men have ever agreed, they ought to be our servants, and not our masters; to give us some agitation for entertainment or exercise, but never to throw our reason out of its seat. It is better to have no passions at all. than to have them too violent; or such alone, as, instead of heightening our pleasures, afford us nothing but vexation and pain.

In all such losses as your ladyship's has been, there is something that common nature cannot be denied ; there is a great deal that good nature may be allowed. But all excessive and outrageous grief or lamentation for the dead, was accounted, among the ancient Christians, to have something Heathenish; and, among the civil nations of old, to have something barbarous: and, therefore, it has been the care of the first to moderate it by their precepts, and of the latter to restrain it by their laws. When young children are taken away, we are sure they are well, and escape much ill, which would, in all appearance, have befallen them if they had staid longer with us. Our kindness to them is deemed to proceed from common opinions, or fond imaginations, not friendship or esteem; and to be grounded upon entertainment, rather than use in the many offices of life. Nor would it pass from any per son besides your ladyship, to say you lost a companion and a friend of nine years old; though you lost one indeed, who gave the fairest hopes that could be, of being both in time, and every thing else that is estimable and good. But yet, that itself is very uncertain, considering the chances of time, the infection of company, the snares of the world, and the passions of youth so that the most excellent and agreeable creature of that tender age, might, by the course of years and accidents, become the most miserable herself; and a greater trouble to her friends by living long, than she could have been by dying young.

Yet, after all, madam, I think your loss so great, and some measure of your grief so deserved, that,

would all your passionate complaints, all the anguish of your heart, do any thing to retrieve it; could tears water the lovely plant, so as to make it grow again after once it is cut down; could sigus furnish new breath, or could it draw life and spirits from the wasting of yours; I am sure your friends would be so far from accusing your passion, that they would encourage it as much, and share it as deeply, as they could. But, alas! the eternal laws of the creation extinguish all such hopes, forbid all such designs; nature gives us many children and friends to take them away, but takes none away to give them to us again. And this makes the excesses of grief to be universally condemned as unnatural, because so much in vain; whereas nature does nothing in vain as unreasonable, because so contrary to our own designs; for we all design to be well, and at ease, and by grief we make ourselves troubles most properly out of the dust, whilst our ravings and complaints are but like arrows shot up into the air, at no mark, and so to no purpose, but only to fall back upon our own heads, and destroy ourselves.

Perhaps, madam, you will say, this is your design, or, if not, your desire; but I hope you are not yet so far gone. or so desperately bent. Your ladyship knows very well, your life is not your own, but liis who lent it you to manage, and preserve, in the best way you can, and not to throw it away, as if it came from some common hand. Our life belongs, in a great measure, to our country and our family; therefore, by all human laws as well as divine, self-murder has ever been agreed upon as the greatest crime; and it is punished here with the utmost shame, which is all that can be inflicted upon the dead. But is the crime much less to kill ourselves by a slow poison, than by a sudden wound? Now, if we do it, and know we do it, by a long and continual grief, can we think ourselves innocent? What great difference is there, if we break our hearts, or consume them; if we pierce them, or

:

braise them since all terminates in the same death, as all arises from the same despair? But what if it does not go so far! it is not indeed so bad as it might be, but that does not excuse it: though I do not kill my neighbour, is it no hurt to wound him, or to spoil him of the conveniences of life? The greatest crime is for a man to kill himself: is it a small one to wound himself, by anguish of heart, by grief, or despair; to ruin his health; to shorten his age; to deprive himself of all the pleasure, ease and enjoyment of life?

Next to the mischiefs which we do ourselves, are those which we do our children, and our friends, who deserve best of us, or at least deserve no ill. The child you carry about you, what has it done, that you should endeavour to deprive it of life, almost as soon as you bestow it? or if you suffer it to be born, that you should, by your ill usage of yourself, so much impair the strength of its body, and perhaps the very temper of its mind, by giving it such an infusion of melancholy, as may serve to discolour the objects, and disrelish the accidents, it may meet with in the common train of life? Would it be a small injury to my lord Capell, to deprive him of a mother, from whose prudence and kindness he may justly expect the care of his health and education, the forming of his body, and the cultivating of his mind, the seeds of honour and virtue, and the true principles of a happy life? How has lord Essex deserved that you should deprive him of a wife, whom he loves with so much passion, and, which is more, with so much reason; who is so great an honour and support to his family, so great a hope to his fortune, and comfort to his life? Are there so many left of your own great family, that you should desire in a manner wholly to reduce it, by suffering almost the last branch of it, to wither away before its time? or is your country, in this age, so stored with great persons, that you should envy it those whom we may justly expect from so noble a race?

Whilst I had any hopes that your tears would ease you, or that your grief would consume itself by liberty and time, your ladyship knows very well I never accused it; nor ever increased it, by the common, formal ways of attempting to assuage it: and this, I am sure, is the first office of the kind I ever performed, otherwise than in the most ordinary forms. I was in hopes what was so violent, could not be long: but, when I observed it to grow stronger with age, and increase like a stream the further it ran; when I saw it draw out to such unhappy consequences, and threaten not less than your child, your health, and your life, I could no longer forbear this endeavour. Nor can I end it without begging of your ladyship, for God's sake, for your own, for that of your children and your friends, your country and your family, that you would no longer abandon yourself to so disconsolate a passion : but that you would, at length, awaken your piety, give way to your prudence, or at least, rouse up the invincible spirit of the Piercies, which never yet shrunk at any disaster; that you would sometimes remember the great honours and fortunes of your family, not always the losses; cherish those veins of good humour that are so natural to you, and sear up those of ill that would make you so unkind to your children, and to yourself; and above all, that you would enter upon the cares of your health, and your life. For my part, I know nothing that could be so great an honour and a satisfaction to me, as if your ladyship would own me to have contributed towards this cure; but however, none can perhaps more justly pretend to your pardon for the attempt, since there is none, I am sure, who has always had at heart a greater honour for your ladyship's family, nor can have more esteem for you, than, madam,

Your most obedient,

And most humble servant,

WILLIAM TEMPLE.

LETTER II.

Dr. Doddridge to Sir J. ———

On swearing.

Dear sir,

Northampton, Dec. 8, 1742.

Permit me frankly to speak my mind to you on a subject, on which I fear to be silent, lest I should fail in a branch of duty and gratitude to a gentleman, to whom I think myself obliged, and whom I would gladly serve to the best of my little ability. Be not angry, when I tell you, I was heartily grieved at the liberties you took last night, in using the venerable name of the Ever Blessed God in so light a manner; and in the needless appeals which you made to him, as to things that would have been believed on much less evidence than the word of Sir J. I have not heard, for some years, so much of that kind of language, except when passing by people of low educacation, in the streets; whether it be owing to the complaisance with which gentlemen commonly treat our profession, or, as I rather hope, to a sense of what is in itself reasonable and decent.

I am sure, sir, that your knowledge of men and things is capable of making conversation pleasant and improving, and of filling up your full share in it without these dreadful expletives; for dreadful I must call them, when considered with a view to that strict account which must certainly, and quickly, be-rendered up to God for all our words, as well as our actions.

I was the more solicitous, sir, to mention this affair to you, in consideration of your office as a magistrate; the dignity of which must certainly be most effectually supported by avoiding whatever it requires you to punish in others. In this view, sir, permit me to entreat you to join your efforts with those of all other wise and good men, to discountenance, and, if possible, to drive out of the world, this unprofitable enormity of swearing in common conversation; concern