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tious parade of correcting our mistakes, enlightening our minds, and reforming our manners, we retire from the schools, both of ancient and modern PHILOSOPHY, not to say any thing of the new system of philosophism, sighing over the vanity, or pitying the illusions, of those, who could only affect to be wiser than the rest of their kind.

If there be any one research, which has peculiar attractions for the intellectual powers of man, it is that, which respects the nature and qualities of TRUE VIRTUE: and it is well known to those, who are the most conversant in scientific pursuits, that Genius the most elevated, and Erudition the most comprehensive, have been employed in that honourable exercise. But, here again,

is a moral evil of the most pernicious consequence, and ought always to be represented as such; as the necessary concomitant of that intemperate love of pleasure, that dereliction of all moral principle, that prostitution of conscience, and that dissoluteness of manners, which are the prominent features and disgrace of the times.

how strangely has the human understanding been bewildered and harassed!

Impatient to have my mind enriched with proper sentiments, and clear ideas, as to the characteristics of true Virtue, I betake myself to this elegant writer; and he informs me, that it consists in a taste for the sublime and beautiful, and in a perfect conformity of our actions with the supreme sense and symmetry of things: but, as all this is perfectly incomprehensible to the million, I am confident there is a fundamental mistake here.

I run to another, less fanciful and elevated, and much more profound, at least, in his mode of reasoning; and he insists, that true Virtue lies in a conformity of our actions with certain eternal and immutable relations and fitnesses of things. But, I am a plain man-no logician-no metaphysician; and I go away still more confounded with undefinable jargon.

I seek to a third; and he assures me, that there is no Virtue, but in the conformity of our actions to truth; in treating every thing, as being what it is. A fourth affirms, that nothing is virtuous, but the proportionable affection of a rational creature to the moral objects of right and wrong; a fifth, that it consists in following nature; a sixth, in avoiding all extremes; and a seventh, to particularize no more, in the voluntary production of the greatest public happiness.

To all these I might have subjoined several more, who have defended their own definitions and views with equal strenuousness and ability. Still, the great question returns, What is the nature of true Virtue? and, after having traversed these labyrinths, which is almost as irksome, though not quite so thorny, as to wade through "The Statutes at Large”— how shall we decide amidst this diversity of opinion* ?

"It may be thought no easy task, to determine the preference in favour of one or other of the many different

Some there are, who would impress their favourite sentiments, by assuming an insolent authority and diction: others, by flattering our pride: others, by indulging our selfish passions: others, by all the arts of sophistry and others, by seducing our imagination. These, however, should only serve to place us the more on our guard, and arm us with greater caution against every dangerous illusion. I foresee no great inconvenience in having revolved a little in the circle of ingenious theory and amusing conjecture, if we fix ultimately in the centre of Truth. He who has wandered through many a path, is most likely to inform us, which is the best *.

hypotheses of virtue, described by divines and philosophers: but, we may safely affirm, that, if the compass of learning and penetration, which appears in their works, had been employed with a just reference to its unerring criterion, or standard, the world would have been furnished with a system of ethics more complete, more easily comprehended, and much better adapted to common use, than any that can be provided by abstract reasoning."

*«The enquiry of truth," said the brightest philosophical,ornament of our country, "which is the wooing of it;

No subject, perhaps, has been more carefully reviewed, or more minutely examined, than that of MORALS; nor any, with much greater propriety; whether we consider its dignity, or its use. All the stores of human Literature have been exhausted on this topic. Nevertheless, at the commencement of the nineteenth century from the Christian era, attempts have been made-and made in hours of calm reflection--and by characters the least of all to be excused-to reconcile actions the most disingenuous and dishonourable, with principles the most pure and uncorrupt! We have had moral philosophers avowedly infidel, and professionally the reverse, pouring equal contempt upon the

the knowledge of truth, which is the presence of it; and the belief of the truth, which is the enjoying of it; is the sovereign good of human nature." BACON'S ESSAYS.

Is it not painful then to know, that, "The road to moral truth has been left in such a plight by some modern projectors, commonly called philosophers, that a man of honesty and plain sense must either, with great labour and loss of time, delve his way through, or be swallowed up in a quagmire ?"

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