that is meant by the charity of Chriftians, and philanthropy of heathen philofophers; yet is this man a flave to envy, to refentment, and to spleen; imperious to his family, cruel to his dependents, and quarrelfome to his acquintance; continually lamenting the infults of the world, and the malignity of others, and profeffing that he alone is happy, by the habit of putting favourable conftructions on premeditated affronts, and parrying infults by the guard of good nature; yet do his captioufnefs, his infolence and his pride, expole him to attacks, which his implacable refentments converts to never-ceafing hatred.

Squire Big is confcious that he left the country in which his family had long refided, because the neighbourhood refufed him that refpect, to which neither his rank, fortune, nor understanding, had ever entitled him; yet is he continually boafting of influence which he dare not return to exert, and of importance which he never means to refume; folicitous to imprefs on others a sense of his own confequence, and to convince the world that he is fomebody when at home; while he is confuming with melancholy at his own infignificance, and only exifts to difguife the fatal truth, that he is actually no body any where.

Poor Ned Cramp is a good natured throughtiefs fellow, who has fquandered a way a fmall fortune to make the world think he had a large one; he talks of money in the funds which he has long fold out; and laments the tardinels of tenants whofe rents he long fince affigned to fatisfy his creditors: he is conftantly advifing with his friends how to put out fums on the best security, while he is actually borrowing money at exorbitant intereft: he talks of prudence and œconomy as" things well enough for people in narrow circumflances," but thanks hea ven," he has no need of fuch virtues to fecare the permanency of his happiness:" nor is he induced to impofe on others to fupport a falfe credit, or to indulge extravagance, but to gratify the vain defire of being thought a menied man. Thus does he wafte his days in mifery, that he may be deemed happy, and will end them in poverty, that he may be efteemed affluent.

Doctor D--- has but one topic in all companies: a few minutes converfation will bring round his favourite fubject, and you will foon difcover, that implicit obedience in a wife, and the ftricteft fubordination to her husband, conftitute ali his ideas of domeftic happinefs; his greateft glory feems to arife from the confcioùfnefs that he is abfolute mafter in his own family of this boafied fuperiority his friends can feldom bear witnefs, for he rarely invites them to his koule. Daving dined there lately, I per

ceived his reafon; for during the repaft, while he was conftantly engaged in afferting his authority, his wife was as anxious to difpute it; and the comforts of conviviality were banished by this domeftic contention, which gradually increased till the lady left the table. However, the Doctor triumphed in this victory. I could discover, that he dreaded fhe would return to the combat, and that the suspension of hoftilities would end with my visit.

There can be no fituation, however ele vated, that will enfure continual happiness; nor any so abject, as to be without enjoyment: indeed happiness and mifery feem fo neteffarily united, that they are eqully difperfed through all ranks of fociety; and though we cannot perfuade ourselves we are content or happy, we wish to conceal from others every appearance to the contrary; we derive happiness from being thought to poffefs it, and comfort ourselves in wretchedness, if we can difguife it from others.

I fhall conclude my examples of feeming contentment with a letter from one, who can have little reafon to disguise the fenfe of his melancholy fituation it is from a criminal under fentence of twelve months confinement in a folitary cell of a county prifon he is without friends, without property, without character, and without any neceflary of life, except the fcanty allowance which hard labour procures amidst the horrors of a dungeon; yet he wrote the following letter, and delivered it to the keeper, to be forwarded to a brother at a distance.

:

"Dear Jack,

"This comes with my kind love, hoping it will find you in good health aud spirits, as it leaves me at this prefent writing, thanks to nobody for it. I live in a pleasent part of the kingdom here, and, only for the diftance between us, not fo much amifs.The people are not over and above sociable, and fo I never mixes with one of 'em.Work is in great plenty here, and provifions coft us nothing. The houfe I live in is newly built, and they fay 'tis one of the best of the fort in all England; for they can make up better than forty feparate bed-rooms every night. I was forry to hear poor Bob was catched-out last affizes; but no matter for that, they say Botany Bay is a rare country, and worth while to go on purpose to fee, for 'tis quite another world. And fo hoping we may all go there one time or other, this concludes me, dear Jack,

Your's till death, FOM FILCH." P. S. Direct to me, at A** Bridewell, where I have fallen into a job of work, that will hold me beft part of next winter.

