from the eye the tears of penitence, encourage the diffident, support the good, and reclaim the profligate! Nor can the generous, even to open enemies, refuse the claims of candour and humanity. Animating are the proofs of ancient and modern greatness, in the delicate, but generous treatment of distinguished warriors to the vanquished foe. Whatever has been conciliating in words, or soothing in manners, the brave, who are always generous, have been eager to concede! . "The opportunity of making happy," observes Rousseau, "is more scarce than we imagine; the punishment of missing it, is never to meet with it again; and the use we make of it, leaves us an eternal sentiment of satisfaction or repentance." "From this alone," says another admired writer, " proceeds the noble disinterested friendship, friendship, the melting love, the generous sentiment, the ardent gratitude, the soft compassion, the candid opinion, and all those strong energies of a good mind." "Dear sensibility!" exclaims the celebrated Sterne, "source inexhausted of all that's precious in our joys, or costly in our sorrows! thou chainest thy martyr down upon his bed of straw, and it is thou who liftest him. up to Heaven. Eternal fountain of our feelings! It is here I trace thee, and this is thy divinity which stirs within me: not, that in some sad and sickening moments, my soul shrinks back upon herself, and startles at destruction'-mere pomp of words!-but that I feel some generous joys and generous cares beyond myself—all comes from thee, great Sensorium of the world! which vibrates, if a hair of our head but falls upon the ground, in the remotest desert of thy creation." If If generosity thus ennobles and amplifies the soul, and stands in direct opposition to every thing that is base; if even barbarians reverenced the name of generosity, and those who despised the laws of civility esteemed those of friendship, be not outdone in virtue by them, O Reader! if thou dost aspire to the Christian name; and if thou art desirous of the favour of thy Maker, the esteem of thy fellow-creature, and the applause of thy own conscience,--Be generous! ESSAY XII. TEMPERANCE. IF from no better motives than personal comforts, men were to determine their different habits of life, those of order and regularity offer them by far the greatest bribes; and it will be only to compare with, what shall be hereafter said on excess, to set a true estimation on temperance. A sober and temperate mode of living, besides acquring that commendation it deserves; in a very great degree secures to us the most desirable of all human blessings, which which is health! and while the mind equally participates with the body in this comfort, it is not only in a state of good defence against the boisterous attack of injurious passions, but maintains a greater share, than it would otherwise have, of vigour of intellect, of firmness of nerve, and cheerfulness of heart. By temperance, which likewise is a cardinal virtue, much more is meant than the negative virtue of not eating or drinking to excess: for the subsequent inconveniences to which some constitutions are particularly liable, may make them very cautious in this respect, and impose on them, very reluctantly, an adequate abstemiousness. While such a kind of temperance is very rational, it is at best but selfish, and therefore deducts from its merit; especially, so long as other desires, equally gross and voluptuous, but which do not so sensibly punish in the |