But a clear confcience enjoys, in the worft conjunction of human life, a peace, a dignity, an elevation of mind peculiar to virtue, not a prefumptuous boaft of innocence. The better a man is, he will be more humble and fenfible in his failings. Of his piety and virtue, he reaps the fruits in the feafon of adverfity: the improvement he makes; the temperate fpirit with which he enjoys thofe advantages; the beneficent actions which he performed, and the good example which he fet to others, remain behind.

By the memory of thefe, he enjoys his profperity a fecond time in reflection. His mind has no load; futurity no terrors. For reflection cheers the lonely houfe of poverty, and attends the confcientious fufferer into prison and exile.

CONSTANCY AND FIRMNESS OF ACTION.

THE great

HE great motives which produce these muft be of a palpable and ftriking kind. A di

vine legislator uttering his voice from heaven ;an omnifcient witnefs beholding us in all our retreats ;-an Almighty governor ftretching forth his arm to punish or reward, disclosing the fecrets of the invifible world, informing us of perpetual

petual reft prepared hereafter for the righteous, and of indignation and wrath awaiting the wicked.

These confiderations oyerawe the world, fupport integrity, and check guilt; they add to virtue that folemnity which fhould ever characterife it-to the admonitions of confcience they give the authority of law.

་

CONTENT.

URING the whole progrefs of human events, the principal materials of our comforts, or uneafinefs, lie within ourselves. Every age will prove burdenfome to those who have no fund of happinefs in their own breafts. Could they be preferved from all infirmities of frame; could they have bestowed upon them, if it were poffible, perpetual youth; ftill they would be restless and miferable, through the influence of ill-governed paffions-It is not furprizing that fuch people are peevifh, and querulous when old. Unjuftly they impute to their time of life that mifery, with which their vices. and follies embitter every age.

Whereas,

Whereas, to good men, no period of life is infupportable, because they draw their chief happinefs from fources which are independent of age or time; Wisdom, Piety, and Virtue, grow not old with our bodies; they fuffer no decay from length of days; to them belongs only unalterable and unfading youth.

MAN'S DANGER AND SECURITY IN YOUTH.

IN

N that period of life too often characterized by forward prefumption and headlong pursuit, felf-conceit is the great fource of those dangers to which men are expofed; and it is peculiarly unfortunate, that the age which stands moft in need of the counsel of the wife, fhould be the most prone to contemn it. Confident in the opinions which they adopt, and in the measures which they pursue, the blifs which youth aim at is, in their opinion, fully apparent. It is not the danger of mistake, but the failure of success, which they dread. Activity to seize, not fagacity to discern, is the only requifite which they value.

The whole ftate of nature is now become a fcene of delufion to the fenfual mind. Hardly

any

any thing is what it appears to be: and what flatters moft is always fartheft from reality.There are voices which fing around us, but whofe ftrains allure to ruin. There is a banquet fpread where poifon is in every difh. There is a couch which invites us to repose, but to flumber upon it is death. Sobriety fhould temper unwary ardour; Modesty check rash presumption; Wifdom be the offspring of reflection now, rather than the bitter fruit of experience hereafter.

THA

DECEIT.

HAT darkness of character, where we can fee no heart-thofe foldings of art, through which no native affection is allowed to penetrate, present an object unamiable in every feason of life, but particularly odious in youth. If at an age when the heart is warm, when the emotions are strong, and when nature is expected to fhew itself free and open, we can already smile and deceive, what is to be expected, when we shall be longer hackneyed in the ways of men, when intereft fhall have compleated the obduration of our hearts, and experience fhall have improved us in all the arts of guile?

Diffimulation in youth is the forerunner of perfidy in old age: its first appearance is the fatal omen of growing depravity and future shame. It degrades parts and learning, obfcures the luftre of every accomplishment, and finks us into contempt with God and man. The path of falfhood is a perplexing maze. After the first departure from fincerity, it is not in our power to stop. One artifice unavoidably leads on to another; till, as the intricacy of the labyrinth increases, we are left entangled in our own fnare..

Deceit difcovers a little mind, which ftops at temporary expedients, without rifing to comprehenfive views of conduct. It betrays a daftardly fpirit. It is the resource of one who wants courage to avow his designs, or to rest upon himfelf. To fet out in the world with no other principle than a crafty attention to intereft, betokens one who is deftined for creeping through the inferior walks of life. He may be fortunate, he cannot be happy; the eye of a good man will weep at his error: he cannot taste the fweets of confidential friendship, and his evening of life will be embittered by univerfal contempt.