your education-your capacity—your sta. tion, deserves the same censure that the pencil meets with, when it errs in expres

sion.

Skill in the distribution of light and shade, or the clair-obscure, as, I think, the term of art is, I should apprehend resembled by prudence; which teaches us to shew ourselves in the most advantageous point of view-brings forward and brightens our good qualities, but throws back and obscures our defects suffers nothing to distinguish itself that will be to our disparagement, nor shades any thing that will credit us.

By ordonnance, is meant, I apprehend, the manner of placing the several objects in a piece, or the disposition of them with respect to the whole composure. And what can be fitter for us, than to consider where we are, and to appear accordingly? The civilities that are less decently shewn in the church, it would be a great indecorum to neglect in the drawing-room. The freedom that will gain you the hearts of your inferiors, shall, if used towards those of a higher rank, make you be thought the worst-bred woman in the world. Let the season for it be disregarded, your cheerfulness shall be offensive, your gravity seem ridiculous-your wit bring your sense into question, and your very friendliest interposition be thought not so much a proof of your affection as of your impertinence. "Tis the right placing of things that shews our discretion-that keeps us clear of difficulties that raises our credit-that principally contributes to give any of our designs success.

To beauty in colouring corresponds, perhaps, good nature improved by good breeding. And, certainly, as the canvass could furnish no design so well fancied, no draught so correct, but what would yet fail to please, and would even disgust you, were the colours of it ill-united-not sustained by each other-void of their due harmony; so both sense and virtue go but a little way in our recommendation, if they appear not to their proper advantage in an easiness of behaviour-in soft and gentle manners, and with all the graces of affability, courtesy, and complaisance. I see, by your smiling, you are satisfied you cannot be accused of being a bad colourist. Believe me, you have then gained a very material point; and the more concerns you have in the world, the more proofs you will find of its importance. I'll drop this subject when

I have said to you, That if to make a good picture is such a complicated task, requires so much attention, such extensive observation-if an error in any of the prin cipal parts of painting so offends, takes off so greatly from the merit of the pieceif he, who is truly an artist, overlooks nothing that would be at all a blemish to his performance, and would call each trivial indecorum a fault, think, child, what care about the original ought to equal this for the portrait-of what infinitely greater consequence it must be, to have every thing right within ourselves, than to give a just appearance to the things without us; and how much less pardonably any violation of decorum would be charged on your life, than on your pencil.

The most finished representation only pleases by its correspondence to what it represents, as nature well imitated; and if justness in mere representation and imitation can have the charms you find in it, you may easily conceive the still greater delight that must arise from beholding the beauties of nature itself; such, particularly, as the pencil cannot imitate-the beauties of rational nature, those which the possessor gives herself-which are of ten thousand times the moment of any in her outward symmetry-which, how highly soever they may adorn her, profit her still more; and are not only to her own advantage, but to that of the age in which she lives, and possibly, of remotest generations.

My concern to see you this fair unblemished original makes me strangely unmindful on what topic I am got. There, surely, can be no proof wanting, how much a wise and good woman excels any portrait or any woman, who has but the merit of a portrait, a fine appearance.

In this way Emilia takes each opportunity to form the manners of her daughter

to give her throughout just and reasonable sentiments, and dispose her to the exact discharge of her duty in every relation.

Leonora, thus educated, has the fools and the follies of the age in their due contempt-judges wisely-acts prudentlyis ever usefully or innocently employedcan pass her evenings very cheerfully without a card in her hand-can be perfectly in humour when she is at home, and all her acquaintance at the assembly; and seems likely to borrow no credit from her family, which she will not fully repay.

We will dismiss the daughter, and represent Emilia parting with her son in

terms

terms like these. I am now to take my leave of you, for one campaign at least. It is the first you ever served; let me advise, and do you act, as if it would be your last: the dangers, to which you will be exposed, give both of us reason to fear it: if it please God that it should be so, may you not be found unprepared, nor I unresigned! This I am the less likely to be, when you have had my best counsel, and I your promise to reflect upon it. He bowing, and assuring her, that whatever she should be pleased to say to him, it would be carefully remembered; she proceeded,—I could never conceive, what induced the soldier to think that he might take greater liberties than the rest of mankind. He is, 'tis true, occasionally subjected to greater hardships, and he runs greater hazards; but by a lewd and vicious life, he makes these hardships abundantly more grievous than they otherwise would be-be disqualifies himself to bear them. What would you think of his wits, who, because he is to be much in the cold, sits, as often as he can, close to the fire? An habitual sobriety and regularity of manners is, certainly, the best preservative of that vigorous constitution, which makes it least uneasy to endure fatigue and cold, hunger and thirst.

