plenteous fruit ; the stock was sur- rounded with seven or eight little shoots of different sizes, that grew up from the root at a small distance, and seemed to com- pose a beautiful defence and ornament for the mother tree : But the gardener, who espied their growth, knew the danger ; he cut down those tender suckers one after another, and laid them in the dust. I pitied them in my heart, and said, " How pretty were those young standards ! How much like their parent ! How elegantly clothed with the raiment of summer ! And each of them might have grown to a fruitful tree :" But they stood so near as to endanger the stock : they drew away the sap, the heart and strength of it, so far as to injure the fruit, and darken the hope - fárl prospect of autumn. The pruning -knife appeared unkind indeed, but the gardener was wise ; for the tree flourished more sensibly, the fruit quickly grew fair and large, and the ingather- Mg at last wasplenteous and joyful. Will you give me leave, Velina, to persuade you into this parable ? Shall I compare you to this tree in the garden of God ? Your agreeable qualifications seem to promise various fruits, of faith, of love, of universal holiness and service: You have had many of these young suckers springing up around you ; they stood a while your sweet ornaments and your joy, and each of them might have grown up to a perfection of likeness, and might have become 'a parent -tree : But say, did they never draw your heart off from God ? Did you never feel them steal- ing any of those seasons of devotion, or those warm affections that were first and supremely due to him that made' you ? Did they not stand a little too near the soul ? And when they have been cut off successively, and laid one after another in the dust, have you not found your heart running out more toward God, and living more perpetually upon him ? Are you not now devoting yourself more entirely to God every day, since the last was taken away ? Are you not aiming at some greater, This pnem was written just after prince George's death. fi Two British Admirals.
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