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 The Vanity of Human Wishes

(English essayist and poet, 1709-1784. The poem from which these lines are taken is a paraphrase of the Roman poet Juvenal)

But, scarce observed, the knowing and the bold Fall in the general massacre of gold; Wide wasting pest! that rages unconfined, And crowds with crimes the records of mankind; For gold his sword the hireling ruffian draws, For gold the hireling judge distorts the laws; Wealth heaped on wealth, nor truth nor safety buys, The dangers gather as the treasures rise.

Letters from a Chinese Official

(This little book, published anonymously, was taken for a genuine document by many critics, among others, Mr. William Jennings Bryan, who wrote an elaborate answer to it. The writer is an English university lecturer)

When I review my impressions of the average English citizen, impressions based on many years' study, what kind of man do I see? I see one divorced from Nature, but unreclaimed by Art; instructed, but not educated; assimilative, but incapable of thought. Trained in the tenets of a religion in which he does not believe—for he sees it flatly contradicted in every relation of life—he dimly feels that it is prudent to conceal under a mask of piety the atheism he is hardly intelligent enough