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

To charge religion with the mischief occafioned by mistakes about it, I think full as impertinent, as to decry reafon for the wrong ufe that has been made of it; or government, for the bad administration of every kind of it, in every part of the world. What hall prove to the advantage of mansiad, will, in all cafes, depend upon temfelves: that which is, confeffedly, moft for it, in every inftance you can think of, you fee, occafionally, abufed; and by that abufe becoming as hurtful, as it would, otherwife, have been beneficial. Controverfy I hate; and to read books of it as ill fuits my leifure as my inclination: yet I do not profefs a religion, the grounds of which I have never confidered. And upon the very fame grounds that I am convinced of the truth of religion in general, I am fo of the truth of christianity. The good of the world is greatly promoted by it. If we would take chriftianity for our guide throughout, we could not have a betterwe could not have a furer to all the happinefs of which our present state admits. Its fimplicity may have been difguifed its intention perverted-its doctrines mifreprefented, and conclufions drawn, fuiting rather the intereft or ambition of the expofitor, than the directions of the text: but when I refort to the rule itself ;—when I find it afferting, that the whole of my duty is to love God above all things, and my neighbour as myfelf-to live always mindful by whom I am fent into, and preferved in, the world, and always difpofed to do in it the utmoft 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 But I will drop a topic, on which I am fure your father muft have fufficiently enlarged: I can only fpeak to it more generally difficulties and objections I muft leave him to obviate; yet thus much confidently affirming, that if you won't adopt an irreligious fcheme, 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 fo. 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 fword against.

one.

When you are told, that the foldier's religion is his honour, obferve the practice of

them from whom you hear it; you'll foon then have proof enough, they mean little more by honour, than what is requifite to keep or advance their commiffions-that they are still in their own opinion men of nice honour, though abandoned to the groffeft fenfuality and excess. though chargeable with acts of the fouleft perfidy and injuftice-that the honour by which they govern themselves differs as widely from what is truly fuch, as humour from reafon. True honour is to virtue what good breeding is to good nature, the polifhing, the refinement of it. And the more you think of chriftianity, the more firmly you will be perfuaded, that in its precepts the ftricteft rules of honour are contained. By thefe I, certainly, would have you always guided, and, on that very account, have reminded you of the religion, which not only fhews you them, but proposes the reward likelieft to attach you to them. I have done. Take care of yourfelf. You won't fly danger, don't court it. If the one would bring your courage into queftion, the other will your fenfe. The rafh is as ill qualified for command, as the coward. May every bleffing attend you! And to fecure 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 fufficiently comfort me for your lofs, that you died with honour; but it would infinitely lefs afflict me to hear of you among the dead, than among the profligate.

What has been the iffue of inftructions like these from both parents? Scipio, for fo we will call the worthy man, from the time he received his commiffion, has alike diftinguished himself by his courage and conduct. The greatest dangers have not terrified, the worst examples have not corrupted him. He has approved himself difdaining by cowardice to keep life, and abhorring to fhorten it by excefs: the bravery with which he has hazarded it, is equalled by the prudence with which he paffes it.

§ 149 On the Employment of Time.

ESSAY THE SECOND.

cum fuis, omnefque naturâ conjunétos, fuos duxerit, cultumque deorum, & puram religionem fufceperit-quid eo, dici aut excogitari poterit beatius? Tull. de Legibus.

Among the Indians there is an excellent fet of men, called Gymnofophifts: thefe I greatly admire, not as skilled in propagating the vine-in the arts of grafting or agriculture. They apply not themfelves to till the ground--to fearch after gold -to break the horse--to tame the ball-to fhear or feed fheep or goats. What is it then that engages them? One thing preferable to all thefe. Wisdom is the purfuit as well of the old men, the teachers, as of the young, their difciples? Nor is there any thing among them that I fo much praife, as their averfion to floth and idleness.

When the tables are spread, before the meat is fet on them, all the youth, affembling to their meal, are afked by their mafters-In what useful task they have been employed from funrifing to that time. One reprefents himself as having been chofen an arbitrator, and fucceeded by his prudent management in compofing a difference--in making them friends who were at variance. A fecond had been paying obedience to his parents commands. A third had made some discovery by his own application, or learned fomething by another's instruction. The reft give an account of themselves in the fame way.