An

That the world has a governor or a fuperintendant, is juft as evident as that it had a maker. For no perfon does any thing with out fome defign, or without intending to make fome use of it. A telescope is made to be ufed for the better diftinguishing diftant objects, the eye itself for feeing things at a moderate distance from us, and no doubt, men, and the world, for fome end or other. And as the fame Being that made the greatest things, made the fmalleft things alfo, all being parts of the fame fyftem, fome ufe, no doubt, is made of every thing, even what appears to us the most inconfiderable; fo that, as our Saviour observed, a fparrow falls not to the ground without God, and the very hairs of our heads are numbered.' Alfo, as nothing was made, fo nothing can came to pass without the knowledge, the appointment, or permiffion of God.-Something, therefore, is intended by every thing that is made. But in little things a defign is not fo apparent as in greater and more ftrik ing things. Though, therefore, the hand of God be really in every thing that happens, and that is recorded in hiftory, our attention is more forcibly drawn to it in great events, and especially in things which happen in a manner unexpected by us.

How can we help acknowledging the hand of God when we fee great and important events brought about by feemingly trifling and inconfiderable means which feem to have little or no relation to the end; as when our king James and both houfes of parliament were refcued from deftruction, by a letter which a confpirator sent with a view to fave one of the members of the house of lords for whom he had a friendship?

Who would have imagined that the defire which Henry VIII. had to be divorced from his wife, would have brought about the reformation in England? The indifcretion of a Portuguese prieft, who wou'd not give place to one of the king's officers in Japan, and the obflinacy of the Jefuits, in refufing to give up the house which a nobleman had given them, when his fon claimed it back again, occafioned the extirpation of the Roman catholic religion in that country.

But what most of all fhews the hand of Providence, and the weakness and fhortfightedness of men, are great events being brought about contrary to the intention of the perfons who were the chief inftruments of them, and by the very means which were

intended to produce a contrary event. Thus

perfecution has always been the means of promoting the perfecuted religion; infomuck, that it is become a common proverb, that the blood of the martyrs, is the feed of the church.' Thus, likewife, Athens, Lacedæmon, Carthage, Rome, and many other ftates have been ruined by their own fucceffes. Philip II. of Spain, by his intolerable oppreffion, was the caufe of the freedom of the ftates of Holland. Such has often been the confequence of wicked men over-acting their parts. Thus alfo the fenate of Rome was once faved by Catiline's making the fignal for the maffacre too foon. With what fatisfaction may a perfon who has an eye to divine Providence read such a paffage as the following in Machiavel, that Borgia had fo well conducted his measures, that he must have been master of Rome, and of the whole ecclefiaftical state after the death of his father, but that it was impoffible for him to forefee that he himself would be at the point of death at the very time that Alexander his father finished his life. They were both poifoned at an entertainment, by a miftake of the waiter, who ferved them with the wine which was to have taken off their enemies.

It is no uncommon thing, in the hiftory of divine Providence, that persons being known to have abilities fhall have been the means of keeping them in obfcurity, while others have been advanced in confequence of their feeming infignificance. If Auguftus had shown any capacity, as a ftate finan or general, any greatnefs of foul, or any thing in the leaft enterprising, at first, he would probably never have been inafter of the Roman empire. Bat while Cicero, and Antony, in their turns, thought to make a tool of him, they, unknown to themselves, increased his power and influence, at the expence of their own.

In this view it is very amufing, and useful, to consider to what a different purpose, the labour, powers, and works of men, and nations, have been employed from what was originally thought of and intended; as that the Romans, after all their conquefts of other nations, fhould be often governed by favage and tyrannical barbarifns, fuch as Maximin and others; and that that city, the mitrefs of the world, which was built by Romulus, and whofe power was enlarged by fuch men as Camillus, Scipio Africanus, Marius, Sylla, Cæfar, Pompey, and Trajan, fhould now be in fubjection to the Pope, and the feat of a power totally different from what had before refided in it, and of which the founders

could

could have no conception. How far was Conflantine from foreleeing, that Conftantinople would be the capital of the Turkish empire, and the principal fupport of a religion oppofite to that which he established! How far, alfo, were the heads of the Grecian commonwealths from forefeeing, that their country, the feat of arts and liberty, would ever become the moft ignorant, and enflaved of all the ftates of Europe!

