abuse of those indulgences which are connected with our daily subsistence.* But these dismal contrasts and frightful exceptions only point out the utilities, as well as the dignity and ornament,-nay, the necessity of virtue: without this, nothing can make life, at any age, happy; or in any country. The moral maxims of all the sages acknowledge this fact. It is the law of Providence that all shall feel this monitory truth. But with the ennobling companionship and actuating influences of the virtuous principle, the humblest and the poorest may, as the American novelist, who has seen and read life largely, intimates, secure to themselves a personal distinction. But are not the reasons of this ever legible to us? What is the moral panorama around us? Instead of mutual kindness, aid, courtesy, and benevolence, which the Deity has recommended and commanded, and which he meant to be the forming and guiding principles of our social world, are we not too much envying, jostling, thwarting, lashing, impeding, repelling, opposing, provoking, and jarring with each other? Whether we write or whether we talk, how little does philanthropy influence either our voice or our pen! We act too frequently in the Arab spirit: "His hand

this.

The vicinity of Dublin could, in June, 1830, exhibit such a scene as "Yesterday was what was called the Walking Sunday of St. John's Well. An iminense assemblage ;-all were dancing, singing, eating, or drinking. I have just returned from the fair ground, and the scene it presented was horrible and disgusting in the extreme. Dozens of drunken wretches, hatless, coatless, shoeless, nay, even shirtless, were scattered along the road; some sleeping away their last night's debauchery, and others, with drooping heads, stealing into the city, to avoid the gaze of others. Numbers too of decently dressed women and girls, actually intoxicated, with tattered bonnets and torn clothes, were returning with shame to their respective homes. The sight was abominable."-Morn. Herald, 26 June, 1830.

It is to Mr. Cooper's honour that he has frankly written his conviction on this point. "While all must be conscious of the fearful infirmities which beset human nature, there are none so base as not to know that their being contains the seeds of that godlike principle which still likens them to their divine Creator. VIRTUE Commands the respect of man, in whatever accidental stage of civilization or of mental improvement he may happen to exist and he who practises its precepts is certain of the respect, though he may not always secure the protection, of his contemporaries."-The Heiden Mauer, v. ii. p. 2.

It is gratifying to read the illustrious Beethoven's analogous sentiments. "Recommend to your children the practice of virtue: for virtue alone, and not wealth, can render men happy. This I know from my own experience. It was virtue which upheld me, even in my misery; and to her, together with the Art, I am indebted for not being

against every man, and every man's hand against him."* It would be slander to say that this is generally the individual will and character, for really mankind abound with good feelings; but we do not act consistently and regularly on these. We intermix, too incongruously and too unthinkingly, the balm and the poison; we wound as well as smile; we are cruel as well as compassionate;t we are too heterogeneous in our opinions and habits. So much of the harsh and stranger spirit is ever actuating the world, that the benign intentions of our Maker, who has planned our nature on the principle that we should habitualy all be "kindly affectioned one to another, with brotherly love"‡ and mutual sympathy," are invalidated and intercepted. But I have no desire to frame a libel against my fellow-creatures, in whose imperfections I fully share; I only seek to show, that as far as it has depended on our Creator, he has formed us with the most gracious care, to be happy in every season of our human existence; and that the failure never rests with him, if any of us happen to be otherwise.

But the world is now what it has thus become, and we must live in it as it is, and do the best we can in it and with it. All of us have our separate plans for its reformation, by which most of us would only make it something worse than it is It is better for us to drop the idea that we can administer the rain and the sunshine, and leave all these great and general operations to His care, who, we are emphatically told, "never slumbers nor sleeps." We cannot newmodel society, or new mould or purify the public heart; but we can begin the amelioration, by a firm and wise govern

a suicide. Farewell, and love one another."--Beethoven's Let. to his Brother in 1802, Quart. Mus. Mag. * Gen. xvi. 12.

The great Tamerlane, or Timour, was a strong instance of this contrariety, which many inferiors of all classes too often display. Though he meant to be humane, and in his Autobiography remarks, how extremely shocked he was one day at having unintentionally trodden upon an ant; yet he ordered molten lead to be poured down the throats of some persons who had indulged in wine. So though he says, "Whenever I undertook any thing, I cared not whether it was deemed a lucky or unlucky hour, but commenced it, placing my faith on God;" yet he soon adds, "At the time I invaded Fars, the people of Shiraz took part with Shah Mansur, and put my governor to death. I therefore ordered a general massacre of all the inhabitants."-Timour's Autobiog Rom. xii. 10.