The dangers to which the soldier is exposed, are so far from excusing his licentiousness, when he has no enemy uear him, that they ought to be considered as the strongest motive to conform himself, at all times, to the rules of reason and religion, A practice agreeable to them is the best support of his spirits, and the surest provision for his safety-It will effectually remove his fears, and can alone encourage his hopes: nothing but it can give him any comfortable expectation, if what threatens him should befal him. He who is so much in danger, ought to be properly armed against it, and this he can never be by reflecting on the woman he has corrupted -on his hours of intemperance, or on any other of his extravagancies. You won't, perhaps, allow that he wants the armour I would provide him, because he never knows the apprehensions that require it. But I am considering what his apprehensions ought to be, not what they are. The nature of things will not be altered by our opinion about them.

It is granted, that a soldier's life is, frequently, in the utmost hazard; and the question is not, how a thoughtless, stupid, absurd creature should behave in such a

situation; but, what should be done in it by a man of prudence and sense? I say, he will attend to the value of what he hazards

to the consequence of its loss; and, if found of very great, he will so act, that the loss thereof may be, if possible, some or other way made up to him, or accompanied with the fewest inconveniences. Insensibility of danger is the merit of a bulldog. True courage sees danger, but despises it only from rational motivesfrom the considerations of duty. There can be no virtue in exposing life, where there is no notion of its value; you are a brave man, when you fully understand its worth, and yet in a good cause disregard death.

If, thus to be ready to die is commendable, wholly from the cause that makes us so, which is, unquestionably, the case; I don't see how such an indifference to life, when honour calls you to risk it, can consist with passing, at any season, immorally and dissolutely.

Here is a gallant officer who will rather be killed than quit his post-than be wanting in the defence of his country! Is not this a fine resolution in one who, by his excesses, makes himself every day less able to serve his country; or who sets an example, which, if followed, would do his country as much mischief as it could have to fear from its most determined enemy?

The inconsiderate and thoughtless may laugh at vice-may give soft terms to very bad actions, or speak of them as if they were rather matter of jest than abhorrence: but whoever will reflect whence all the misery of mankind arises-what the source is of all the evils we lament; he cannot but own, that if any thing ought to make us serious-if we ought to detest any thing, it should be that, from which such terrible effects are derived.

For the very same reason that we prefer health to sickness, ease to pain, we must prefer virtue to vice. Moral evil seems to me to have a necessary connection with natural. According to my notion of things, there is no crime but what creates pain, or has a tendency to create it to others or ourselves: every criminal is such, by doing something that is directly, or in its consequences, hurtful to himself, or to a fellow-creature.

Is not here a foundation of religion that no objections can effect? Deprive us of it, you deprive us of the only effectual restraint from those practices, which are most detrimental to the world-you deprive us

of

of virtue, and thereby of all the true hap piness we have here to expect.

To charge religion with the mischief occasioned by mistakes about it, I think full as impertinent, as to decry reason for the wrong use that has been made of it; or government, for the bad administration of every kind of it, in every part of the world. What shall prove to the advantage of mankind, will, in all cases, depend upon themselves that which is, confessedly, most for it, in every instance you can think of, you see, occasionally, abused; and by that abuse becoming as hurtful, as it would, otherwise, have been beneficial. Controversy I hate; and to read books of it as ill suits my leisure as my inclination: yet I do not profess a religion, the grounds of which I have never considered. And upon the very same grounds that I am convinced of the truth of religion in general, I am so of the truth of Christianity. The good of the word is greatly promoted by it. If we would take Christianity for our guide throughout, we could not have a better-we could not have a surer to all the happiness of which our present state admits. Its simplicity may have been disguised-its intention perverted-its doctrines misrepresented, and conclusions drawn, suiting rather the interest or ambition of the expositor, than the directions of the text: but when I resort to the rule itself;when I find it asserting, that the whole of my duty is to love God above all things, and my neighbour as myself to live always mindful by whom I am sent into, and preserved in, the world, and always disposed to do in it the utmost good in my power; I can no more doubt, whether this is the voice of my Creator, than I can doubt, whether it must be his will, that, when he has made me a reasonable creature, I should act like one. But I will drop a topic on which I am sure your father must have sufficiently enlarged: I can only speak to it more generally: difficulties and objections I must leave him to obviate; yet thus much confidently affirming, that if you won't adopt an irreligious scheme, till you find one clear of them, you will continue as good a Christian, as it has been our joint care to make you. I pray God you may do so. He that would corrupt your principles, is the enemy you have most to fear; an enemy who means you worse, than any you will draw your sword against.

