falfely called innocent amusement, and dif gracing it by faults which would alarm fociety more though possibly they might injure it less. Mrs. Chapone.

$105. Of the Difference between the Ex treme of Negligence and Rigour in Religion.

How amazing is the distance between the extreme of negligence and self-indulgence in such nominal Christians, and the oppofite excefs of rigour which some have unhappily thought meritorious! between a Pafcal (who dreaded the influence of plea fure fo much, as to wear an iron, which he pressed into his side whenever he found himself taking delight in any object of sense) and those who think life lent them only to be squandered in senseless diversions, and the frivolous indulgence of vanity!-what a strange composition is man! ever diverging from the right line -forgetting the true end of his beingor widely mistaking the means that lead to it.

If it were indeed true that the Supreme Being had made it the condition of our future happiness, that we should spend the days of our pilgrimage here on earth in voluntary suffering and mortification, and a continual opposition to every inclination of nature, it would surely be worth while to conform even to these conditions, how ever rigorous: and we fee, by numerous examples, that it is not more than human creatures are capable of, when fully perfuaded that their eternal interests demand it. But if, in fact, the laws of God are no other than directions for the better enjoyment of our existence-if he has forbid us nothing that is not pernicious, and commanded nothing that is not highly advantageous to us if, like a beneficent parent, he inflicts neither punishment nor constraint unnecessarily, but makes our good the end of all his injunctions it will then appear much more extraordinary that we should perversely go on in constant and acknowledged neglect of those injunctions.

Is there a single pleasure worthy of a rational being, which is not, within certain limitations, consistent with religion and vir tue-And are not the limits, within which we are permitted to enjoy them, the fame which are prescribed by reason and nature, and which we cannot exceed without manifeft hurt to ourselves, or others? It is not the life of a hermit that is enjoined us;

it is only the life of a rational being, form ed for society, capable of continual improvement, and confequently of continual advancement in happiness.

Sir Charles and Lady Worthy are nei. ther gloomy afcetics, nor frantic enthufiafts; they married from affection on long acquaintance, and perfect esteem; they therefore enjoy the best pleasures of the heart in the highest degree. They concur in a rational scheme of life, which, whilst it makes them always chearful and happy, renders them the friends of human-kind, and the blessing of all around them. They do not defert their station in the world, nor deny themselves the proper and moderate use of their large fortune; though that portion of it, which is appropriated to the use of others, is that from which they derive their highest gratifications. They spend four or five months of every year in London, where they keep up an intercourse of hospitality and civility with many of the most respectable persons of their own, or of higher rank; but have endeavoured rather at a felect than a numerous acquaintance; and as they never play at cards, this endeavour has the more easily succeeded. Three days in the week, from the hour of dinner, are given up to this intercourse with what may be called the world. Three more are spent in a family way, with a few intimate friends, whose tastes are conformable to their own, and with whom the book and workingtable, or sometimes mufic, supply the intervals of useful and agreeable conversation. In these parties their children are always present, and partake of the improvement that arises from fuch society, or from the well-chosen pieces which are read aloud. The seventh day is always spent at home, after the due attendance on public worship; and is peculiarly appropriated to the religious instruction of their children and servants, or to other works of charity. As they keep regular hours, and rife early, and as Lady Worthy never pays or admits morning visits, they have seven or eight hours in every day, free from all interruption from the world, in which the cultivation of their own minds, and thofe of their children, the due attention to health, to economy, and to the poor, are carried on in the most regular manner.

Thus, even in London, they contrive, without the appearance of quarrelling with the world, or of shutting themselves up from it, to pass the greatest part of their time in a reasonable and useful, as well as an agreeable manner. The rest of the year they spend at their family feat in the country, where the happy effects of their example, and of their affiduous attention to the good of all around them, are still more obfervable than in town. Their neighbours, their tenants, and the poor, for many miles about them, find in them a fure resource and comfort in calamity, and a ready afsistance to every scheme of honest industry. The young are inftructed at their expence, and under their direction, and rendered useful at the earliest period pollible; the aged and the fick have every comfort adminiftered that their state requires; the idle and dissolute are kept in awe by vigilant inspection; the quarrelfome are brought, by a sense of their own interest, to live more quietly with their family and neighbours, and amicably to refer their disputes to Sir Charles's de

cifion.

