offices and enjoyments of friendship-alas! I have no hours left for friends! I must see them in a croud, or not at all. As to cultivating the friendship of my husband, we are very civil when we meet; but we are both too much engaged to spend much time with each other. With regard to my daughters, I have given them a French governess, and proper masters I can do no more for them. You tell me I should instruct my servants but I have not time to inform myself, much less can I undertake any thing of that sort for them, or even be able to guess what they do with themselves the greatest part of the twenty-four hours. I go to church, if possible, once on a Sunday, and then some of my servants attend me; and, if they will not mind what the preacher says, how can I help it? The management of our fortune, as far as I am concerned, I must leave to the steward and house keeper; for I find I can barely snatch a quarter of an hour just to look over the bill of fare when I am to have company, that they may not send up any thing frightful or old-fashioned. As to the Christain duty of charity, I assure you I am not ill-natured; and (considering that the great expence of being always dressed for company, with losses at cards, subscrip. tions, and public spectacles, leave me very little to dispose of) I am ready enough to give my money when I meet with a miserable object. You say, I should inquire out such, inform myself thoroughly of their cases, make an acquaintance with the poor of my neighbourhood in the country, and plan out the best methods of relieving the unfortunate, and assisting the industrious. But this supposes much more time, and much more money, than I have to bestow. I have had hopes indeed that my summers would have afforded me more leisure; but we stay pretty late ip town; then we generally pass several weeks at one or other of the water-drinking places, where every moment is spent in public; and, for the few months in which we reside at our own seat, our house is always full, with a succession of company, to whose amusement one is obliged to dedicate every hour of the day." So here ends the account of that time which was given you to prepare and educate yourself for eternity-yet you believe the immortality of the soul, and a future stṛte of rewards and punishments. Aşk your own heart what rewards you deserve or what kind of felicity you are fitted to enjoy? Which of those faculties or affections, which heaven can be supposed to gratify, have you cultivated and improved? If, in that eternal world, the stores of knowledge should be laid open before you, have you preserved that thirst of knowledge, or that taste for truth, which is now to be indulged with endless information? If, in the society of saints and angels, the purest benevolence and most cordial love is to constitute your happiness, where is the heart that should enjoy this delightful in-. tercourse of affection? Has yours been exercised and refined to a proper capacity of it during your state of discipline, by the energies of generous friendship, by the meltings of parental fondness, of by that union of heart and soul, that mixed exertion of perfect friend ship and ineffable tenderness, which approaches nearest to the full satisfaction of our nature, in the bands of conjugal love? Alas! you scarce knew you had a heart, except when you felt it swell with pride, or flutter with vanity. Has your piety and gratitude to the source of all good been exercised and strengthened by constant acts of praise and thanksgiving? Was it nourished by frequent meditation, and silent recollection of all the wonders he hath done for us, till it burst forth in fervent prayer? I fear it was rather decency than devotion that carried you once a week to the place of public worship-and, for the rest of the week, your thoughts and time were so differently filled up, that the idea of a ruler of the universe could occur but seldom, and then, rather as an object of terror than of hope and joy. How then shall a soul, so dead to divine love, so lost to all but the most childish pursuits, be able to exalt and enlarge itself to a capacity. of bliss which we are allowed to hope for, in a more intimate perception of the divine presence, in contemplating more nearly the perfections of our Creator, and in pouring out before his throne our ardent gratitude, love, and adoration? What kind of training is the life you have passed through for such an immortality? And, dare you look down with contempt on those whom strong temptation from natural passions, or a train of unfortunate circumstances, have sunk into the commission of what you call great crimes? Dare you speak peace to your own heart, because by different circumstances you have been preserved from them? Far be it from me to wish to lessen the horror of crimes; but yet, as the temptations to these occur but seldom, whereas the temptations to neglect, and indifference towards our duty, for ever surround us, it may be necessary to awaken ourselves to some calculation of the proportions between such habitual