sour and misanthropic. By how much his opinion of mankind was too favorable in his younger days, by so much it is too uncharitable in his advanced age.

Self-convicted credulity often runs into scepticism: and so also, a zeal to free themselves from all shackles of superstition is very apt to drive men upon the fatal rocks of infidelity and irreligion.

Gibbon, the historian, no less celebrated for talents and learning than notorious for infidelity, was, in his youth, an implicit believer in, and a zealot for, the nonsensical popish doctrine of transubstantiation. To the arguments and expostulations of his father and other protestant relations and friends, he was utterly deaf. But happening, of himself, to find out an argument which convinced him of the monstrous absurdity of that doctrine, he rejected it, and along with it, rejected the whole system of divine revelation: which he, in the manner of Voltaire, encountered with the weapons of sneer and contempt, rather than by fair and manly reasoning. Nor is it unlikely that the rank infidelity, so general, a few years since, among the learned and the fashionable in Europe, sprung chiefly from the same root. Identifying the monstrous doctrines and superstitious rites of the corrupted church in whose bosom they had been educated, with the gospel itself, and discerning clearly the ridiculous absurdities of the former, they hesitated not to explode the latter.

Some men of impetuous tempers, but of feeling hearts, are possessed, by turns, of ferocity, and, on the other hand, of an undue measure of indulgent feelings. In their gusts of anger, hard words, and sometimes hard blows, are dealt out for petty offences, or for none at all. But no sooner is the tempest subsided, than they deeply relent; and, passing into the other extreme, they smother their little ones with caresses, and indulge them in every thing. A certain nobleman of former times is said to have been so remarkable in this respect, that his domestics threw themselves in his way whenever they saw him angry, in order to be beaten by him; well knowing that he would reward them bountifu with gifts as soon as his passion cooled.

Again, some fatl:ers frame in their own minds a sys

tem of paternal government, that is fine-spun in theory, but impracticable. They will govern by rule and plummet. They will begin in good season, and effectually whip old Adam out of their children. So they do begin, and so they proceed, sternly marking every childish foible, till, finding their efforts baffled, they rather cast away, than remit, the reins of government, and let their children do as they will.

Beware of extremes. Several of the minor virtues of our nature degenerate to folly or vice when carried beyond the due measure. Sensibility is not more lovely in its proper degree, than contemptible in its extravagance. A sentimentalist, puling over an uprooted flower or a maimed butterfly, excites disgust. rather than sympathy. Good humor, candor, and generosity, may all be carried to extreme. If our good humor render our moral characters flexible, and our hearts too yielding; if our candor degenerate to a sort of indiscriminate approvance of truth and error, of right and wrong, of the good and of the evil; if our generosity infringe upon the sacred laws of justice, by an hospitality exceeding our means, or by giving gifts in preference to paying honest debts :-in these, as in divers other cases, too much of a good thing turns it to bad.

One remark more: moments of excessive mirth are usually succeeded by melancholy and gloom; because ecstatic joy, by wasting the animal spirits, produces the opposite extreme. So that the mind which is serene, but not mirthful, ordinarily enjoys a greater amount of real pleasure, than one of a very jovial cast; the latter being, at times, sunk as much below the tone of nature, as, at other times it is raised above it. Cheerful

ness of heart is one of the best cordials of life, but highseasoned mirth has the effect of intoxicating liquor. Transporting joys of permanent continuance, are to be found in certain fantastical books, but belong not to real life.

CHAP. LXXXIV.

Of despising small things.

"He that despiseth small things, shall fall by little and litECCLESIASTICUS.

de."

THIS text, though apocryphal, is consonant to the whole tenor of human experience.

Time, which is of such invaluable account to every hunran being, is made up as of little particles, that ever are flying away from us, and never to return: No, never.

"Time that ensueth

Is but the death of time that went before

Youth is the death of childhoood; age of youth."

How inconceivably small are the passing moments! yet they are not to be contemned. For of these is the whole duration of life composed; and it is the assiduous and wise use of moments, that crowns life with honor. On the other hand, by undervaluing the moments and neglecting to employ them, whole days and years are lost.