Sir Charles and Lady Worthy are seldom without fome friends in the house with them during their stay in the country; but, as their methods are known, they are never broken in upon by their guests, who do not expect to fee them till dinner-time, except at the hour of prayer and of breakfaft. In their private walks or rides, they ufually visit the cottages of the labouring poor, with all of whom they are perfonally acquainted; and by the sweetness and friendliness of their manner, as well as by their beneficent actions, they so entirely poffefs the hearts of these people, that they are made the confidants of all their family grievances, and the casuists to fettle all their fcruples of confcience or difficulties in conduct. By this method of converfing freely with them, they find out their different characters and capacities, and often difcover and apply to their own benefit, & well as that of the perfon they diftin

guish, talents, which would otherwise have been for ever loft to the public.

From this flight sketch of their manner of living, can it be thought that the practice of virtue costs them any great facrifices? Do they appear to be the servants of a hard master?-It is true, they have not the amusement of gaming, nor do they curse themselves in bitterness of foul, for losing the fortune Providence had bestowed upon them: they are not continually in public places, nor stifled in crowded affemblies; nor are their hours confumed in an infipid interchange of unmeaning chat with hundreds of fine people who are perfectly indifferent to them; but then, in return, the Being whom they serve indulges them in the best pleasures of love, of friendship, of parental and family affection, of divine beneficence, and a piety, which chiefly confifts in joyful acts of love and praise!-not to mention the delights they derive from a taste uncorrupted and still alive to natural pleafures; from the beauties of nature, and from cultivating those beauties joined with utility in the scenes around them; and above all, from that flow of spirits, which a life of activity, and the constant exertion of right affections, naturally produce. Compare their countenances with those of the wretched slaves of the world, who are hourly complaining of fatigue, of liftleffness, distaste, and vapours; and who, with faded cheeks and worn out constitutions, still continue to haunt the scenes where once their vanity found gratification, but where they now meet only with mortification and disgust; then tell me, which has chofen the happier plan, admitting for a moment that no future penalty was an nexed to a wrong choice? Liften to the character that is given of Sir Charles Worthy and his Lady, wherever they are named, and then tell me, whether even your idol, the world, is not more favourable to them than to you.

Perhaps it is vain to think of recalling those whom long habits, and the established tyranny of pride and vanity, have almost precluded from a possibility of imitating such patterns, and in whom the very defire of amendment is extinguished; but for those who are now entering on the stage of life, and who have their parts to choose, how earnestly could I wish for the spirit of perfuafion for fuch a "warning voice" as should make itself heard amidst all the gay

gay bustle that furrounds them! it should cry to them without ceasing, not to be led away by the crowd of fools, without knowing whither they are going not to exchange real happiness for the empty name of pleasure-not to prefer fashion to immortality-and, not to fancy it possible for them to be innocent, and at the same time ufelefs. Mrs. Chapone.

§106. Virtue Man's true Interest.

I find myself exifting upon a little spot, furrounded every way by an immenfe unknown expansion Where am I? What fort of place do I inhabit? Is it exactly accommodated, in every instance, to my convenience? Is there no excess of cold, none of heat, to offend me? Am I never annoyed by animals, either of my own kind, or a different? Is every thing fubservient to me, as though I had ordered all myself?-No-nothing like it-the far. theft from it poffible. - The world appear's not, then, originally made for the private convenience of me alone? It does not.But is it not poflible so to accommodate it, by my own particular industry? If to accommodate man and beast, heaven and earth, if this be beyond me, 'tis not poffible-What confequence then follows? or can there be any other than this-If I seek an intereft of my own, detached from that of others, I feek an interest which is chimerical, and can never have existence?

How then must I determine? Have I no interest at all? - If I have not, I am a fool for staying here. "Tis a smoky house; and the fooner out of it the better.-But why no interest? - Can I be contented with none, but one separate and detached? Is a focial interest, joined with others, such an absurdity as not to be admitted?-The bee, the beaver, and the tribes of herding animals, are enow to convince me, that the thing is fomewhere at least possible. How, then, am I affured that 'tis not equally true of man?-Admit it; and what follows? If fo, then honour and justice are my intereft; then the whole train of moral virtues are my interest; without some portion of which, not even thieves can maintain fociety.

But, farther still-I stop not here I pursue this focial interest, as far as I can trace my several relations. I pass from my own stock, my own neighbourhood, my own nation, to the whole race of mankind, as difperfed throughout the earth.

Am I not related to them all by the

mutual aids of commerce, by the general intercourse of arts and letters, by that common nature of which we all participate?

