From any cenfures of the world, or reproaches of his confcience, he has an appeal to action and to knowledge; and though his whole life is a course of rapacity and avarice, he concludes himself to be tender and liberal, because he has once performed an act of liberality and tenderness.

As a glafs which magnifies objects by the approach of one end to the eye, leffens them by the application of the other, fo vices are extenuated by the inverfion of that fallacy by which virtues are augmented. Those faults which we cannot conceal from our own notice, are confidered, however frequent, not as habitual corruptions, or fettled practices, but as cafual failures, and fingle lapfes. A man who has, from year to year, fet his country to fale, either for the gratification of his ambition or refentment, confeffes that the heat of party now and then betrays the feverest virtue to measures that cannot be seriously defended. He that fpends his days and nights in riot and debauchery, owns that his paffions oftentimes overpower his refolution. But each comforts himself that his faults are not without precedent, for the beft and the wifeft men have given way to the violence of fudden temptations.

There are men who always confound the praife of goodness with the practice, and who believe themselves mild and moderate, charitable and faithful, because they have exerted their eloquence in commendation of mildnefs, fidelity, and other virtues. This is an error almost universal among those that conyerfe much with dependents, with fuch whofe fear or intereft difpofes them to a feeming reverence for any declamation, however enthusiastic, and fubmiffion to any boaft, however arrogant. Having none to recall their attention to their lives, they rate themselves by the goodness of their opinions, and forget how much more easily men may shew their virtue in their talk than in their actions.

The tribe is likewise very numerous of those who regulate their lives, not by the standard of religion, but

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the measure of other men's virtue; who lull their own remorfe with the remembrance of crimes more atrocious than their own, and feem to believe that they are not bad while another can be found worse.

For escaping these and a thousand other deceits, many expedients have been propofed. Some have recommended the frequent confultation of a wife friend, admitted to intimacy, and encouraged to fincerity. But,. this appears a remedy by no means adapted to general ufe; for in order to fecure the virtue of one, it prefuppofes more virtue in two than will generally be found. In the first, such a defire of rectitude and amendment, as may incline him to hear his own accufation from the mouth of him whom he esteems, and by whom, therefore, he will always hope that his faults are not discovered; and in the fecond, fuch zeal and honesty as will make him content, for his friend's advantage, to lose his kindness.

It seems that enemies. have been always found by experience the most faithful monitors; for adverfity has ever been confidered as the state in which a man most easily becomes acquainted with himself, and this effect it must produce by withdrawing flatterers, whose business it is to hide our weakneffes from us; or by giving a loose to malice, and license to reproach; or at leaft by cutting off those pleasures which called us away from meditation on our own conduct, and repreffing that pride which too easily perfuades us that we merit whatever we enjoy.

Part of these benefits it is in every man's power to procure to himself, by affigning proper portions of his life to the examination of the reft, and by putting himfelf frequently in fuch a fituation, by retirement and abstraction, as may weaken the influence of external objects. By this practice he may obtain the folitude of adverfity without its melancholy, its inftructions without its cenfures, and its fenfibility without its perturbations. There

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There are few conditions which do not entangle us with fublunary hopes and fears, from which it is neceffary to be at intervals difencumbered, that we may place ourselves in His prefence who views effects in their caufes, and actions in their motiyes; that we may, as Chillingworth expreffes it, confider things as if there were no other beings in the world but God and ourfelves; or, to ufe language yet more awful, may commune with our own hearts, and be fill.

The Distresses of a modest Man.

Y father was a farmer of no great property,

M'and with no other learning than what he had

acquired at a charity-fchool; but my mother being dead, and I an only child, he determined to give me that advantage, which he fancied would have made him happy, viz. a learned education. I was fent to a country grammar-fchool, and from thence to the Univerfity, with a view of qualifying for holy orders. Here, having but a small allowance from my father, and being naturally of a timid and bafhful difpofition, I had no opportunity of rubbing off that native aukwardnefs, which is the fatal caufe of all my unhappiness, and which I now begin to fear can never be amended. You must know, that in my perfon I am tall and thin, with a fair complexion, and light flaxen hair; but of fuch extreme fufceptibility of fhame, that, on the fmalleft fubject of confufion, my blood all rushes into my cheeks, and I appear a full-blown rofe. The confcioufnefs of this unhappy failing made me avoid fociety, and I became enamoured of a college life; particularly when I reflected, that the uncouth manners of my father's family

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were little calculated to improve my outward conduct: I therefore had refolved on living at the University and taking pupils, when two unexpected events greatly altered the posture of my affairs, viz. my father's death, and the arrival of an uncle from the Indies.

This uncle I had very rarely heard my father mention, and it was generally believed that he was long fince dead, when he arrived in England only a week too late to close his brother's eyes. I am afhamed to confefs, what I believe has been often experienced by those whose education has been better than their parents, that my poor father's ignorance and vulgar language had often made me blush to think I was his fon; and at his death I was not inconfolable for the lofs of that, which I was not unfrequently afhamed to own. My uncle was but little affected, for he had been separated from his brother more than thirty years, and in that time had acquired a fortune which, he used to brag, would make a Nabob happy; in fhort, he had brought over with him the enormous fum of thirty thousand pounds, and upon this he built his hopes of never-ending happiness. While he was planning schemes of greatness and delight, whether the change of climate might affect him, or what other cause, I know not, but he was fnatched from all his dreams of joy by a fhort illness, of which he died, leaving me heir to all his property. And now, Sir, behold me at the age of twenty-five, well stocked with Latin, Greek, and Mathematics, poffeffed of an ample fortune, but so aukward and unverfed in every gentleman-like accomplishment, that I am pointed at by all who see me, as the wealthy learned fool.

I have lately purchased an eftate in the country, which abounds in (what is called) a fashionable neighbourhood; and when you reflect on my parentage and uncouth manner, you will hardly think how much my company is courted by the furrounding families, efpecially by thofe who have marriageable daughters: From thefe gentlemen I have received familiar calls, and the'

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