When you are told, that the soldier's religion is his honour, observe the practice of

them from whom you hear it; you'll soon then have proof enough, they mean little more by honour, than what is requisite to keep or advance their commissions-that they are still in their own in ion men of nice honour, though abandoned to the grossest sensuality and excess-though chargeable with acts of the foulest perfidy and injustice-that the honour by which they govern themselves differs as widely from what is truly such, as humour from reason. True humour is to virtue what good breeding is to good nature, the polishing, the refinement of it. And the more you think of Christianity, the more firmly you will be persuaded, that in its precepts the strictest rules of honour are contained. By these I, certainly, would have you always guided, and, on that very account, have reminded you of the religion which not only shews you them, but proposes the reward likeliest to attach you to them. I have done. Take care of yourself. You won't fly danger, don't court it. If the one would bring your courage into question, the other will your sense. The rash is as ill qualified for command, as the coward. May every blessing attend you! And to secure your happiness, live always attentive to your duty; reverence and obey Him to whom you owe your being, and from whom must come whatever good you can hope for in it. Adieu. I can't say it would sufficiently comfort me for your loss, that you died with honour; but it would infinitely less afflict me to hear of you among the dead, than among the profligate.

What has been the issue of instructions like these from both parents? Scipio, for so we will call the worthy man, from the time he received his commission, has alike distinguished himself by his courage and conduct. The greatest dangers have not terrified, the worst examples have not corrupted him. He has approved himself disdaining by cowardice to keep life, and abhorring to shorten it by excess: the bravery with which he has hazarded it, is equalled by the prudence with which he passes it.

cum suos, omnesque naturâ conjunctos, suos duxerit, cultumque deorum, et puram religio nem susceperit quid eo, dici aut excogitari poterit beatius? Tull, de Legibus.

Among the Indians there is an excellent set of men, called Gymnosophists: these I greatly admire, not as skilled in propagating the vine-in the arts of grafting or agriculture. They apply not them selves to till the ground-to search after gold-to break the horse-to tame the bull -to shear or feed sheep or goats. What is it then that engages them? One thing preferable to all these. Wisdom is the pursuit as well of the old men, the teachers, as of the young, their disciples. Nor is there any thing among them that I so much praise as their aversion to sloth and idleness. When the tables are spread, before the meat is set on them, all the you assembling to their meal, are asked by their masters-In what useful task they have been employed from sun-rising to that time. One represents himself as having been chosen an arbitrator, and succeeded by his prudent management in composing a difference-in making them friends who were at variance. A second had been paying obedience to his parent's commands. A third had made some discovery by his own application, or learned something by another's instruction. The rest gave an account of themselves in the

same way.

He who has done nothing to deserve a dinner, is turned out of doors without one.

Dipping into Apuleius for my after noon's amusement, the foregoing passage was the last I read before I fell into a slumber, which exhibited to me a vast concourse of the fashionable people at the court-end of the town, under the examination of a Gymnosophist, how they had passed their morning. He began with the men.

Many of them acknowledged, that the morning, properly speaking, was near gone, before their eyes were opened.

Many of them had only risen to dress to visit to amuse themselves at the drawing-room or coffee-house.

ness.

Some had been early out of their beds, but it was because they could not, from their ill-luck the preceding evening, rest in them; and when risen, as they had no spirits, they could not reconcile themselves to any sort of application.

Some had not had it in their power to do what was of much consequence; in the former part of the morning, they wanted to speak with their tradesmen; and in the latter, they could not be denied to their friends..

Others, truly, had been reading, but reading what could make them neither wiser nor better; what was not worth their remembering, or what they should wish to forget.

It grieved me to hear so many of emihent rank, both in the sea and land service, giving an account of themselves that levelled them with the meanest under their command.

