reparation for the mischief that he has caused. There is not, perhaps, in all the stores of ideal anguish, a thought more painful than the consciousness of having propagated corruption by vitiating principles; of having not only drawn others from the paths of virtue, but blocked up the way by which they should return; of having blinded them to every beauty but the paint of pleasure, and deafened them to every call but the alluring voice of the sirens of destruction. There is yet another danger in this practice: men who cannot deceive others are very often successful in deceiving themselves; they weave their sophistry till their own reason is entangled, and repeat their positions until they are credited by themselves; by often contending they grow sincere in the cause; and by long wishing for demonstrative arguments, they at last bring themselves to fancy that they have found them. They are then at the uttermost verge of wickedness, and may die without having that light rekindled in their minds which their own pride and contumacy have extinguished. The men who can be charged with fewest failings, either with respect to abilities or virtue, are generally most ready to allow them; for, not to dwell on things of solemn and awful consideration, the humility of confessors, the tears of saints, and the dying terrors of persons eminent for piety and innocence, it is well known that Cæsar wrote an account of the errors committed by him in his wars of Gaul, and that Hippocrates, whose name is, perhaps, in rational estimation, greater than Cæsar's, warned posterity against a mistake into which he had fallen. "So much," says Celsus, "does the open and artless confession of an error become a man conscious that he has enough remaining to support his character." As all error is meanness, it is incumbent on every man who consults his own dignity to retract as soon as he discovers it, without fearing any censure so much as that of his own mind. As justice requires that all injuries should be repaired, it is the duty of him who has seduced others by bad practices or false notions to endeavour that such as have adopted his errors should know his retraction, and that those who have learned vice by his example should by his example be taught amendment. THE DUTY AND BENEFITS OF PATIENCE. "Of all the woes that load the mortal state, PYTHAG.--ELPHINSTON'S Trans. So large a part of human life passes in a state contrary to our natural desires, that one of the principal topics of moral instruction is the art of bearing calamities. And such is the certainty of evil, that it is the duty of every man to furnish his mind with those principles which may enable him to act under it with decency and propriety. The sect of ancient philosophers that boasted to have carried this necessary science to the highest perfection were the Stoics, or scholars of Ženo, whose wild, enthusiastic virtue pretended to an exemption from the sensibilities of unenlightened mortals, and who proclaimed themselves exalted, by the doctrines of their sect, above the reach of those miseries which imbitter life to the rest of the world. They therefore removed pain, poverty, loss of friends, exile, and violent death from the catalogue of evils; and passed, in their haughty style, a kind of irreversible decree, by which they forbade them to be counted any longer among the objects of terror or anxiety, or to give any disturbance to the tranquillity of a wise man. This edict was, I think, not universally observed : for, though one of the more resolute, when he was tortured by a violent disease, cried out, that, let pain harass him to its utmost power, it should never force him to consider it as other than indifferent and neutral; yet all had not stubbornness to hold out against their senses; for a weaker pupil of Zeno is recorded to have confessed, in the anguish of the gout, that he now found pain to be an evil. It may however be questioned, whether these philosophers can be very properly numbered among the teachers of patience; for if pain be not an evil, there seems no instruction requisite how it may be borne; and therefore, when they endeavour to arm their followers with arguments against it, they may be thought to have given up their first position. But such inconsistencies are to be expected from the greatest understandings, when they endeavour to grow eminent by singularity, and employ their strength in establishing opinions opposite to nature. The controversy about the reality of external evils is now at an end. That life has many miseries, and that those miseries are sometimes, at least, equal to all the powers of fortitude, is now universally confessed; and therefore it is useful to consider not only how we may escape them, but by what means those which either the accidents of affairs or the infirmities of nature must bring upon us, may be mitigated and lightened, and how we may make those hours less wretched which the condition of our present existence will not allow to be very happy. The cure for the greatest part of human miseries is not radical, but palliative. Infelicity is involved in corporeal nature and interwoven with our being; all attempts, therefore, to decline it wholly are useless and vain; the armies of pain send their arrows against us on every side; the choice is only between those which are more or less sharp, or tinged with poison of greater or less malignity; and the strongest armour which reason can supply will only blunt their points, but cannot repel them. The great remedy which Heaven has put in our hands is patience, by which, though we cannot lessen the torments of the body, we can in a great measure preserve the peace of the mind, and shall suffer only the natural and genuine force of an evil, without heightening its acrimony or prolonging its effects. There is, indeed, nothing more unsuitable to the nature of man in any calamity than rage and turbulence, which, without examining whether they are not sometimes impious, are at least always offensive, and incline others rather to hate and despise than to pity and assist us. If what we suffer has been brought upon us by ourselves, it is observed by an ancient poet that patience is eminently our duty, since no one should be angry at feeling that which he has deserved. "Let pain deserved without complaint be borne." And surely, if we are conscious that we have not contributed to our own sufferings, if punishment falls upon innocence, or disappointment happens to industry and prudence, patience, whether more necessary or not, is much easier, since our pain is then without aggravation, and we have not the bitterness of remorse to add to the asperity of misfortune. In those evils which are allotted to us by Providence, such as deformity, privation of any of the senses, or old age, it is always to be remembered that impatience can have no present effect but to deprive us of the consolations which our condition admits, by driving away from us those by whose conversation or advice we might be amused or helped; and that with regard to futurity it is yet less to be justified, since, without lessening the pain, it cuts off the hope of that reward which He by whom it is inflicted will confer upon them that bear it well. In all evils which admit a remedy, impatience is to be avoided, because it wastes that time and attention in complaints, that, if properly applied, might remove the cause. Turenne, among the acknowledgments which he used to pay in conversation to the memory of those by whom he had been instructed in the art of war, mentioned one with honour who taught him not to spend his time in regretting any mistake which he had made, but to set⚫ himself immediately and vigorously to repair it. Patience and submission are very carefully to be distinguished from cowardice and indolence. We are not to repine, but we may lawfully struggle, for the calamities of life, like the necessities of nature, are calls to labour and exercises of diligence. When we feel any pressure of distress, we are not to conclude that we can only obey the will of Heaven by languishing under it, any more than when we perceive the pain of thirst, we are to imagine that water is prohibited. Of misfortune it never can be certainly known whether, as proceeding from the hand of God, it is an act of favour or of punishment but since all the ordinary dispensations of Providence are to be interpreted according to the general analogy of things, we may conclude that we have a right to remove one inconvenience as well as another; that we are only to take care lest we purchase ease with guilt; and that our Maker's purpose, whether of reward or severity, will be answered by the labours which he lays us under the necessity of performing. This duty is not more difficult in any state than |