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

one.

Dipping into Apuleius for my afternoon's amufement, the foregoing paffage was the laft I read, before I fell into a flumber, which exhibited to me a vaft concourse of the fashionable people at the court-end of the town, under the examination of a Gymnofophift how they had paffed their morning. He begun with the men.

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

Many of them had only rifen to drefsto vifit-to amufe themselves at the drawing-room or coffee house.

Some had by riding or walking been confulting that health at the beginning of the day, which the close of it would wholly país in impairing.

Some from the time they had got on their own cloaths, had been engaged in feeing others put on theirsin attending levees in endeavouring to procure

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

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

Others, truly, had been reading, but reading what could make them neither wifer nor better, what was not worth their remembring, or what they fhould with to forget.

It grieved me to hear fo many of emi nent rank, both in the fea and land fervice, giving an account of themselves that levelled them with the meaneft under their command.

Several appeared with an air expreffing the fulleft confidence that what they had to fay for themselves would be to the philofopher's entire fatisfaction. They had been employed as Virtuofi fhould be--had been exercifing their skill in the liberal arts, and encouraging the artifts. Medals, pictures, flatues had undergone their examination, and been their purchase. They had been inquiring what the literati of France, Germany, Italy had of late publish

ed;

and they had bought what fuited their refpective taftes.

When it appeared, that the compleating a Roman feries had been their concern, who had never read over, in their own language, a Latin hiftorian that they who grudged no expence for originals, knew them only by hearfay from their worst copies

that the very perfons who had paid fo much for the labour of Ryfbrack, upon Sir Andrew's judgment, would, if they had followed their own, have paid the fame fum for that of Bird's- -That the book-buyers had not laid out their money on what they ever propofed to read, but on what they had heard commended, and what they wanted to fit a fhelf, and fill a library that only ferved them for a breakfast-room; this clafs of men the Sage pronounced the idleft of all idle people, and doubly blameable, as wafting àlike their time and their fortune.

The follies of one fex had fo tired the

philofopher, that he would fuffer no account to be given him of thofe of the other. It was eafy for him to guefs how the females must have been employed, where fuch were the examples in those they were to honour and obey.

For a fhort space there was a general filence. The Gymnofophift at length expreffed himself to this effect: You have been reprefented 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 fentiments merely because they were his. A character, to which, for ought I can find, you are as ill entitled as, perhaps, moft nations in the univerfe. The freedom with which great names are opposed, and received opinions questioned by fome among you, is, probably, no other than what is ufed by fome of every country in which liberal inquiries are purfued. The difference is, you fafely publish your fentiments on every fubject; to them it would be penal to avow any notions that agree not with thofe of their fuperiors. But when you thus pafs your days, as if you thought not at all, have you any pretence to freedom of thought? Can they be faid to love truth, who fhun confideration? When it feems your ftudy to be ufelefs, to be of no fervice to others or yourfelves when you treat your time as a burthen, to be eafed of which is your whole concern when that fituation, thofe circumftances of life are accounted the happiest, which most tempt you to be idle and infignificant; human nature is as much dishonoured by you, as it is by any of thofe people, whofe favagenefs or fuperftition you have in the greateft contempt.

Let me not be told, how well you approve your reafon by your arguments or your fentiments. The proper ufe of reafon, is to act reafonably. When you fo grófsly fail in this, all the juft apprehenfions you may entertain, all the right things you may fay, only prove with what abilities you are formed, and with what guilt you mifapply them.

The Sage here raifing his arm with his voice, I concluded it advifeable not to ftand quite fo near him. In attempting to remove I awoke, and haftened to commit to writing a dream that had fo much truth in it, and therefore expreffed how feafonable it will be to confider to what ufe of our time we are directed.

First, by our present state and condi

tion;

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 fuch--when it is but a round of eating, drinking, and fleeping, as theirs is when, by our idlenefs and inattention, we are almoft on a level with them, both as to all fenfe of duty and all useful knowledge that we poffefs, our time must have been grievously mifemployed; there is no furer token of its having been fo, than that we have done fo little to advance ourselves above the herd, when our Creator had vouchsafed us so far fuperior a capacity.