We often complain of the shortness of the whole, and at the same time are daily making prodigal waste of the parts. We carelessly throw away thousands of the small fractions of time; else, in most cases, we should have time enough.

So it happens that in the acquisition of knowledge, the race is not always to the swift. Many a wonderful boy that confided altogether in the native force of his genius, has been left far behind his cotemporaries of smaller talent, but of unwearied assiduity. Nor does history scarcely record the single instance of a man truly great in point of knowledge, who did not diligently improve even the small fractions of his time. In short, with the exception of a few remarkable cases, much more is effected by the dint of application than by the dint of genius. The fabled mouse with unweariable diligence ate in twain the cable, which a giant could not have parted with all his strength. And besides, if it be of great value to know how to bear tedi

ous moments with fortitude and patience, it is of still greater value to be able to prevent their being tedious; which can be accomplished only by turning them to good account, through assiduous diligence in proper and useful pursuits.

Nor is the apocryphal text that I am conimenting upon, of less pertinent application to the interesting subjects of economy and morals.

It is the hand of the diligent that maketh rich. Most estates have been acquired by degrees, by regular and well-applied industry, and by a prudent care against waste in even the smallest matters. By these means, in a long series of years, estates have grown up to such a magnitude as the owners themselves would be puzzled to account for. They had met with nothing that could be termed great good luck. The wheel of fortune never turned them out a lottery prize, nor did they ever gather a single sheaf from the field of speculation; and they themselves can hardly see, how their estates have so increased. The truth of it is, that small annual savings, so judiciously managed as to be made constantly productive, will, in the space of half a century, count up to the magnitude of considerable wealth. On the contrary, many of the estates that are spent, chiefly leak out in small streamlets. The heirs, or owners, are neither stained with gross vices, nor chargeable with wanton prodigality. But small things they have contemned, or at least neglected. And what from lack of industry, or the misapplication of it, and what from incessant little wastes, their all is gone at length, and they look about them, deeply wondering how the catastrophe hath happened.

Turn we now to the consideration of Morals-and here also, our text holds true. Seldom does a man commit a crime of the blackest grain, till he hath ripened himself for it by degrees. It is by little and little, he plunges into the depths of turpitude. He begins with contemning small things; with disregarding the minor points in the code of morality; and, step by step, he advances, till at length he becomes capable of crimes, of which the bare thought would have struck him with horror at first.

Here, a youth of estimable qualities associates with the idle and dissipated; not because he feels any desire for the intoxicating cup, but because he loves sport and jollity. Presently, however, his moral nature is deteriorated. By imperceptible degrees he slides into intemperance, profanity, deep gaming; and turns out at last either a desperate villain, or a lumpish sot.

There, a youth of good talents, of considerable learning, and possessed of pleasing social qualities,-is seen, nevertheless, from his very cradle, to trespass often, in the small way, against truth and integrity. He begins with petty falsehoods and petty frauds; mere childish or juvenile roguery, which the doating parent interprets for a mark of sprightly genius, rather than the inceptive blossom of foul corruption. Unchecked in childhood, and perhaps flattered for his art and cunning; as he advances in age his genius takes a wider range. By little and little he proceeds on, till at last he adventures upon great things, and is arraigned before the bar of justice as a perjurer, a swindler, a forger, or a thief.

In short, were all the tenants of our state prisons to publish a true and full account of themselves, it would be found that puerile immoralities tolerated and encouraged, were the seeds which had ripened into so fearful a crop. They did not become high-viced at once, but by gradual advances. In the first step they had themselves perhaps been inveigled into vice; in the last they were adepts in the fiendly art, and qualified to tempt and inveigle others. With respect to these, and also to those in various parts of our country who have recently been brought to the ignominious scaffold, were their future crimes foretold them when their hearts were tender, their blood had run cold; they would have stood aghast, or uttered shrieks of heart-rending distress.

CHAP. LXXXV.

Of cutting the coat to the cloth.

CERVANTES, in his inimitable Don Quixote, finely ridicules the custom of larding conversation and writings with proverbs or old sayings, by his dealing them out by