Several appeared with an air expressing the fullest confidence that what they had to say for themselves would be to the philosopher's entire satisfaction. They had been employed as virtuosi should be-had been exercising their skill in the liberal arts, and encouraging the artist. Medas, pictures, statues, had undergone their examination, and been their purchase. They had been inquiring what the literati of France, Germany, Italy, had of late published; and they had bought what suited their respective tastes.

When it appeared, that the completing a Roman series had been their concern, who had never read over, in their own language, a Latin histor an—that they who grudged no expence for originals, knew them only by hearsay from their worst copies-that the very persons who had paid so much for the labour of Rysbrack, upon Sir Andrew's judgment, would, if they had followed their own, have paid the same sum for that of Bird's-that he book buyers had not laid out their money on what they ever proposed to read, but on what they had heard commended, and what they wanted to fit a shelf, and fill a library that only served them for a breakfast-room; this class of men the sage pronounced the idlest of all idle people, and doubly blameable, as wasting alike their time and their fortune.

The follies of one sex had so tired the

philosopher, that he would suffer no account to be given him of those of the other. It was easy for him to guess how the females must have been employed, where such were the examples in those they were to honour and obey.

For a short space there was a general silence. The Gymnosophist at length expressed himself to this effect: You have been represented to me as a people who would use your own reason-who would think for yourselves-who would freely inquire, form your opinions on evidence, and adopt no man's sentiments merely because they were his. A character, to which, for ought I can find, you are as ill entitled as, perhaps, most nations in the universe. The freedom with which great names are opposed, and received opinions questioned by some among you, is, probably, no other than what is used by some of every country in which liberal inquiries are pursued. The difference is, you safely publish your sentiments on every subject; to them it would be penal to avow any notions that agree not with those of their superiors. But when you thus pass your days, as if you thought not at all, have you any pretence to freedom of thought? Can they be said to love truth, who shun consideration? When it seems your study to be useless, to be of no service to others or yourselves when you treat your time as a burthen, to be eased of which is your whole concern-when that situation, those circumstances of life are accounted the happiest, which must tempt you to be idle and insignificant; human nature is as much dishonoured by you, as it is by any of those people, whose savageness or superstition you have in the greatest contempt.

Let me not be told, how well you approve your reason by your arguments or your sentiments. The proper use of reason, is to act reasonably. When you so grossly fail in this, all the just apprehensions you may entertain, all the right things you may say, only prove with what abilities you are formed, and with what guilt you misapply them.

The Sage here raising his arm with his voice, I concluded it advisable not to stand quite so near him. In attempting to remove I awoke, and hastened to commit to writing a dream that had so much truth în it, and therefore expressed how seasonable it will be to consider to what use of our time we are directed.

Secondly, By the relation we bear to each other;

Thirdly, By that in which we stand towards the Deity.

If we are raised above the brutes-if we are undeniably of a more excellent kind, we must be made for a different purpose; we cannot have the faculties they want, but in order to a life different from theirs; and when our life is not such-when it is but a round of eating, drinking, and sleeping, as theirs is-when, by our idleness and inattention, we are almost on a level with them, both as to all sense of duty, and all useful knowledge that we possess, our time must have been grievously misemployed; there is no surer token of its having been so, than that we have done so little to advance ourselves above the herd, when our Creator had vouchsafed us so far superior a capacity.

The creatures below us are wholly intent on the pleasures of sense, because they are capable of no other: but as man is capable of much higher and nobler, he must have this privilege, that his pursuits may be accordingly-that his better nature should be better employed.

Were we born only to satisfy the appetites we have in common with the brute kind, we should, like it, have no higher principle to direct us-to furnish us with other delights. All the distinction between us that this principle can make, was, undoubtedly, intended by our Creator to be made; and the less any appears, our abuse of this principle, and consequently our opposition to our Maker's will, is the more notorious and blameable.

It may seem then plain, that there are advantages to be pursued, and a certain degree of excellence to be attained by us, according to the powers that we have, and the creatures below us want. How industrious we should be to improve each opportunity for this, we may learn by attending, in the next place, to our uncertain and, at all events, short continuance on earth.

We are fully apprised, that by the pains of a few hours or days no progress can be made in any thing, that has the slightest pretence to commendation. Those accomplishments, that are contined to our fingers' ends, what months, what years of application do they cost us! And, alas! what trifles are the most admired of them,