confounded, they discover, when it is too late, what they should have said and done *, verifying the poet's song,

Yet thus when we our way have found,
And can upon our care depend,

To travel safely when we learn,

Behold we're near our journey's end +.

Mental absence, and other peculiarities, are so far from being affected, that there is great care to avoid them. If any thing forward or impudent appear, it is a rash desperate attempt to shake off timidity, followed by selfreproach and bitterness, which the hearts of the bashful only know, and with which they only can sympathize. There may be an appearance of pride and moroseness, which is really owing to diffidence and extreme respect. Conscious defects, and the dread of being despised, impose many restraints. The neglect of temporal affairs cannot be excused; but he who has been perplexed and disheartened in transacting them, will be in

* Je fais d'excellentes impromptus a loisir; mais sur le temps je n'ai jamais rien fait ou dit qui vaille. Rousseau.

See Miss Edgeworth's well-drawn portrait of the cruel enchantress Mauvaise Honte-Patronage.

+ Crabbe.

clined to extenuate the fault, and to sympathize with Evans, who displayed the Christian temper so well, and only failed in economy; and to compassionate the son of Doctor Darwin *. When the bashful are censured for doing little in a good cause, one of a similar temper knows what it costs them. to do a little; and if virtue be estimated by the resistance overcome, and the effort which it costs, some credit is due to the very bashful man, who gives his presence, and his voice, and his name; he may not extend his bounty when asked, and at the right time, from that cautious frugality to which he is led, through a love of independence, and conscious inability to better his fortune, or to recover losses; at the same time his heart is prone to sympathy and beneficence. At Naples there is an association for the relief of the bashful †: in the spirit of that institution, the alms of such as have a fellow-feeling flow silently to them. "We must not "wait for applications, but search into the "cause of the poor and needy: we must pry, "if I may so express it, into their private affairs, the knowledge of which may often

66

Miss Seward's Life of Doctor Darwin,

+ Eustace's Travels in Italy.

"suggest obvious expedients for mitigating "and removing the hardships which they " endure *" All cannot receive this saying, "Consult your own temper: if it be extreme

ly modest, you are not qualified to scramble "for the power of patronage, or solicit for "friends, or pry into secret wants, or to be "officious. Enquire what good work may "fall in with your constitutional temper, and "not force the course of the river. It is the "safe and desirable course, at least for a quiet "man, to interest himself in some charity "which he can accomplish without troubling "other people t." Active beneficence and social virtues are good preparations for a future state, and so are the silent virtues; purity, humility, patience, faith, and love to God, are preparatives for seeing him.

Doctor Somerville's Sermons.

+ Charters on Alms.

M

CONCLUSION.

SHAME is influenced by the opinions of others, and enforces respect for such as are well founded; but it may likewise be assailed by such as are false, and hypocritical, and immoral: these must be combated by a love of truth, and a regard to the will and approbation of God. He who knew what was in man adapted the doctrines and motives of his religion to the human character. "Who"soever shall be ashamed of me and of my "words in this adulterous and sinful genera❝tion, of him also shall the Son of Man be "ashamed when he cometh in the glory of "his Father with the holy angels." What do you feel when another must blush for you, a friend for your ingratitude? The Son

of Man will be ashamed of those who have disgraced the nature which he adorned, and basely neglected and disowned so generous a friend, who for their sakes despised the shame. To the corrupt maxims, and temporary frowns of an adulterous and sinful generation, oppose the sentence of a righteous Judge, the Judge of all the earth, to be pronounced in the presence of angels, and an assembled world.