borious preparations; they are enforced without the aid of eloquence, and understood without skill in analytic science. Every tongue can utter them, and every understanding can conceive them. He that wishes in earnest to obtain just sentiments concerning his condition, and would be intimately acquainted with the world, may find instructions on every side. He that desires to enter behind the scene, which every art has been employed to decorate, and every passion labours to illuminate, and wishes to see life stripped of those ornaments which make it glitter on the stage, and exposed in its natural meanness, impotence, and nakedness, may find all the delusion laid open in the chamber of disease; he will there find vanity divested of her robes, power deprived of her sceptre, and hypocrisy without her mask. The friend whom I have lost was a man eminent for genius, and, like others of the same class, sufficiently pleased with acceptance and applause. Being caressed by those who have preferments and riches at their disposal, he considered himself as in the direct road to advancement, and had caught the flame of ambition by approaches to its object. But, in the midst of his hopes, his projects, and his gayeties, he was seized by a lingering disease, which, from its first stage, he knew to be incurable. Here was an end of all his visions of greatness and happiness; from the first hour that his health declined all his former pleasures grew tasteless. His friends expected to please him by those accounts of the growth of his reputation, which were formerly certain of being well received; but they soon found how little he was now affected by compliments, and how vainly they attempted, by flattery, to exhilarate the languor of weakness and relieve the solicitude of approaching death. Whoever would know how much piety and virtue surpass all external goods, might here have seen them weighed against each other, where all that gives motion to the active and elevation to the eminent, all that sparkles in the eye of hope and pants in the bosom of suspicion, at once became dust in the balance, without weight and without regard. Riches, authority, and praise lose all their influence when they are considered as riches which to-morrow shall be bestowed upon another, authority which shall this night expire for ever, and praise which, however merited or however sincere, shall, after a few moments, be heard no more. In those hours of seriousness and wisdom, nothing appeared to raise his spirits or gladden his heart but the recollection of acts of goodness, nor to excite his attention but some opportunity for the exercise of the duties of religion. Everything that terminated on this side of the grave was received with coldness and indifference, and regarded rather in consequence of the habit of valuing it than from any opinion that it deserved value; it had little more prevalence over his mind than a bubble that was now broken, a dream from which he was awake. His whole powers were engrossed by the consideration of another state, and all conversation was tedious that had not some tendency to disengage him from human affairs, and open his prospects into futurity. It is now passed; we have closed his eyes, and heard him breathe the groan of expiration. At the sight of this last conflict I felt a sensation never known to me before; a confusion of passions, an awful stillness of sorrow, a gloomy terror without a name. The thoughts that entered my soul were too strong to be diverted, and too piercing to be endured; but such violence cannot be lasting; the storm subsided in a short time; I wept, retired, and grew calm. I have from that time frequently revolved in my mind the effects which the observation of death produces in those who are not wholly without the power and use of reflection; for by far the greater part it is wholly unregarded. Their friends and their enemies sink into the grave without raising any uncommon emotion, or reminding them that they are themselves on the edge of the precipice, and that they must soon plunge into the gulf of eternity. It seems to me remarkable, that death increases our veneration for the good and extenuates our hatred of the bad. Those virtues which once we envied, as Horace observes, because they eclipsed our own, can now no longer obstruct our reputation, and we have therefore no interest to suppress their praise. That wickedness, which we feared for its malignity, is now become impotent; and the man, whose name filled us with alarm, and rage, and indignation, can at last be considered only with pity or contempt. When a friend is carried to his grave, we at once find excuses for every weakness and palliations of every fault; we recollect a thousand endearments, which before glided off our minds without impression; a thousand favours unrepaid, a thousand duties unperformed, and wish, vainly wish, for his return, not so much that we may receive, as that we may bestow happiness, and recompense that kindness which before we never understood. } There is not, perhaps, to a mind well instructed, a more painful occurrence than the death of one whom we have injured without reparation. Our crime seems now irretrievable; it is indelibly recorded, and the stamp of fate is fixed upon it. We consider, with the most afflictive anguish, the pain which we have given, and now cannot alleviate, and the losses which we have caused and now cannot repair. Of the same kind are the emotions which the death of an emulator or competitor produces. Who ever had qualities to alarm our jealousy, had excellence to deserve our fondness; and to whatever ardour of opposition interest may inflame us, no man ever outlived an enemy whom he did not then wish to have made a friend. Those who are versed in literary history know that the elder Scaliger was the redoubted antagonist of Cardan and Erasmus; yet at the death of each of his great rivals he relented, and complained that they were snatched away from him before their reconciliation was completed. "Art thou too fallen? ere anger could subside Such are the sentiments with which we finally review the effects of passion, but which we sometimes delay till we can no longer rectify our errors. Let us therefore make haste to do what we shall certainly at last wish to have done; let us return the caresses of our friends, and endeavour, by mutual endearments, to heighten that tenderness which is the balm of life. Let us be quick to repent of injuries while repentance may not be a barren anguish, and let us open our eyes to every rival excellence, and pay early and willingly those honours which justice will compel us to pay at last, THE TRUE VALUE AND USE OF RICHES. "But while in heaps his wicked wealth ascends, He is not of his wish possess'd; There's something wanting still to make him bless'd." HOM.-FRANCIS's Trans. As the love of money has been in all ages one of the passions that have given great disturbance to the tranquillity of the world, there is no topic more copiously treated by the ancient moralists than the folly of devoting the heart to the accumulation of riches. They who are acquainted with these authors need not be told how riches excite pity, contempt, or reproach whenever they are mentioned; with what numbers of examples the dangers of large possessions is illustrated; and how all the powers of reason and eloquence have been exhausted in endeavours to eradicate a desire, which seems to have intrenched itself too strongly in the mind to be driven out, and which, perhaps, had not lost its power even over those who declaimed against it, but would have broken out in the poet or the sage if it had been excited by opportunity and invigorated by the approximation of its proper object. Their arguments have been, indeed, so unsuccessful, that I know not whether it can be shown that, by all the wit and reason which this favourite cause has called forth, a convert was ever made; that even one man has refused to be rich, when to be rich was in his power, from the conviction of the greater happiness of a narrow fortune; or disburdened himself of wealth when he had tried its inquietudes, merely to enjoy the peace, and leisure, and security of a mean and unenvied state. It is true, indeed, that many have neglected opportunities of raising themselves to honours and to wealth, and rejected the kindest offers of fortune; but, however their moderation may be boasted by themselves, or admired by such as only view them at a distance, it will be, perhaps, seldom found that they value riches less, but that they dread labour or danger more than others; they are unable to rouse themselves to action, to strain the race of competition, or to stand the shock of contest; but though they, therefore, decline the toil of climbing, they nevertheless wish themselves aloft, and would willingly enjoy what they dare not seize, |