posterous attachment, and the publick which it injures will be entitled to complain of its effects. Nothing has been more fatal to princes than this predilection for weak and unworthy men; and the history of mankind is one continued lesson of the danger to greatness in being made the dupe of its private attachments, when they are not restrained by prudence nor regulated by virtue. The annals of our own country are not silent on that subject. You, Sir, I believe, have heard them quoted in excuse, if not in compliment, of some youthful levities for which the good-humour of Englishmen is glad to find an apology. Eastcheap has been cited for the credit of Parliament-street, and Gadshill drawn into precedent for the honour of Newmarket; but if there is any scholiast on Shakspeare who has the entree to your library, let him not forget the expression of "unyoked idleness" which the youthful Henry indulged with his associates. There was an extravagance in the pranks of Falstaff and Poins that might impeach the dignity, but did not taint the character of their illustrious companion. The excursive sallies of the Prince were made into the regions of absurdity, foreign to that place which his birth entitled him to hold, or those duties which it called on him to perform; his follies hung upon him like a masking dress which the mummery of the hour put on, and the serious occupations of his own person and character laid aside. Your companions, Sir, if not all of a higher rank than Harry Monmouth's, had in general deeper and more important designs. They did not, amid the jovialness of wine or the gayety of pleasure, doff the cares of life, or mock the toils of ambition. Theirs was not always the honest, joyous vacancy of thoughtless mirth; like the Athenian heroes, beneath the roses of the feast they hid the arms of their ambition; but they did not, like the Athenian heroes, use them against the enemies of their country. One particular juncture there was which might have afforded an apology for men of less foresight than them, to think of using the connexion which youth and inexperience had formed to purposes of interest and advancement; when the diadem hovered over the head of their pa tron, and when indeed, but for some errour in their political measures, its power and authority might have been his. That juncture was attended with circumstances of so extraordinary a kind as to form an era in the political history of the kingdom. When disease and infirmity invaded the throne, the distress of the Sovereign was felt as a private calamity, which interested the feelings of evcry individual, without relation to his political rights, or the political interests of the community; not only the loyalty of subjects, but the affection, the sympathy of men were excited by this calamity. In this calamity they looked to you, Sir, with feelings of a similar kind, ready to acknowledge the publick merits of the Prince, or the private virtues of the son. In distress, men's hearts are easily won: if you failed to win them, it must have been owing to some imprudence in that surrounding circle, through the medium of whose character the characters of princes are always seen. It could not be owing to any fault in your own disposition, gracious at all times, and then peculiarly called on to exercise the best qualities of your nature-kindness, compassion, filial attention, and filial reverence. The thoughtless and unprincipled dissipation of some of that circle, might have, at such a period, been supposed to watch the bed of sickness with malignant expectation, to scoff at the distress of those around it, and to make matter for wretched and scurril jests of the most severe of all human afflictions. In a publick view they might have been supposed to have catched, with a blind and rapacious eagerness, this opportunity of gratifying their avarice or ambition; in the triumph of sudden elevation, to have forgot decency; and, in the insolence of anticipated power, to have despised moderation. Bankrupt alike in fortune and in character, some of them might have been imagined capable of every extremity to which desperate circumstances and determined profligacy might excite; and have nothing to lose, and nothing to feel with the country, to have been equally unrestrained by prudence and by sentiment. Your sentiments, Sir, and your deportment, we knew by our own. Struck with the solemn melancholy of the national distress, you felt it doubled in your own individual affliction. At the age when feeling is acute, when interest and ambition | have hardly learned the value of their objects, you thought less of the publick dignity to which this calamitous event might call you, than of the private sorrow by which it was to be accompanied. Of political opinions, you adopted the most temperate; of political measures, you proposed the least violent : you did not wish to add to the depression of the publick by the fear of sudden change, or the dread of civil dissension. You knew that the influence and power which a different conduct might obtain were as unsafe to a prudent, as disagreeable to a good mind; that in the opposite scale were placed everything that wisdom or virtue in a Prince could desire; all the confidence, the love, the glory, which a generous people could offer to his acceptance. To the joy of the nation, as to yours, Sir, this calamity "overpassed us like a summer cloud," and our fears were lost before we could well ascertain them. The country was freed from a situation of uncer tainty and of danger that shook its credit and its quiet, and you were left, we hope, (and we know you hope) many years longer to the exercise of those engaging and amiable qualities that are hardly allowed to expand under the weight and