vengeful, and desperately malignant, by impressions of injustice and cruelty experienced in the season of childhood.

In families, and in schools, where almost the popish inquisition is practised upon the children; where they are compelled to confess unproved and unprovable faults, and sometimes made, by the torture of the whip or ferule, to confess faults of which they are not guilty;-how pernicious are the impressions left upon their minds, which ever after will rankle in their memories! And so again, when children, by bad management at first, are made disgusted with their learning, seldom, and not without great difficulty, can they be brought to love it heartily thereafter.

NUMBER LXXIII.

OF CALAMITOUS REVERSES IN RESPECT TO WORLDLY CIRCUMSTANCES.

"Think how frail

And full of danger is the life of man,

Now prosperous, now adverse; who feels no ills

Should therefore fear them; and when fortune smiles

Be doubly cautious, lest destruction come

Remorseless on him.".

SOPHOCLES.

In this free, commercial, speculating and money-loving country, the wheel of fortune is turning up blanks and prizes alternately; some families decaying and sinking, and others rising to wealth; the griefs of the former greatly overbalancing the real joys of the latter.

One of the bitterest calamities of life, is the sudden fall from affluence, or competence, to poverty. Not that what we call poverty, is so very distressing of itself. In some countries, it implies a privation of the indispensable necessaries of life, or the sufferance of hunger and nakedness: but here, few are so poor that, with prudent care and assiduous industry, they may not provide.

themselves with wholesome food and comfortable raiment. Multitudes, in this country, of the poorest classes, are neither the least contented, nor the least happy. Unaccustomed to the elegancies and luxuries of life, they feel no hankering after them; and accustomed to earn their bread by their toil, they regard labor as no hardship. It procures them two very essential enjoyments-keen appetite and sound sleep; and with respect to real and heartfelt jovialness, they very often have more than an equal share.

That degree of poverty, which includes not in it the pinching want of real necessaries wounds the mind alone and it often deeply wounds the minds of those who have fallen from easy and plentiful circumstances. To them it is an evil indeed. A comparison of the past with the present, renders the present irksome to them, if not intolerable. The real or imaginary neglects they experience in society, and from even their former familiars, plant, as it were, thorns in their hearts. Time wears away, however, the pungency of first impressions. of the Creator is clearly manifested in it), as it were, a principle of elasticity in the minds of human beings, which enables them to recover themselves when crushed down by the shocks of adversity, and to accommodate, after a while, their feelings to their circumstances with marvellous facility. But far above and beyond this, the balm that Religion furnishes has the never-failing virtue of removing the corrosions of the heart, occasioned by worldly misfortunes.

There is (and the goodness

No human prudence can always secure its subject from disastrous reverses in worldly circumstances. In times of old, "there came a great wind from the wilderness, and smote the

four corners of the house," in which the sons and daughters of the man of the East-as distinguished for benevolence and charity as for wealth—" were eating, and drinking wine." In a single hour, his vast substance, and the natural heirs to it, were all swept from him. And recent experience teaches that, in America as well as in Asia, a great wind may destroy in a single hour, what many years of painful industry had accumulated. The most flattering condition of worldly prosperity is sometimes found to be like the smoothness of the surface of the waters, in their approximation to a cataract.

But though it is not in the power of prudence to secure earthly possessions in all cases, yet often, and for the most part, they are lost by imprudence. It ought to be held in general remembrance," that nothing will supply the want of prudence; that negligence and irregularity, long continued," will sink both fortune and character, and that if there be but little moral good in worldly prudence, there is a great deal of moral evil in imprudence, or in such wastefulness and improvidence as not only lead to want and wretchedness, but often to the ruin or deep injury of creditors.

If we take a careful survey of American society, I believe we shall find, that the greater part of the families who have experienced a distressing reverse in their circumstances, owe it to one or other of the three following causes: the inheritance of wealth-the greediness of wealth-or the affectation of wealth.

"Riches certainly make themselves wings; they fly away." Now these wings, as of an eagle, that bear away riches from the places of their wonted residence, it is worthy of particular no

tice, are such as naturally grow out of riches; they are wings which riches make themselves;--they are idleness, wastefulness, improvidence, and prodigality; all of which a very large proportion of the children of wealth inherit, along with their

estates.

66

A great many fall into poverty, not for lack of industry, but from inordinate greediness of wealth. They make haste to be rich." Scorning the secure competence they already possess, or which is fairly within their reach, they put it to risk upon the precarious contingency of suddenly attaining the condition of opulence. Impatient of slow gains, the fruits of regular industry, they dash into hazardous enterprises. If unsuccessful-and they have more than an even chance to be so-they are presently ruined or if brilliant success attend their steps for awhile, so that they heap up riches in sudden abundance; this run of good luck expands their hopes and desires, and they plunge anew into still deeper speculations, till, unexpectedly, the fallacious ground on which they stand cleaves from under them, and their fortunes are all swallowed up.

If the two great destroyers, which I have just mentioned, have devoured their thousands, the one that is yet to be mentioned has devoured its ten thousands. The heritors of overgrown wealth are but few and though there are very many greedy and rash adventurers, yet their numbers bear no proportion to the numbers of those who are ruining their circumstances by an absurd, and a pitiful affectation of wealth. This last is in economics, what consumption is among bodily distempers, the most common and fatal disease of all. The affectation of wealth, or the vanity of making a show beyond our condition, in apparel, in the elegan