Again-I must have food and cloathing. Without a proper genial warmth, I instantly perish.-Am I not related, in this view, to the very earth itself? to the distant fun, from whose beams I derive vigour? to that stupendous course and order of the infinite host of heaven, by which the times and seasons ever uniformly pass on?-Were this order once confounded, I could not probably survive a moment; fo absolutely do I depend on this common general welfare. What, then, have I to do, but to enlarge virtue into piety? Not only honour and justice, and what I owe to man, is my intereft; but gratitude also, acquiefence, resignation, adoration, and all I owe to this great polity, and its greater governor our common parent.

§107. On Gratitude.

Harris.

There is not a more pleasing exercise of the mind, than gratitude.

It is accompanied with such inward fatisfaction, that the duty is sufficiently rewarded by the performance. It is not like the practice of many other virtues, difficult and painful, but attended with so much pleasure, that were there no positive command which enjoined it, nor any recompence laid up for it hereafter-a generous mind would indulge in it, for the natural gratification that accompanies it.

If gratitude is due from man to manhow much more from man to his Maker ? -The Supreme Being does not only confer upon us those bounties which proceed more immediately from his hand, but even those benefits which are conveyed to us by others. Every blessing we enjoy, by what means foever it may be derived upon us, is the gift of Him who is the great Author of good, and Father of mercies.

If gratitude, when exerted towards one another, naturally produces a very pleasing sensation in the mind of a grateful man; it exalts the soul into rapture, when it is employed on this great object of gratitude, on this beneficent Being, who has given us every thing we already possess, and from whom we expect every thing we yet hope for.

Most of the works of the Pagan poets were either direct hymns of their deities, or tended indirectly to the celebration of Those who are acquainted with the works of the Greek and Latin poets which are fill extant, will, upon reflection, find this observation so true, that I shall not enlarge upon it. One would wonder that more of our Chriftian poets have not turned their thoughts this way, especially if we confider, that our idea of the Supreme Being, is not only infinitely more great and noble than could poffibly enter into the heart of a heathen, but filled with every thing that can raise the imagination, and give an opportunity for the fublimest thoughts and conceptions.

Plutarch tells us of a heathen who was finging an hymn to Diana, in which he celebrated her for her delight in human facrifices, and other instances of cruelty and revenge; upon which a poet who was present at this piece of devotion, and feems to have had a truer idea of the divine nature, told the votary, by way of reproof, that in recompence for his hymn, he heartily wished he might have a daughter of the fame temper with the goddess he celebrated. It was indeed impossible to write the praises of one of those false deities, according to the Pagan creed, without a mixture of impertinence and abfurdity.

The Jews, who before the time of Chriftianity were the only people who had the knowledge of the true God, have set the Christian world an example how they cught to employ this divine talent, of which I am fpeaking. As that nation produced men of great genius, without confidering them as inspired writers, they have tranfmitted to us many hymns and divine odes, which excel those that are delivered down to us by the ancient Greeks and Romans, in the poetry as mach as in the subject to which it is confecrated. This, I think, might be easily thewn, if there were occafion for it.

Spectator.

108. Religion the Foundation of Content : an Allegory.

Omar, the hermit of the mountain Aubukabis, which rifes on the east of Mecca, and overlooks the city, found one evening a man fitting pensive and alone, within a few paces of his cell. Omar regarded him with attention, and perceived that his looks were wild and haggard, and that his body was feeble and emaciated: the man ali feemed to gaze stedfastly on Omar;

" Son of

that his eye did not immediately take cognizance of its object. In the moment of recollection he started as from a dream, he covered his face in confufion, and bowed himself to the ground. affliction," said Omar, "who art thou, and what is thy distress ?" My name," replied the stranger, "is Haffan, and I am a native of this city: the Angel of adversity has laid his hand upon me, and the wretch whom thine eye compaffionates, thou canst not deliver." "To deliver thee," said Omar, "belongs to Him only, from whom we should receive with humility both good and evil: yet hide not thy life from me; for the burthen which I cannot remove, I may at least enable thee to sustain." Hassan fixed his eyes upon the ground, and remained some time filent; then fetching a deep figh, he looked up at the hermit, and thus complied with his request.