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

Were we born only to fatisfy 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 diftinction between us that this principle can make, was, undoubtedly, intended by our Creator to be made; and the lefs any appears, our abuse of this principle, and confequently our oppofition to our Maker's will, is the more notorious and blameable.

It may feem then plain, that there are advantages to be purfued, 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, fort continuance on earth.

We are fully apprifed, that by the pains of a few hours or days no progrefs can be made in any thing, that has the flighteft pretence to commendation. Those accomplishments, that are confined to our finger's ends, what months, what years of application do they coft us! And, alas! what trifles are the most admired of them,

in comparison of a great number of others for which we are qualified; and which, as they are fo infinitely preferable to thefe, ought to be fo much the more earnestly fought! When, therefore, the whole term allowed for gaining and ufing them, is thus precarious and fhort, we can have but a very fmall portion of it to difpofe of as we pleafe to pafs entirely as mere fancy or humour fuggefts. If much is to be done in a very fhort time, the good hufbandry of it must be confulted: and there is no one, who confiders what we, univerfally, may effect-in how many particulars we may be of fervice to ourfelves--how much depends upon our endeavours how neceffary they are for our attaining what should be most valued by us, what is of greatest confequence to us; there is, I fay, no one, who confiders these things, but must admit, that we have much to do, and, therefore, that the fcanty term we have for it ought to be carefully managed can only by a prudent management fuffice for the difpatch of fuch a task.

And our opportunities, for making at tainments thus defirable, should be so much the more diligently watched and readily embraced, as they meet with many unavoidable interruptions even in our fhort life.

How great a part of our time is necessarily loft to usis confumed by, that thorter death, our fleep! We are really better conomists than ordinary in this inftance, if only a third part of our life thus paffes: and on the rest of it what a large demand is made by our meals-by our juftifiable recreations--by the forms and civilities, to which a proper correspondence with our fellow-creatures obliges us? Add to thefe neceffary deductions, the many cafual ones with which we all, unavoidably, meet, and it will foon appear, what an exceeding fmall part of our short continuance on earth, we have to bestow on fuch purposes of living, as alone can be of credit to us.

We are further to reflect, that in the fmall part of our life, in which we can be employed like reasonable creatures, opportunities, for doing what may be of greatest moment, do not always ferve us; and with fome of them, if loft we never again

meet.

We depend very much on things without es, and over which we have no fort of command. There may be an extraordinary advantage derived to us from them; but, if the first offer of this be neglected, we may never have a fecond.

Nor is it only the dependance we have on things without us, that requires us fo carefully to watch our opportunities; we have a ftill more awakening call, if poffible, to this from within ourfelves--from the reftraints to which the exercise of our powers is fubjected. We cannot use these when and as we pleafe--we cannot chufe the time of life wherein to avail ourselves of our natural endowments, and to reap all the advantage defigned us in them.

When we are in our youth, our bodies eafily receive whatever mein or motion can recommend us: where is the found fo difficult, which our tongue cannot be then taught to exprefs? To what speed may our feet then be brought, and our hands to what dexterity? But if we are advanced to manhood before the forming us in any of thefe ways is attempted, all endeavour after it will then either be quite fruitless, or, probably, lefs fuccessful than it would have been in our earlier years; and whatever its fuccefs be, a much greater might have formerly been obtained with half the pains.

The very fame is it with our understanding, with our will and our paffions. There is a certain season when our minds may be enlarged--when a vaft ftock of ufeful truths may be acquired--when our pasfions will readily fubmit to the government of reafon-when right principles may be fo fixed in us, as to influence every important action of our future lives: but the feafon for this extends neither to the whole, nor to any confiderable length of our continuance upon earth; it is limited to a few years of our term; and, if throughout these we neglect it, error or ignorance are, according to the ordinary course of things, entailed upon us. Our will becomes our law-our lufts gain a ftrength that we afterwards vainly oppofe--wrong inclinations become fo confirmed in us, that they defeat all our endeavours to correct them.

