tribute which holds out a warning of danger. That you both may pass through life with health and happiness, at once blessing and blessed, is the sincere and ardent wish of, LADIES, With respect, Your most obliged, Obedient humble Servant, ELIZABETH HELME. ADVERTISEMENT. I can neither offer the fol lowing work to my Juvenile Readers, as entirely original (though the greater part is so), nor as perfect compilation, as from my youth I have been so well acquainted with the writings of many of our Moral Authors, that they are imprinted on my memory, and, if I may be permitted to use the expression, have interwoven with my language and improved my ideas. Those pages that treat on the Sea, the Air, and the Mountains, are in great part remembrances from the Spectacle de la Nature; for the rest, as nearly as I can viii. ADVERTISEMENT. recollect, I owe them to Tillotson, Hervey, Watts, Johnson, and many others whom I cannot now particularize, but whose names I have quoted in the work whenever I could recal them to my memory. Many of the Essays are entirely ori- ginal; and though they doubtless fall short of those which possess the greater ad- vantages I have mentioned, yet the design is the same,-to inculcate truth, universal Thus I present to my Juvenile Readers CONTENTS. |