A regard to divine Providence, is, likewife, extremely useful to heighten our fatisfaction in reading hiftory, and throw an agreeable light upon the moft gloomy and difgufting parts of it. With a view to this, the most difagreeable objects in hiftory will bear to be looked upon with fatisfaction. And could we fee every event, in all its connexions, and moft diftant influences, we fhould, no doubt, perfectly acquiefce in eve ry thing that comes to pafs under the government of God; in feeing that all evils, lead to, and terminate in a greater good. But in many cafes, we fee events which give us pain at first sight, and which occafion much regret and difappointment, to thofe who give more fcope to their paffions than to their reflection while they are reading; which, if we look no farther than the next and immediate confequences, we fhall be thoroughly fatisfied and pleased with.

No perfon converfant with the ancient claffical hiftorians, and who has thereby acquired a claffical tafte, and claffical notions of liberty, but regrets that Rome, in the height of its glory, should fall under the power of mafters. But it is because he does not confider that all the provinces of the vaft Roman empire were moft miferably oppreffed and plundered by the republican governors, who had little to fear from courts of juftice; but were relieved and happy under the government of perfons who lived in conflant fear of being accufed of maladministration, to an inexorable mafter. Nay the provinces were not much lefs happy under Tiberius and Nero, than under Trajan and the Antonines.

A reader of Thucydides is apt to be extremely mortified at the ill treatment of Alcibiades, and the defeat of the Athenians before Syracufe. But it is because he does not think that would probably have been the confequence of the fuccefs of that expedition; namely, the flavery of Greece, and, from the nature of its government, the confufion and flavery of Athens too. As fuccefs naturally points out our favourite hero to us, we cannot help conceiving a violent indignation against Hanno, for taking no more care to fend recruits to Hannibal, after the battle of Canna. But juftly did he, and all Carthage, dread the power Gent. Mag. O. 1788.

4

of Hannibal, when master of Rome, who was able to change the whole form of their government, even when he was conquered.

Hiftory too, in the misfortunes and hardfhips to which the moft diftinguifhed perfonages have been reduced, gives us a deep conviction of the inftability of all human things, and prepares our minds, to fubmit to adverfity with more patience and refignation, as to a condition from which we fee none are exempt. Even the misfortunes and difappointments of brave and good men, who have brought themselves into difficulties, in confequence of their generous attempts, in favour of the liberties and beft interests of mankind, do not, as exhibited in hiftory, in the leaft tend to flacken our zeal in the fame glorious caufe; at the fame time that they make us more prudent in the choice and profecution of our meafures, to attain the fame end, and dispose us to yield to disappointment with a better grace. That an acquaintance with hiftory has this effect, I appeal to what any person feels after reading of the untimely end of Agis, Cato, Brutus, Hampden, and the great Algernon Sydney. The honourable mention that will, to the end of the world, be made of fuch glorious, though unfortunate men as these, and their noble ends, will raife more friends to the fame great interefts; while their misfortunes will only serve to make thofe friends more prudent, and therefore probably more fuccefsful in their endeavours.

But, independent of thefe martyrs of liberty raifing up more, and more fuccessful patrons of it, the remarkable reverfes of fortune in the hiftory of confiderable perfonages, has a fine effect upon the human mind. It. wonderfully foftens and calms it, and gives it an excellent temper for encountering with the viciffitudes of life. What other fenfations do we feel, while we read that flenrietta, daughter of Henry IV of France, and wife to Charles I of England, was reduced to the utmost extremity of poverty; and that her daughter, who was afterward married to a brother of Lewis XIV, is faid to have lain in bed for want of coals to keep her warm, while the people of Paris, blind with rage, paid no attention to their fufferings? The fame kind of fenfations we feel, when we read of the great and fuccefsful general Belifarius (if the ftory be true) begging his bread; of Cortez, the renowned conqueror of Mexico, living unknown and in difgrace in Spain, and fearce able to get to fpeak to his mafter Charles V, though when the king afked, who the fellow was that was fo clamorous to fpeak to him, he cried out, I am one who have got your majefly more provinces, than your father left you towns.' He afterwards ferved in a

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