"Rejoice with them that do rejoice, weep."-Roi. xii. 15.

and weep with them that Psalm cxxi. 3, 4.

ment and improvement of our own. Let us mainly study this effect, and a new spirit and temper would soon warm into action about us, with all the buds and blooms of a fresh moral spring. No one knows how much good he may do by his own quiet and unobtruding good example. Our eyes are always on each other; and if we took but half as much pains to make our dispositions and feelings pleasing to each other as we do to make our complexions, persons, and dress agreeable, we should be half seraphs ourselves, and be ever unconsciously educating and aiding others to become such. By improving ourselves, we should be silent and secret benefactors to all with whom we intermingle and associate. We cannot well avoid, more or less, imitating each other. Those who see or feel in another what they like, what they perceive to be pleasing, are imperceptibly attracted to do what they find from their own sensations to be gratifying, and what they hear to be approved of by those who observe it. No one, therefore, acts rightly without acting beneficently in so doing. He scatters the seed of a sweet flower, that will spring up again in some other bosom, sure to multiply itself in the same way for ever.*

It is a predominant principle in the system of human nature, that the designs which have been formed for its improvement are also made contributory to its happiness; and in this respect we may admire the tendency and efficacy of the succession of the four stages of our earthly being, and of their occurring in the order we all pass through. The pleasures and activities, as well as the disciplines and corrective vicissitudes of our after life, cause us to forget the enjoyments of our cradle era; but, excepting the anomalies

* The Edinburgh Review, in July, 1832, had these striking remarks on this subject: "How is moral reform to be looked for, but in this way: that more and more good men are, by a bountiful Providence, sent hither to disseminate goodness; literally to sow it, as in seeds shaken abroad by the living tree?

"For such, in all ages and places, is the nature of a good man. He is ever a mystic, creative centre of goodness. His influence, if we consider it, is not to be measured. For his works do not die; but, being of eternity, are eternal and in new transformation, and ever wider dif fusion, endure, living and giving life. If thou exclaimest against the baseness of time, think of this. To redeem a world sunk into dishonesty has not been given to thee. Solely over one man in it hast thou power Redeem him; make him honest; this will be something; it will be much; thy life and labour there will not be in vain-THYSELF."-Edin Rev. No. 110, p. 357,

which arise from neglecting or depraved mothers, these must be as soothing as those of all young animals seem to be; with the addition of those maternal endearments and comtingling sensibilities, which it is the privilege of the human race only to participate. All these gratifications are hourly increased, as the senses begin to attend to and to perceive the external things which affect it; for it is a law of our intellectual nature, that every new sensation is a pleasure. Even pain, in its novelty, from its exciting operation, is not wholly disagreeable, if it be not too severe nor too continsous; and when it is so, its departure causes a sense of positive enjoyment to succeed to it, merely from its absence. This I have repeatedly experienced. But with the exception of what is of the painful kind, the continual occurrence of fresh impressions, unknown before, which, from a world where every thing is new to it, as it begins to be acquainted wth it, are continually occurring to the growing child, must make that state of its being a happy era. We see this effect continually before us. Who is so happy as the self-amusing child that is tolerably well brought up! Its hours glide in :ayful comfort. It seems to feel life, as the ascending ark and the sportive insect do, to be an instinctive blessing Left to itself, and permitted to pursue its own little fancies and activities, it is happy, because it exists and moves; for we are so formed, that motion, as well as sensation, is pleas

rable to us.

Old age is querulous. It is one of its defects at times to be so; but let not this occasional weakness deceive you. Age suffers often from calamities which it has brought upon self, and from many splenetic feelings, which it might requish if it chose. But you may be assured that, naturally, Las new gratifications of its own, which fully balance those of earlier days, and which, if cultivated, would carry on the Fream of happiness to its grave. If the life has been rightly employed, it will also have the visioned recollections of its preceding comforts, to enhance the pleasures which it is actually enjoying.*

On this last period of life my own experience is, in the 67th year of my age, that, not withstanding ailments, infirmities, and the priva tons which they occasion, it is just as happy as all the preceding sen

Were though in a different way. Ho happy, as to cause no regret at they have prosed, and no desire to exchange what is for what has

The result of both our reasoning and our experience is, if we act properly ourselves, and keep a right judgment within us, as well as becoming habits, that each period has and brings its own felicities; and that it will be the fault of human mismanagement, not of created nature and its plan, if infancy, childhood, youth, maturity, and old age, be not a series of diversified pleasures: each period having its own best suiting and wisely appointed ones, and altogether composing a noble banquet of rational happiness, partly sensorial, partly moral, and partly intellectual, terminating, if we shall so choose, with that which is divine, and which is meant, ultimately, to be superior to every other.

LETTER XII.

Paradise-State of Adam and Eve-The Divine Command-The Necessity of such Tuition-Reasons for its Imposition.

MY DEAR SYDNEY,

HAVING taken this survey of the system of being which our Creator devised and selected to be that of the human nature which he chose to place on this our globe; and of its intended qualities, and of the provisions which he made for its moral and intellectual formation while here; let us now proceed to consider the actual execution of his interesting design, in the experienced history of our thus favoured race.

It was his will, that our order of being should begin with two parents, one of each of the sexes already alluded to, and that from these, in an ever-multiplying series of productions, by a continued succession of new generations, all that quan tity of human beings should issue, which have since constituted the human population. It was also his plan, that these two originating ancestors should begin their existence in a place, in a state, and under circumstances, which would not occur to any of their descendants, and which would be but a temporary condition to themselves and that of a very brief duration.

been. If youth has hopes, and prospects, and wishes that enchant it, age has no inferiority even in this respect.