omission of all that is good, and the commission of more heinous acts of sin; between wasting our whole life in what is falsely called innocent amusement, and disgracing it by faults which would alarm society more, though possibly they might injure it less. How amazing is the distance be-tween the extreme of negligence and self-indulgence in such nominal Christians, and the opposite excess of rigour which some have unhappily thought meritorious! between a Pascal (who dreaded the influence éf pleasure so much, as to wear an iron, which he pressed into his side whenever he found himself taking delight in any object of sense) and those who thing life lent them only to be squandered in sensual diversions, and the frivolous indulgence of vanity? What a strange composition is man! ever diverging from the right line -forgetting the true end of his being or widely mistaking the means that lead to it? If it were indeed true, that the Supreme Being had made it the condition of our future happiness, that we should spend the days of our pilgrimage here on earth in voluntary suffering and mortification, and a continual opposition to every. inclination of nature, it would surely be worth while to conform even to these conditions, however rigorous: and we see, by numerous M 4 examples examples, that it is not more than human creatures are capable of, when fully persuaded that their eternal interests demand it. But if, in fact, the laws of God are no other than directions for the better enjoyment of our existence if he has forbid us nothing that is not pernicious, and commanded nothing that is not highly advantageous to usif, like a beneficent parent, he inflicts neither punishment nor constraint unnecessarily, but makes our good the end of all his injunctions -it will then appear much more extraordinary that we should perversely go on in constant and acknowledged neglect of those injunctions. Is there a single pleasure worthy of a rational being, which is not, within certain limitations, consistent with religion and virtue? And, are not the limits, within which we are permitted to enjoy them, the same which are prescribed by reason and nature, and which we cannot exceed without manifest hurt to ourselves, or others? It is not the life of a hermit, or a Pere de la Trappe, that is enjoined us: it is only the life of a rational being, formed for society, capable of continual improvement, and consequently of continual advancement in appiness. It is vain, however, to think of recalling those whom long habits, and the established tyranny of pride and vanity, have almost precluded from a possibility of improving by advice, and in whom the very desire of amendment is extinguished; but for those who are now entering on the stage of life, and who have their parts to chuse, how earnestly could I wish for the spirit of persuasion for such a warning voice as should make itself heard amidst all the gay bustle that surrounds them! it should cry to them with out ceasing, not to be led away by the crowd of fools, without knowing whither they are going-not to exchange real happiness for the empty name of pleasure not to prefer fashion to immortality-and not to fancy it possible for them to be innocent, and at the same time useless. The great Difference in the State of Morals, &c. and Taste for the Fine Arts, &c. in different Couns tries, at the same Period; and at different Periods, in the same Coun try; sufficiently accountable for, from the Difference in the State of Education and Religion, in these Countries and at these Periods, without any Recourse to the com: 0◄ mitant Circumstances of Soil Climate. From an Inquiry into the real and imaginary Obstructions to the Acquisition of the Arts in England, by James Barry, Royal Academician, and Member of the Clementine Academy of Bologna, produces such different effects on the two nations: one is so cold and indifferent, the other so transport ed, that it seems almost inconceiv, able* " I shall notwithstanding venture to say, that these different efects are easily conceivable when we chuse to reflect upon the mutability, growth, decline, and different materials of temporary na tional education. Is not the na tional taste for music, like the taste for all the other arts, constantly, though imperceptibly, changing? Is it not evident that in Italy, France and England, the different ages have had very different feelings about them? And are there not many very considerable Italians who, so far from approving of their present taste of music, have lamented its want of meaning and true expression, its degeneracy and change. But I shall leave this matter for Doctor Burney and the gentlemen who understand music, as it is fully sufficient for my purpose that changes have been admitted, and that the taste for this art, like that for all the others, depends upon the mass of education, and fluctuates accordingly. In book xix. ch. 27. of the Spirit of Laws, it is observed, as a necessary consequence of their situation and mode of government," that the satirical writings of