It is now fix years fince our mighty lord the Caliph Almalic, whose memory be blessed, first came privately to worship in the temple of the holy city. The blessing which he petitioned of the prophet, as the prophet's vicegerent, he was diligent to dispense: in the intervals of his devotion, therefore, he went about the city relieving distress and restraining oppreffion: the widow smiled under his protection, and the weakness of age and infancy was fuftained by his bounty. I, who dreaded no evil but fickness, and expected no good beyond the reward of my labour, was finging at my work, when Almalic entered my dwelling. He looked round with a smile of complacency; perceiving that though it was mean it was neat, and though I was poor I appeared to be conAs his habit was that of a pilgrim, I haftened to receive him with such hofpitality as was in my power; and my chearfulness was rather increased than restrained by his prefence. After he had accepted fome coffee, he asked me many questions; and though by my answers I always endeavoured to excite him to mirth, yet I perceived that he grew th ughtful, and eyed me with a placid but fixed attention. I suspected that he had fome knowledge of me, and therefore enquired his country and his name. "Haifan," faid he, "I have raised thy curiofity, and it shall be satisfied; he who now talks with thee, is Almalic, the fovereign of the faithful, whose feat is the throne of Medina,

tent.

G

dina, and whose commiffion is from above." These words ftruck me dumb with aftonishment, though I had some doubt of their truth: but Almalic, throwing back his garment, discovered the peculiarity of his vest, and put the royal signet upon his finger. I then started up, and was about to prostrate myself before him, but he prevented me: "Haffan," said he, "forbear; thou art greater than I, and from thee I have at once derived humility and wifdom." I answered, "Mock not thy fervant, who is but as a worm before thee: life and death are in thy hand, and happiness and misery are the daughters of thy will." "Hassan," he replied, " I can no otherwise give life or happiness, than by not taking them away: thou art thyself beyond the reach of my bounty, and poffeffed of felicity which I can neither communicate nor obtain. My influence over others, fills my bosom with perpetual solicitude and anxiety; and yet my influence over others extends only to their vices, whether I would reward or punish. By the bow-ftring, I can repress violence and fraud; and by the delegation of power, I can transfer the infatiable wishes of avarice and ambition from one object to another: but with respect to virtue, I am impotent; if I could reward it, I would reward it in thee. Thou art content, and haft therefore neither avarice nor ambition: to exalt thee, would destroy the fimplicity of thy life, and diminish that happiness which I have no power either to encrease or to continue."

He then rose up, and commanding me not to difclose his secret, departed.

As soon as I recovered from the confufion and aftonishment in which the Caliph left me, I began to regret that my behaviour had intercepted his bounty; and accused that chearfulness of folly, which was the concomitant of poverty and labour. I now repined at the obscurity of my station, which my former infenfibility had perpetuated: I neglected my Jabour, because I defpised the reward; I Spent the day in idleness, forming romantic projects to recover the advantages which I had loft: and at night, instead of losing myself in that sweet and refreshing sleep, from which I used to rife with new health, chearfulness, and vigour, I dreamt of splendid habits and a numerous retinue, of gardens, palaces, eunuchs, and women, and waked only to regret the illufions that had vanished. My health was at

length impaired by the inquietude of my mind; I fold all my moveables for fubfistence; and reserved only a mattrass, upon which I fometimes lay from one night to another.

In the first moon of the following year, the Caliph caine again to Mecca, with the same secrecy, and for the fame purposes. He was willing once more to see the man, whom he confidered as deriving felicity from himself. But he found me, not finging at my work, ruddy with health, vivid with chearfulness; but pale and dejected, fitting on the ground, and chewing opium, which contributed to substitute the phantoms of imagination for the realities of greatness. He entered with a kind of joyful impatience in his countenance, which, the moment he beheld me, was changed to a mixture of wonder and pity. I had often wished for another opportunity to address the Caliph; yet I was confounded at his presence, and, throwing myself at his feet, I laid my hand upon my head, and was speechless. "Haffan," said he, "what canft thou have loft, whose wealth was the labour of thine own hand; and what can have made thee sad, the spring of whose joy was in thy own bofom? What evil hath befallen thee? Speak, and if I can remove it, thou art happy." I was now encouraged to look up, and I replied, "Let my Lord forgive the presumption of his servant, who rather than utter a falsehood, would be dumb for ever. I am become wretched by the lofs of that which I never possessed: thou haft raifed wishes, which indeed I am not worthy thou shouldst satisfy; but why should it be thought, that he who was happy in obfcurity and indigence, world not have been rendered more happy by eminence and wealth?"

When, I had finished this speech, Almalic stood some moments in suspense, and I continued prostrate before him. "Hassan," faid he, " I perceive, not with indignation but regret, that I mistook thy character; I now discover avarice and ambition in thy heart, which lay torpid only because their objects were too remote to rouse them. I cannot therefore invest thee with authority, because I would not fubject my people to oppreffion; and because I would not be compelled to punish thee for crimes which I first enabled thee to commit. But as I have taken from thee that which I cannot reftore, I will at least gratify the wishes that I excited, lest thy