small recommendation. For what impression does an allusion to his pursuits usually excite but that of merriment and laughter? This goes to confirm and encourage, instead of appalling him; brings complacency into his heart, not the blush of shame into his cheek. When so few turn from him with disgust and horror, has he not a right to conclude that he is engaged in a career which the world approves? And yet what is he in fact but one of the greatest pests a community can be cursed with; whose whole life has no other object but to convert it into a scene of calamity and vice? Who is known to make charity, yes, sacred charity, the pander of his foul appetites; will open his hand with profusion to the necessitous, in order to shut their eyes on the seduction of their children; who respects not rights that are rigorously respected by very barbarians; would dishonor the family of his host or friend with the same indifference that he would that of the meanest of human creatures; and be as ready to meet, that is, to imbrue his hands in the blood of the father or brother of his victim, as he was to destroy the chief source of their pride and happiness forever. Alas! how many unfortunate parents, after the fatal dishonor of a child, have never raised their heads more, nor passed a moment of remaining life, but in counting the pulsations of a broken heart.

No woman ever voluntarily surrendered the blessing of a fair name. The sensitive plant shrinks not more instinctively from the touch, than the nature of woman from defilement. The love and pride of purity are still entwined with her being, and the last breath of virtue ever consecrated to the fair state from which she falls. Often, in the midst of the most thoughtless and headlong course of vice, will the tear of sad recollection steal down into the empoisoned cup. Though, generally, she may be found to evince a detestation of the modest and virtuous part of her sex, it is not, believe me, that happy distinction from which she recoils, but from the objects that too strongly remind her of her own infamy and degradation.

THE MISER.

Attention to our own concerns can become culpable only, when they so far enslave and engross us, as to leave us neither leisure nor inclination to promote the happiness of our fellow creatures. Then does self-love degenerate into selfishness. This, indeed, is a dark and melancholy transformation of our natural character, and the last term of its abasement. When the light of benevolence is entirely put out, man is reduced to that state of existence, which is disavowed by nature, and abhorred of God! Let one suppose him, I say, but once radically divested of all generous feelings, and entirely involved in himself; it will be impossible to say, what deeds of shame and horror he will not readily commit: in the balance of his perverted judgment, honor, gratitude, friendship, religion, yea, even natural affection, will all be outweighed by interest. The maxim of the Roman satirist will be his rule of life, 86 'money at any rate." If the plain and beaten paths of the world, diligence and frugality, will conduct him to that end, it is well: but if not, rather than fail of his object, I will be bold to say, he will plunge, without scruple or remorse, into the most serpentine labyrinths of fraud and iniquity. Whilst his schemes are unaccomplished, fretfulness and discontent will lower on his brow; when favorable, and even most prosperous, his unslaked and unsatisfied soul still thirsts for more. As he is insensible to the calamities of his fellow creatures, so the greatest torment he can experience, is an application to his charity and compassion. Should he stumble, like the Levite, on some spectacle of woe, he will, like the Levite, hasten to the other side of the way, resist the finest movements of nature, and cling to the demon of inhumanity, as the guardian angel of his happiness. Suppose him, however, under the accidental necessity of listening to the petition of misery; he will endeavour to beat down the evidence of the case by the meanest shifts and evasions; or will cry aloud, as the brutal and insensible Nabal did to the hungry soldiers of David, "Why should I be such a fool, as to