the EngIsh are sharp and severe; and we find amongst them many Juvenals, without discovering one Horace." "Their poets have more fre, quently an original rudeness of invention, than that particular kind of delicacy which springs from taste; we there find something which approaches nearer to the bold strength of M. Angelo, than to the softer graces of a Rafaelle." These instances from the Roman writers are a little unlucky, and foreign to the purpose for which they were brought: as the delicate Horace was bred up in the contests of a republic, as well as the harsh and sharp Lucillius; and the severe, furious Juvenal lived in the times of slavery. As to our satirists, it is hard to say how many of them Montesquieu had read, or whether he read any of them, or how far he was master of their language, so as to be able to form a proper judgment of their style and man. ner. But Abbe Wincleman, who has also passed a magisterial consure upon all the English pocts, was, to my own knowledge of him, so little acquainted with the language they wrote in, that he was scarcely able to understand even an ordinary article of intelligence in one of our Gazettes. But as Montesquieu was indeed a very different kind of writer, suppose we admit for the present, that he was also above prejudice, and had not, liko the other, any system to maintain that was incompatible with the truth; that he did understand our language; and that, before he formed this judgment, he had given at least our be-t satirists a fair and dispassionate perusal. Yet, what are we to think, if, after all, he could not find in Pope's Satires, and in his Rape of the. Lock, any thing of the Horatian neatness and delicacy, which all the rest of the world have found there; that in Addison he could see nothing at all of a gentlemanly turn of humour; and that Swift appeared to him to be a blunt, direct, angry writer, who never furnished any exercise to Spirit of Laws, book xiv. ch. 2. the the risible muscles, and who was unskilled in the use of wit and irony. As to what he says in his 14th book, "that the climate of Engfond is so distempered as to give the natives a disrelish to every thing, nay even of life; and that the English destroy themselves most unaccountably often in the very bosom of happiness," &c. it is an observation every way unworthy such a writer as Montesquieu. At least in this particular he might have informed himself better, as the knowledge of it did not depend upon any nice discernment of our language, as in the former instance. But sometimes these eagles of phi losophy will soar so high, that they see nothing but clouds. A more ordinary man would have found out; nay had it been in the islands of Borneo, or Madagascar, Montesquieu would have found, that this hateful practice of suicide was brought about by a combination of moral causes; that it was of very recent introduction, and that the natives formerly were not particularly remarkable for this moroseness of disposition, and this tedium vitæ. When we consider the compound nature of man, neither a merely sensitive being, nor yet a merely intellectual, or moral one, it will afford no small entertainment to let our thoughts wander over the various ways that the different religions of the Greeks, Romans, and the Italians, were calculated to act upon, and to occupy all the senses and the imagination, as well as the understanding of the people: even the ancient Jewish religion was not E! constructed for this, by its pom pous and magnificent feasts, its music, its sacrifices, its numerous ceremopies, and their constant frequency. The ancients seem to have grounded themselves upon a persuasion that all this external of things, this allegria, feasting, and occupation of the senses, was indispensibly necessary for the bulk of mankind, whose situations in life utterly disqualified them for philosophy, subtle calculations, and deductions from the fitness of things; and who could be but little affected, and that but for a very short time, by any set of abstract, naked, speculative opinions, rigidly divested of all outside pomps and vanities of this world; and which, by despising the toys and puppet-shew work of superstition and weakness, would leave nothing to amuse the weak and ignorant, who are very numerous, and are not always confined to the lower class. Their religions were accordingly constructed in such a manner, as to afford a sort of general pursuit and source of occupation and entertainment, which grew up with every man at the same time that he was pursuing his particular avocation in life; and those who were baffled and disappointed in these particular pursuits, found an asylum and resource in recurring to the matter with which religion was amply stored, and with which he could fill up the gulph and vacuity of his mind thus sickened and forsaken by its other prospects. Some countries, from commerce and the form of government, are remarkably distinguished for great private wealth, and its concomitants ease and luxury. In such countries Socrates, Lycurgus, and St. |