without thinking now of emperors, or kings, or their minifters, of Sully, or Mecænas, or Hephæftion, or Henry, or Auguftus, or Alexander the Great, turn your attention to yourselves, and look forward. It is not so vaft a way, as you may fancy, to that feafon of decline, when, fuppofing your condition favourable in many other refpects, much of your relifh for its pleasures will be over, and of your early companions, who by sharing them with you might have contributed to exhilarate your fpirits, the most part will be gone to the land of forgetfulness. But what a comfort, in that cafe, if you ftill poffeffed one or two welltried and well-principled Friends, who were able not only to amuse you by their good-humour and chearful converfation, but to revive the frequent languors of decrepitude, and to alleviate its unavoidable infirmities, by turning your views from a world, where you will have fuffered many a painful breach and bitter difappointment,

to the regions of unmingled joy and immortal youth! By the timely aid of fuch communion, you may learn the art, understood by fo few, of growing old with a good grace, and be prepared to fuftain the weight of years, not with fubmiffion merely, but with dignity too.

Among the numerous claffes of human mifery, it is not perhaps easy to figure a being more forlorn than the man who is funk in the vale of age without a Friend

without a Friend to confole him in the remembrance of paft calamity, to fupport him under the preffure of growing frailty, to direct his hopes beyond the dreary scene that is clofing round him, to addrefs him in that voice of affection which gives warmth and perfuafion to the language of piety, to talk to him of the glorious things which are in store for the fervants of God broken with the toils of life, to tell him of that Divine Redeemer, at whofe fight, while yet an in

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fant, the devout old Ifraelite could in a holy rapture wifh to die. How mournful must it be for a perfon of fenfibility, who has furvived whatever he held dearest on earth, to fee himself left alone, like fome folitary fhattered tree on a barren wild; to see the world, which perhaps he had long entertained and obliged, forgetting him because he can oblige and entertain it no longer, and those kind hands mouldering in the duft, which, had they still lived, would have propped his tottering frame, when the gayer affociates of his laughing days are either vanished in the grave, or withdrawn to more amufing fociety than he can now furnifh!

What, not one worthy faithful Friend to bear him company, to nurfe his weakness, to footh his pains, to overlook his starts of peevishness, to affift him in beguiling the tedious hours, in fettling his laft accounts, in smoothing the paffage to his long home! Merciful Creator, may we never know the mifery of being abandoned to helpless

folitude in the midst of feeble age: teach us to cultivate, in the preceding stages of our journey, those sweet sympathies of the foul, which reafon approves, and religion confecrates, which depend for their grati>cation but on a few fellow-travellers, and will continue to relieve us when wearied, and refresh us when worn out, with the length of the way. It is the unrivalled glory of virtuous Friendship, that when all other attachments, fprung from fancy, appetite, or intereft, fall off and fade away, it remains," like a tree planted by the

rivers of water," fresh and vigorous, the joint growth of invariable esteem, affection, and principle.

But carry your thoughts a little farther: imagine yourself, Sir, about to lie down "upon your last bed: suppose, what I pray Heaven may be only a fuppofition, that 'you are but indifferently prepared for it: whom would you wish to vifit and comfort you in so awful a fituation? Any of

thofe jovial companions who now endea vour to divert from your mind, as well as their own, all grave reflections? Try then, if you will, the experiment: send for the most fenfible you can fingle out from their whole number: inform him that you look upon yourself as a dying man, and defire his advice and affiftance: what will he anfwer? Moft probably, that you fhall yet recover; that you are only low-fpirited, or by no means fo ill as you apprehend; that you should keep a good heart, that you shall live to fee many happy days, and fo forth. At this eafy ftyle you are disappointed. He that feels himself finking down under a load of infurmountable disease, is hurt by so flight an addrefs. You will fignify to your vifitant his mistake: you will affure him, the matter is become too ferious for fuch fort of talk. What will he do next? It is likely, that altering his tone and countenance into an expreffion of more concern, and perhaps joining the tear of