Essays selected and ed by C D Yonge Author:John Dryden Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: The history of all ages teems with the fatal effects of internal discord; and were history and tradition annihilated, common sense would plainly point out the mi... more »schiefs that must arise from want of harmony and national union. Every schoolboy can have recourse to the fable of the rods, which, when united in a bundle, no strength could bend, but when separated into single twigs, a child could break with ease. Asem The Man-hater ; Or, A Vindication Of The Wisdom Of God In The Moral Government Of The World, An Eastern Tale. From ' The Bee,' No. 19. Where Tauris lifts its head above the storm, and presents nothing to the sight of the distant traveller but a prospect of nodding rocks, falling torrents, and all the variety of tremendous nature; on the bleak bosom of this frightful mountain, secluded from society, and detesting the ways of men, lived Asem the man-hater. Asem had spent his youth with men, had shared in their amusements, and had been taught to love his fellow-creatures with the most ardent affection ; but, from the tenderness of his disposition, he exhausted all his fortune in relieving the wants of the distressed. The petitioner never sued in vain; the weary traveller never passed his door; he only desisted from doing good when he had no longer the power of relieving. For a fortune thus spent in benevolence he expected a grateful return from those he had formerlyrelieved, and made his application with confidence of redress; the ungrateful world soon grew weary of his importunity; for pity is but a short-lived passion. He soon, therefore, began to view mankind in a very different light from that in which he had before oeheld them ; he perceived a thousand vices he had never before suspected to exist; wherever he turned, ingratitude, dissimulation, and treachery ...« less