the denominations of good and ill; and the ear of profligacy has been tickled with no soft appellations, confounding things in their natures irreconcilable. Ancient and prescriptive rules have been adhered to, in rejection of modern discoveries in morals; and sense, experience, and conscience, are gravely set up, in defiance of the polite system of ethics which at present prevails. Yet, with all these disadvantages in the plan of the LOOKER-on, it has lived to a fourth edition: and it is pleasing to think, that there is yet a party in the country which can relish the formal cut of Mr. OLIVE-BRANCH's morality. There must needs (my friendship and these facts suggest to me) be something in the manner and character of this pious old gentleman that resists the unpropitiating effect of his doctrines, and disguises the salutary roughness of his admonitions. Vigorous in mind, though puny in structure; waxing in virtue, though waning in strength; a certain adolescence about the heart counteracts the decline of his years, and gives a spreading and active effect to his goodness, at a time of life when virtue for the greater part consists in negatives, and gives no proofs of its existence but in the forbearances of impotency. He has collected these transcripts of instruction from among a multiplicity of papers, devolved to him through a prudent ancestry, remarkable for their inheritance of innocence, and the antiquity of their estate, in a characteristic probity. He chose this juncture (it should have seemed an inauspicious one) to produce this little fund of morality, assuming to himself the task of giving it applicability to the times, and furnishing it with the vehicle which he thought might most attractively display it. Nothing, as it appeared to him, was better suited to this purpose than a periodical paper,

on account of the scope and variety of such a work, and the versatility of its style and matter, as the interests of virtue might require, or as this or that folly might seem ripest for reprobation. He did not think that this branch of literature was exhausted; for besides its infinite capability of diversifica tion, which tends so much to protract its interest, its successful cultivators had been comparatively but few. Its difficulty had been proved by a multitude of imbecile imitations of the original Spectatorial plan. Some bolder writers, in affecting to deviate from that plan, have been instances to show, that, where a great and original genius has primarily trodden, guided as it were by the hand of nature, he has struck out the true path; and though the footsteps of the first adventurer may be avoided, the same track must still be pursued.

Rules insensibly form themselves upon his model, and the design of the great projector must lead all subsequent attempts. It is the description indeed of a liberal, as distinguished from a servile imitation, that it is studious only of the principle and spirit of its model; and, without straining the resemblance to a mechanical conformity, raises a likeness not discernible in the detail, but stamped upon the generality of the whole; not existing in outward admeasurement and correspondence of feature, but furtively produced from a latent consentaneity of genius and character. Ignorance of these rules, or inability to follow them, has been one of the causes of the common failure of attempts to copy the graces and urbanity of the Spectator. There is, indeed, a sort of physical languor in all imitations; the conception and execution must be connate in the mind, to carry to their perfection the productions of genius. It is not so in the manual and mechanical

arts; and the ground of the distinction is obvious. What is sensible and tangible, and what is purely ideal and intellectual, must proceed by very different principles of growth to their consummation; and it is easy to see, that the nature of one will scarcely endure the handling of different operators, and perishes under the ponderous accumulation of pretended improvements; while the perfection of the other arises from use and repetition, and the multiplied efforts of ingenuity and industry.

As there is no room for originality in this species of composition, disadvantaged as in many respects are the efforts of imitation, yet it is all that we can aspire to; and grace and dignity in the execution of a secondary part, must content our ambition. The delicacy of Addison's morality, the vivacity of his comments, and above all the spirit of his plan, are the just objects of judicious imitation; and he will most egregiously have failed, who aims only at forcing into his work a few of the principal ingredients of the Spectator, without having sounded the secret of those happy combinations of language, and that easy controul of imagery and illustration, which finish and adorn the admonitions, the raillery, and the reasonings of that master-production. Many of our late periodical writers, disdaining to imitate another's plan, have struck out a course in which no plan has been disclosed. They have miscarried, I think, in their attempts. A mere succession of essays, not connected by any common design, and conspiring to no general effect, is accordingly all that they have produced; and for want of that characteristic colouring, which in some instances has made this sort of publication the history of the mind of a thoughtful individual, whose character, insinuated through the work, has fixed the regards

of the reader, there is a total failure of that collateral interest which carries one forwards from subject to subject with a superadded curiosity and delight. Something to organise the parts into correspondence, and to constitute a whole; some common attraction to a general design; touches of moral painting that produce a sort of portrait of the writer, and clothes him with a conciliating parental character, a varied intertexture of narration and anecdote; and a polished freedom of general raillery; are, I think, among the essential requisites of this kind of composition; and a loose compilation of essays, having no cement or lining of this sort, must consequently fail of producing all this satisfaction in the reader's mind.

Thus much has been said on the requisites and perfections of a periodical paper, because it appears to have been treated too much as a branch of composition to which no rules were applicable, as dispensing with all order and design, and implying nothing more than a succession of detached essays. Sir Roger de Coverley, Will. Wimble, and the Short-faced Silent Man, are not characters necessary to a periodical paper; but they serve as illustrations of the principles and perfections alluded to; and true taste will condescend to imitation, and choose rather to proceed in the track already marked out by original excellence, than proudly to take a new course that justifies its departure from models by no hope or promise of compensation to the reader.

Great things are done by the gratuitous endowments of nature; but, if the richest in those endowments will choose a path where great geniuses have already trodden, they must bound their ambition to the praise of vigorous imitation.

As affording room for a great diversity of topic and instruction, and as a powerful agent of moral culture, Mr. OLIVE-BRANCH adopted the plan of a periodical paper; and the public are to assign him his portion of credit in the conduct of it. Happily for the success of his scheme, his own character, as it floats upon the surface of these papers, is well adapted to aid the impression of his morality; for something there surely is, in almost every heart of common goodness, that bespeaks attention to the mild admonitions of considerate age, where grey hairs are the blossoms of wisdom, and not the fruit of worldly anxieties.

These papers upon the whole, therefore, it must be said, owe much to the personal and complexional advantages of the writer: they have given an exterior comeliness to his lessons and persuasions, more efficacious by much than the decorations of an artificial style, or the agency of personal satire. · His morality is grave and independent, and his good humour would be ill understood if construed into courtesy to fashionable vices; it is in him only the boon of temperance, and the health of an honest and cheerful mind. In respect to the matter of these volumes, the reader will find that the vices of fashionable life, and the characteristic infirmities of the rich, are not endeavoured to be discountenanced by raising a fictitious contrast in the pretended exemptions of the poor. And the author seems to have thought, that the needy and the affluent, the vulgar and the great, are not distinguished in the substance of immorality, but in the modes; that profligacy is not the prerogative of the rich; and that sin and folly are not less in degree, because more homely in their practice, and less notorious in their career. Vice is of a subtile and mutable na