pressure of state affairs. In your present situation, Sir,' you have many opportunities, which we are persuaded you will improve, of rendering essential service to your country. Your favour and example can encourage genuine patriotism, can promote publick honour and pubJick virtue; without the responsibi lity of official power, your patronage can call merit into action, and prompt the rewards of its exertions. Keep but the purity of your influence unsullied, preserve its dignity unimpaired, and you can weave the civick crown for the statesman, and the laurel wreath for the soldier. In former times, of which some curious records are left us, the heirapparent of the crown has been induced to lend himself to a factious cabal, to become a king of the "shreds and patches" of opposition, who prostituted his name to their own little purposes, who abused his confidence, and made a vile stewardship of his weakness for their own private advantage. To such arts greatness must always be liable; and it is, perhaps, rather a compliment to your good nature than an impeachment on your understanding, if we venture to caution you against them. In your situation you cannot know their effects; you cannot see them as we do in distant provinces, and amid the mass of the people. You know not what despicable associates the Cressy standard assembles, over what impurities the plumage of your crest is made to wave; yet popular prejudice will often lay these abuses to your charge, though in that encouragement, to which the easiness of your nature allows them, you cannot foresee the mischiefs they produce. The noblest tree of the forest is not always shaken by the winds, or scathed by the lightning of heaven; it suffers, ignobly suffers, from the vermin that shelter at its root. In a private capacity, your humility will not probably allow you to suppose how much is in your power for the manners and the happiness of the community. With the ad vantages you derive from nature, with the accomplishments have you received from education, you have for sometime been acknowledged "The glass of fashion and the mould of form;" and there is a sort of dominion an nexed to this idea, which, though of a lighter kind, is of greater extent and importance than some others which men are more solicitous to possess. I am no Cynick preacher, and will not suppose that, at your time of life, and with your temperament you are to regulate your conduct and deportment by the rules of cold-blooded age and sober wisdom. But there is a decorum in pleasure, a temperance even in dissipation, which, amid all the extravagance of the moment, marks the feeling of a man of sense and a gentleman; a something even about his idlest indulgences which speaks the folly to belong to him, and not him to the folly. The words, gentleman and man of fashion, will borrow their meaning, within a certain circle, from you; but there is an intrinsick sense of the terms which will still be the understanding of the people. Consider, Sir, that, with all the witchery of your manners and address, the sphere of your attraction is limited, the sphere of your fame extensive. Sacrifice a little to the judgment, or if your gayer friends will call it so, the prejudice of those whose judgment is one day to be so important to you. Remember that no power, even in the most arbitary governments, was ever equal to his who could wield at will the opinions of his subjects. BRUTUS. For The Port Folio. By a gentleman and a scholar, who has formerly been a valued correspondent, we have been favoured with the subsequent a series. Employed on topicks of philological imports, it exhibits much acuteness speculation. It is intended as the first of of analysis, and may be very profitably perused, by those, who are in the pernicious habits of thinking at random, and of speaking and writing inaccurately. Nothing is more common in this, our young and unfashioned country, than to listen to winter evenings conversations, and to turn over innumerable pages, in cision, perspicuity, or transparent good which little appears in the shape of presense and meaning. A bald, disjointed, incoherent, rambling, and digressive style is a sort of fashion among the herd. Every attempt to correct such bad taste, to recommend good models of speech and writing, to investigate the causes, and indicate the cure of mental errour is eminently laudable, however it may be received by the prejudice of some, and the folly of others. As the analysis of moral sentiment, tends to the development of those principles in our own nature, or in that of others, whereby we are made happy or miserable; and as in the prosecution of this analysis, the mind is at once the subject of investigation, and the investigating power; no path of inquiry seems more natural, or attractive to the philosopher. Accordingly, that some of the first advances of genius were made in this department of science, is evident, from the copiousness of early language in terms of moral discrimination. Indeed when with a view to their comparative affluancient and modern languages, ence in these, we examine the little advancement appears to have taken place for many ages. this results from the assumption of language as the standard, for which it is not altogether competent: for though the existence of moral discriminating terms necessarily indicates a corresponding analysis of ideas; yet this analysis, is not always followed by this indication. For language can only be established, or extended, by the general consent of those, by whom it is employed: but general consent, requires general intelli But Το sense gence; and this is limited by ge- kind, would contribute to further The results of chymical analysis, so far as they, or their effects are palpaple