II. Let me proceed to confider what directions are furnished us for the employment of our time, by the relation we bear to each other.

Society is manifeftly upheld by a circulation of kindnefs: we are all of us, in fome way or other, wanting affiftance, and in like manner, qualified to give it. None are in a state of independency on their fellow-creatures. The moft flenderly endowed are not a mere burthen on their kind; even they can contribute their share to the

common good, and may be to the political body, what thofe parts of us, in which we leaft pride ourselves, are to the natural, not greatly indeed its ornaments, but much for its real ufe.

We learn what are juftly our mutual claims, from this mutual dependency: that on its account, as well as for other reafons, our life is not to pafs in a round of pleasure or idleness, or according to the fuggeftions of mere humour and fancy, or in fordid and felfish pursuits.

There can be nothing more evidently my duty than that I fhould return the kindnefs I receive-than that, if many are employed in promoting my intereft, I fhould be as intent on furthering theirs.

All men are by nature equal. Their common paflions and affections, their common infirmities, their common wants give fuch conftant remembrances of this equality, even to them who are moft difpofed to forget it, that they cannot, with all their endeavours, render themfelves wholly unmindful thercof-they cannot become infenfible, how unwilling foever they may be to confider, that their debt is as large as their demands--that they owe to others, as much as they can reafonably expect from them.

But are all then upon a level-muft thofe diftinctions be thrown down, which, being the chief fupport of the order and peace of fociety, are fuch of its happinefs; and which nature herself may be judged to appoint, by the very difpofitions and abilities with which fhe forms us; qualifying fome for rule, and fitting fome for subjection?

That, in many inftances, we are all upon a level, none can deny, who regard the materials of our bodies the difeafes and pain to which we are fubject-our entrance into the world-the means of preferving us in. it-the length of our continuance therein our paffage out of it. But then as it will not follow, that, because we are made of the fame materials-are liable to the fame accidents and end, we, therefore, are the fame throughout; neither is it a juft conclufion, that, becaufe we are levelled in our dependence, we fhould be fo in our employments.

Superiority will remain-diftinétions will be preferved, though all of us must ferve each other, while that fervice is differently performed.

Superiority has no fort of connection with idleness and ufeleffnefs: it may exempt us from the bodily fatigue of our in

feriors, from their confinement and hardfhips-it may entitle fome to the deference and fubmiflion of thofe about them; but it by no means exempts any of us from all attention to the common good, from all endeavours to promote it-by no means does it entitle any of us to live, like fo many drones, on the industry of others, to reap all the benefit we can from them, and be of none to them.

The distinctions of prince and fubjectnoble and vulgar-rich and poor, confift not in this, that the one has a great deal to do, and the other nothing-that the one must be always bufied, and the other may be always taking his pleasure, or enjoying his ease. No, in this they confift, that these feveral perfons are differently bufied-aftift each other in different ways.

The fovereign acquaints himfelf with the true ftate of his kingdom-directs the execution of its laws-provides for the exact administration of juftice-secures the properties of his people-preferves their peace. Thefe are his cares; and that they may be the more affured of fuccefs, and have their weight more eafily fupported, his commands find the readieft obedience-a large revenue is affigned him-the higheft honours are paid him. It is not, in any of thefe inftances, the man who is regarded, but the head of the community; and that for the benefit of the community-for the fecurity of its quiet, and the furtherance of its profperity.

The nobility have it their task, to qualify themfelves for executing the more honourable and important offices of the commonwealth, and to execute these offices with diligence and fidelity. The very station, to which they are advanced, is fuppofed either the recompence of great fervice done the public, or of the merit of an uncommon capacity to ferve it.

The richer members of the flate, as they have all the helps that education can give them-as in their riper age they have all the opportunity they can wifh for to improve upon thefe helps-as their circumftances exempt them from the temptations, to which poverty is expofed; to them is committed the discharge of thofe offices in the commonwealth, which are next to the highest, and fometimes even of thefe-they either concur in making laws for the fociety, or are chiefly concerned in executing them-commerce, arts, fcience, liberty, virtue, whatever can be for the credit and peace-for the cafe and profperity of a na