nours which were wont to attend them in the genuine refpect and fincere applauses of the best men; this more fagacious age has difcovered, that fuch airy qualities, and shadowy acquifitions, might formerly do well enough to fatisfy those who were infected with the knight-ertantry of virtue; but that they fignify little now-a-days. Why? Because they would

.go for nothing on the turf, at the gamingtable, in the circles of fplendor, the abodes of luxury, or the reforts of diffipation. Such, my dear hearers but " tell it not

in" France, publish it not in the streets of Madrid-fuch are the fcenes, the very honourable and highly-improving scenes, which muft form, and finish, and fend forth from time to time, the hopeful perfonages that are to be the fathers of the next generation, that are to command our fleets and armies, that are to fit in the British Senate, and give law to half the globe; that are to fill the chief offices of government, and affift in the councils of their fo

vereign; in a word, that are to watch over the dearest interests of liberty, religion, and mankind. Eternal God! what but thy wonder-working Providence and Spirit can fave this nation from utter profligacy, ignominy, and destruction? Ah, my young men,what superlative praife would redound to you, whom I now addrefs, were you, in the several spheres for which you are intended—were You, I fay, to unite with the wife, the worthy, and the brave, who yet remain, and to vow in the name of the Omnipotent, that you will exert every faculty which nature has implanted, and every talent which principle can incite, to stem the torrent of general corruption, to oppose against effeminate manners a mafculine virtue, to "quit you like men" in defpite of enervating fashion, to show amidft the furrounding flavery of vice that you have the rule of your own fpirits ;" and wherever duty, wherever honour calls, there to play the men for your

"people, and for the cities of your God!”

ON

A MANLY SPIRIT,

AS OPPOSED TO

COWARD ICE.

T has been obferved, that to complain of present degeneracy from former days is common in every age, but that the complaint is always weak and unjust; that mankind are ftill much the fame ; that there is nearly an equal quantity of virtue and vice still fubfifting in the world; that it is only diftributed in various proportions, through different countries, at different times; and what is taken from the general stock in any one nation, at any particular period, is transferred to fome other, The first part of the observation may be true: but we can by no means sub