to the senses, must be susceptible of accurate descriptions; which must invariably awaken similar ideas. Hence the chymical analyst, is enabled by study to avail himself of almost all the useful conceptions of his predecessours; and commencing his career, where they finished, must go somewhat beyond them, if not destitute of genius. But it were as easy to describe sounds to the deaf, or colours to the blind, as to convey to crude minds the results of refined moral analysis: and even between such as possess an equal and superiour degree of refinement, how are the nice shades of difference, or the exact identity of their ideas, to be so palpably established, as to render it certain that the application of any common term, will not veil from future detection a fundamental discordancy of view, and thus lay the foundation of that nominal controversy, so frequent in metaphysicks. Hence it follows, that beyond what we glean from the common sense of mankind, we are almost wholly dependent on our own genius, for our progress in moral analysis. It is a labyrinth wherein superiour minds are doomed to grope, without other assistance from any the lights of their predecessours be afforded by a few indirect rays, or cotemporaries, than what may which superiour sagacity may discover through the perverting medium of inadequate language. Independently of these considerations, it would astonish us that those delicate springs of human nature which are the source of almost all that is good or bad, or happy or miserable in the world; should at this late period be so ill defined, that scarcely two can be found to accord in a definition of them; and more especially, as they have the objects of investigation among philosophers in all ages. But as I have already hinted, any superiour knowledge which may be gained by an individual in this path of inquiry, commences and ends with himself; as he can only receive, or communicate through an inadequate medium; the effects of which are limited by that common standard of intelligence, whence it arises. It must, however, be observed, that though the diversified and intricate. movements of the human soul, are not susceptible of accurate description, yet that they admit of accurate representation: and we must allow, that though the refined conceptions which may be attained by an individual, in regard to human nature, cannot be so recorded as invariably to awaken similar ideas, even in minds of equal capacity, yet that the facts which gave rise to such conceptions, by being preserved in MISCELLANY. Commoner, &c. the historick or biographick page; A Letter from a Distinguished English may become the seed of knowledge to every fertile mind. Hence it is not in the books of metaphysicians that we obtain a knowledge of our moral nature, but by observation of the world as displayed to our own eyes, or as represented in history, biography, or the drama. The latter, when executed by a skilful hand, affords by far the most efficient instruction, as the shades of character, though within what is possible in nature, are heightened beyond what we meet in ordinary life, and, of course, speak more forcibly to the mind. In this view, Shakspeare is, of all moralists, one of the most profound, interesting, and instructive. It is not by furnishing refined definitions of the principles of human nature, that he enables us to conceive them justly, but by the display of their characteristick effects, in the genuine impulses and language of the soul. Hence it is rare to find any one addicted to moral analysis, who does not bow with veneration before this superiour genius, the full extent of whose greatness, can only be felt by such as may, in some degree, boast of a portion of his fire. well, will pass for nothing with those All this, my lord, I know very who wish that the popish clergy should be illiterate, and in a situation to produce contempt and detestation. Their minds are wholly taken up with party squabbles, and I have neither leisure nor inclination to apply any part of what I have to say, to those who never think of religion, or of light, than as they tend to the prevathe commonwealth, in any other lence of some faction in either. I speak on a supposition, that there is a disposition to take the state in the condition in which it is found, and to improve it in that state to the best advantage. Hitherto, the plan for the government of Ireland has been, to sacrifice the civil prosperity of the nation to its religious improvement. But if people in power there, are at length come to entertain other ideas, decorum, virtue, and morality of they will consider the good order, every description of men among them, as of infinitely greater impor tance, than the struggle (for it is no thing better) to change those descriptions by means which put to hazard, objects, which, in my poor opinion, are of more importance to religion and to the state, than all the polemical matter which has been agitated among men from the beginning of the world to this hour. On this idea, an education fitted to each order and division of men, such as they are found, will be thought an affair rather to be encouraged than discountenanced: and until insti tutions at home, suitable to the oc But when contemplating the stupendous monument of moral knowledge, raised by this individual, with such slight assistance from the works of others, do we not find confirmation for the belief, that in this science the mind is dependent for superiority on in-casions and necessities of the people, nate fertility and refinement: for otherwise Shakspeare, comparatively so illiterate, could not have produced a picture of human nature, so just, so variegated, and profoundly analytick. and which are armed, as they are NH |