Who bidd'st me honour with an artless song, Affectionate, a mother lost so long, I will obey, not willingly alone, But gladly, as the precept were her own:

Johnson refers, I suppose, to a passage in Dryden which he quotes in his Dictionary under mechanick:'Many a fair precept in poetry is like a seeming demonstration in mathematicks, very specious in the diagram, but failing in the mechanick operation.'

There are those among them who have obeyed very faithfully St. Paul's precept: "No man that warreth entangleth himself with the affairs of this life."

I cannot help thinking that PYTHAGORAS, who enjoined his disciples to "abstain from beans," would, if he were now alive, be inclined to revise that cryptic precept and bid us "abstain from potatoes," or, at any rate, from over-indulgence in hot potato-cakes.

dictation; dictate, mandate; caveat, decree, senatus consultum [Lat.]; precept; prescript, rescript; writ, ordination, bull,

permit, warrant, brevet, precept, sanction, authority, firman; hukm^; pass, passport; furlough, license, carte blanche

[Lat.], constitution, pandect^, charter, enactment, statute, rule; canon &c (precept) 697; ordinance, institution, regulation; bylaw, byelaw; decree &c (order) 741; ordonnance^; standing order; plebiscite &c (choice) 609.

The Aristotelian principle of keeping the mean in all things is ill suited to the moral law for which it was intended; but it may easily be the best general rule of worldly wisdom, the best precept for a happy life.

Civis Civem ducat, Nobilis Nobilem, let a citizen match with a citizen, a gentleman with a gentlewoman; he that observes not this precept (saith he) non generum sed malum Genium, non nurum sed Furiam, non vitae Comitem, sed litis fomitem domi habebit, instead of a fair wife shall have a fury, for a fit son-in-law a mere fiend, &c. examples are too frequent.

Only take this for a corollary and conclusion, as thou tenderest thine own welfare in this, and all other melancholy, thy good health of body and mind, observe this short precept, give not way to solitariness and idleness.

They show how completely Marcus had triumphed over all petty malignity, and how earnestly he strove to fulfil his own precept of always keeping the thoughts so sweet and clear, that "if any one should suddenly ask, 'What hast thou now in thy thoughts?' with perfect openness thou mightest immediately answer, 'This or That,'"

The Apostle instructs us to take advantage of our present Temper of Mind, to graft upon it such a religious Exercise as is particularly conformable to it, by that Precept which advises those who are sad to pray, and those who are merry to sing Psalms.

These votaries were engaged in keeping alive the myth, in impressing the supposed commands of the deity on the people, and in imitating him in example and precept.

The officer to whom you allude and the person in company with him were arrested for serving a precept on a citizen of Maine.

Moreover, the answer to the question, "Who is thy neighbour?" added to the divine precept, "Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself," is the same as in the exploded pages of our author,"He to whom we can do most good."

The working people are standing now for a different phase of liberty, but their work is their supply, and having simultaneously discovered their grievances to be intolerable, they are making the same old use of the ancient precept.

But this is given as a common precept to guide one in framing an enumeration, that out of every part of the argument, since the whole cannot be repeated over again, that is to be selected which is of the greatest weight, and that each point is to be run over as briefly as possible, so that it shall appear to be only a refreshing of the recollection of the hearers, not a repetition of the speech.

So that it seemed folly either to forsake the sensible maxims brought forward by any one, merely because we are offended at some other blunder of his, or, on the other hand, to embrace his faults because we have been tempted by some sensible precept which he has also delivered.

" The precept of his father, enforced when they were about parting, and at a time when his affections for that father were active and intense, lingered in the mind of Thomas Howland.

Still, his own heart condemned him, for he felt that it would pain his father and mother exceedingly if they knew that he neglected to attend church at least once on the sabbath-day; and he was, besides, self-convicted of wrong in what seemed to him a violation of the precept, Remember the sabbath-day, &c. as he had been taught to regard that precept.

why, where we get all our divine precept and inspired morality, the bible.

Indeed, the test seems to have been only a fair exposition of the second great command, and of course it must be applicable to all who are placed under the obligations of that precept.

Some few cases of crime do occasionally arise;but when it is considered that the population of this island is nearly as dense as that of any part of China, and wholly uneducated, either by precept or example, this absence of frequent crime excites our wonder, and is highly creditable to the negroes.

"And hence it is, that the most important precept, which a rhetorical teacher can inculcate respecting this part of discourse, is negative.

Those who misinterpret or misapply Pater forget his constant insistence on the second half of that precept.