pass our latter years with serenity and cheerful

ness.

If it has been found by the experience of mankind that not even the best seasons of life are able to supply sufficient gratifications without anticipating uncertain felicities, it cannot surely be supposed that old age, worn with labours, harassed with anxieties, and tortured with diseases, should have any gladness of its own, or feel any satisfaction from the contemplation of the present. All the comfort that can now be expected must be recalled from the past or borrowed from the future; the past is very soon exhausted; all the events or actions of which the memory can afford pleasure are quickly recollected; and the future lies beyond the grave, where it can be reached only by virtue and devotion.

Piety is the only proper and adequate relief of decaying man. He that grows old without religious hopes, as he declines into imbecility, and feels pains and sorrows incessantly crowding upon him, falls into a gulf of bottomless misery, in which every reflection must plunge him deeper, and where he finds only new gradations of anguish and precipices of horror.

DIFFERENT DEGREES OF VIRTUE.

"Succeeding times a silver age behold,
Excelling brass, but more excell'd by gold."

OVID.-DRYDEN'S Trans.

HESIOD, in his celebrated distribution of mankind, divides them into three orders of intellect. "The first place," says he, "belongs to him that can by his own powers, discern what is right and fit, and penetrate to the remoter motives of action. The

tate of an uncle, who, by the course of nature, could not live long. He that followed was preparing to dive for treasure in a new-invented bell; and another was on the point of discovering the longitude.

Being thus rejected wheresoever I applied myself for information, I began to imagine it best to desist from inquiry, and try what my own observation would discover; but, seeing a young man, gay and thoughtless, I resolved on one more experiment, and was informed that I was in the garden of Hope, the daughter of Desire, and that all those whom I saw thus tumultuously bustling round me were incited by the promises of Hope, and hastening to seize the gifts which she held in her hand.

I turned my sight upward, and saw a goddess in the bloom of youth sitting on a throne; around her lay all the gifts of fortune, and all the blessings of life were spread abroad to view; she had a perpetual gayety of aspect, and every one imagined that her smile, which was impartial and general, was directed to himself, and triumphed in his own superiority to others, who had conceived the same confidence from the same mistake.

I then mounted an eminence, from which I had a more extensive view of the whole place, and could with less perplexity consider the different conduct of the crowds that filled it. From this station I observed that the entrance into the garden of Hope was by two gates, one of which was kept by Reason and the other by Fancy. Reason was surly and scrupulous, and seldom turned the key without many interrogatories and long hesitation; but Fancy was a kind and gentle portress; she held her gate wide open, and welcomed all equally to the district under her superintendence: so that the passage was crowded by all those who either feared the examination of Reason, or had been rejected by her.

From the gate of Reason there was a way to the throne of Hope, by a craggy, slippery, and winding path, called the Strait of Difficulty, which those who entered with the permission of the guard endeavoured to climb. But, though they surveyed the way very cheerfully before they began to rise, and marked out the several stages of their progress, they commonly found unexpected obstacles, and were obliged frequently to stop on the sudden where they imagined the way plain and even. A thousand intricacies embarrassed them, a thousand slips. threw them back, and a thousand pitfalls impeded their advance. So formidable were the dangers and so frequent the miscarriages, that many returned from the first attempt, and many fainted in the midst of the way, and only a very small number were led up to the summit of Hope by the hand of Fortitude. Of these few the greater part, when they had obtained the gift which Hope had promised them, regretted the labour which it had cost, and felt in their success the regret of disappointment; the rest retired with their prize, and were led by Wisdom to the bowers of Content.

Turning, then, to the gate of Fancy, I could find no way to the seat of Hope; but, though she sat full in view, and held out her gifts with an air of invitation, which filled every heart with rapture, the mountain was on that side inaccessibly steep, but so channelled and shaded that none perceived the impossibility of ascending it, but each imagined himself to have discovered a way to which the rest were strangers. Many expedients were indeed tried by this industrious tribe, of whom some were making themselves wings, which others were contriving to actuate by the perpetual motion. But, with all their labour and all their artifices, they never rose above the ground, or quickly fell back, nor ever approached the throne of Hope, but continued still to gaze at a distance, and laughed at the

slow progress of those whom they saw toiling in the Strait of Difficulty.

Part of the favourites of Fancy, when they had entered the garden, without making, like the rest, an attempt to climb the mountain, turned immediately to the vale of Idleness, a calm and undisturbed retirement, from whence they could always have Hope in prospect, and to which they pleased themselves with believing that she intended speedily to descend. These were indeed scorned by all the rest; but they seemed very little affected by contempt, advice, or reproof, but were resolved to expect at ease the favour of the goddess.

Among this gay race I was wandering, and found them ready to answer all my questions and willing to communicate their mirth; but turning round, I beheld two dreadful monsters entering the vale, one of whom I knew to be Age and the other Want. Sport and revelling were now at an end, and a universal shriek of affright and distress burst out and awaked me.

THE CHARACTER OF A MAN BEST KNOWN BY HIS CONDUCT AT HOME.

"Let us live well: were it alone for this
The baneful tongue of servants to despise :
Slander, that worst of poisons, ever finds
An easy entrance to ingnoble minds."

Juv.-HERVEY'S Trans.

THE younger Pliny has very justly observed, that of actions that deserve our attention, the most splendid are not always the greatest. Fame, and wonder, and applause are not excited but by external and adventitious circumstances, often distinct

and separate from virtue and heroism. Eminence of station, greatness of effect, and all the favours of fortune, must concur to place excellence in public view; but fortitude, diligence, and patience, divested of their show, glide unobserved through the crowd of life, and suffer and act, though with the same vigour and constancy, yet without pity and without praise.

This remark may be extended to all parts of life. Nothing is to be estimated by its effect upon com mon eyes and common ears. A thousand miseries make silent and invisible inroads on mankind, and the heart feels innumerable throbs which never break into complaint. Perhaps, likewise, our pleasures are, for the most part, equally secret, and most are borne up by some private satisfaction, some internal consciousness, some latent hope, some peculiar prospect, which they never communicate, but reserve for solitary hours and clandestine meditation.

The main of life is, indeed, composed of small incidents and petty occurrences; of wishes for objects not remote, and grief for disappointments of no fatal consequence; of insect vexations, which sting us and fly away; impertinences, which buzz a while about us and are heard no more; of meteorous pleasures, which dance before us and are dissipated; of compliments, which glide off the soul like other music, and are forgotten by him that gave and him that received them.

Such is the general heap out of which every man is to cull his own condition: for as the chymists tell us that all bodies are resolvable into the same elements, and that the boundless variety of things arises from the different proportions of very few ingredients, so a few pains and a few pleasures are all the materials of human life, and of these the proportions are partly allotted by Providence and partly left to the arrangement of reason and of choice.