give my flesh, which I have prepared for my shearers, to men that I know not from whence they be?" But, admitting that a remnant of shame may goad him for once to an act of beneficence, so mean and inconsiderable, so unworthy of the great concern would it probably be, that the idol of his soul would appear more distinctly in the very relief he administers, than in the barbarous insensibility which habitually with holds it. Merciful and eternal God! what a passion! And how much ought the power and fascination of that object to be dreaded which can turn the human heart into such a pathless and irreclaimable desert. Irreclaimable, I say; for men inflamed with any other passion, even voluptuousness the most impure and inveterate, are sometimes enlightened and reformed by the ministry of religion, or the sober and deliberate judgment of manhood and experience. But who will say that such a wretch as I have described, in the extremity of selfishness, was ever corrected by any ordinary resource or expedient? Who will say that he is at any time vulnerable by reproach, or, I had almost added, even convertible by grace! No; through every stage and revolution of life he remains invariably the same; or, if any difference, it is only this, that as he advances into the shade of a long evening, he clings closer and closer to the object of his idolatry: and while every other passion lies dead and blasted in his heart, his desire for more pelf increases with renewed eagerness, and he holds by a sinking world with an agonizing grasp, til! he drop into the earth with the increased curses of wretchedness on his head, without the tribute of a tear from child or parent, or any inscription on his memory, but that he lived to counteract the distributive justice of Providence, and died without hope or title to a blessed immortality.

ADVICE TO PARENTS.

If our insensibility to the pressing claims of the rising generation proceed from our corruption, that cor

ruption has its chief source in the very education we have received. If the people are victims, because absolutely untutored, so are we, because the stress in our education is not laid where it ought to be. Nothing indeed is usually omitted that can fit the youth of both sexes to play a part in the world; the one to climb by their talents; the other to triumph in the wretched circles of vanity by the grace of manners. But a deep and indelible sense of their duty to God, a fixed horror of vice, and noble disdain of folly, where is the parent who thinks sufficiently of inspiring? But admitting that some pains are employed on this head, of what use can they be, if, from their infrequency and langour, they are considered by children rather as a debt paid to custom and routine, than a thing of serious and awful necessity? How shall the superficial tincture of religion and virtue hold against the rising passions of youth? No; when the season of their hurricane comes, what lies merely on the surface of the heart, will be torn up and swept away like chaff before the winds. No; if impressions penetrate not to the very bottom of the soul, are not united with our very being, never shall man resist, for any time, the power of the enemy within, or of the world without. The evidence of this is on every side of us. Besides, of what use are instructions, even assiduously and fervently conveyed, without unceasing vigilance to cut off all danger of corruption? We know, that to relax in this particular but a moment, is sometimes fatal. Remember that our Saviour scarce slumbered when the tempest arose to overwhelm the vessel that bore his disciples. Remember the counsel of the Wise Man, "Never lose sight of what you value, and are in danger of losing." Re member the fate of the unfortunate Dinah, "who went out without being accompanied." What tears the compliance of a moment cost the afflicted Jacob, and what torrents of blood were shed to repair the injury he received. Indefatigable attention then to this point is indispensably necessary. But who at this day, make it a rule never to admit their children

to improper intercourse? How often, on the contrary, are they permitted to pass warm from the lesson of piety and virtue into circles of pleasure and dissipation, where every thing they hear and see tends to enervate the mind and corrupt the heart? It will easily, I believe, be admitted, that the world possesses the secret of making perfect proselytes to vice without giving any direct lessons on the subject; and that many a youth may be thought a saint at home, who is known among his associates as a libertine of the very first hope; and who secretly laughs at the imbecility of his parents, who could rely on theory, and overlook the force of example.

I cannot omit reprobating on this head the too familiar intercourse to which children are admitted with servants. For to say nothing of the coarse and grovelling habits they must consequently imbibe; nothing of those arrogant, and supercilious notions that are necessarily contracted from being flattered and fawned on; the great danger is, that as servants, in general, have not been blessed with the advantage of education, and are under no sort of restraint, but what arises merely from the dread of dismission, they will often utter language, and betray principles, that sink deep into the recollection of young minds, and naturally produce the most deplorable effects.

I would remind parents, how infinite are the qualities necessary to succeed in seducing, I may say, the understanding and the hearts of children to the knowledge and love of virtue. There should be tenderness to engage their affection; bounty to attract their confidence, gravity to draw their respect; authority to hold them in submission; affability to render their dependence amiable; severity that has nothing revolting; compliance that has nothing base; mildness that knows how to forgive; firmness that can punish and repress; wisdom that can sometimes dissemble, and seem ignorant of what it sees; deep attention to discover their ruling passions; attention, if possible, still more deep, to counteract them, and yet conceal the discovery; in fine,