There are parents, indeed, who seem to have little concern but for the pecuniary interest or worldly advancement of their children. While their children excel in dress, address, simulation, and dissimulation, they are allowed to be as debauched and immoral as they please. While they possess a poor, mean, and contemptible kind of wisdom, commonly called the knowledge of the world, their parents are perfectly easy; though they should be notoriously guilty of every base artifice, and plunged in the grossest and most unlawful species of sensuality. That poor man, lord Chesterfield, was one of those parents who are ready to sacrifice their children's honour, conscience, and salvation, for the sake of gaining a little of the little honours and riches of a world, where not even the highest honours or the most abundant riches are comparable to the possession of an honest heart. That wretched lord seems to have entertained very little natural affection for his spurious offspring. His paternal attention was all avarice and ambition. He would probably have been delighted if his son had been at an early age a remarkable debauchee. He would have thought the spirit which vice displayed, a sure prognostic of future eminence. Providence defeated his purpose, and permitted his letters to be exhibited as a loathsome monument of wickedness, vanity, and worldly wisdom. Such wisdom is indeed usually folly, even where its effects and consequences are confined to the present period of existence.

Every father then, and every mother who deserves that tender and venerable appellation, will strenuously endeavour, whatever have been their own

errors and vices, to preserve those whom they have introduced into a troublesome world from the foul contagion and pollution of vice. If they have any regard for their children, for their country, for themselves, they will use every probable means to rescue the rising generation from early profligacy. Selfish motives often prevail when all others are inefficacious. I repeat then, that, for their own sakes, they must guard their offspring from riot, intemperance, and prodigality. If they are misguided by the example of Henry the fifth, or any other reformed rake, so as to encourage their children in evil, or even to be negligent of them, they will probably repent in the day of old age, and find poverty, shame, and anguish, superadded to the weight of years, and the unavoidable evils of a natural decay.

NO. CLIX. A GOOD HEART NECESSARY TO ENJOY THE BEAUTIES OF NATURE.

BY a just dispensation of Providence, it happens that they who are unreasonably selfish, seldom enjoy so much happiness as the generous and contented. Almost, all the wicked deviate from the line of rectitude, that they may engross an extraordinary portion of some real or imaginary advantage. Their hearts are agitated in the pursuit of it with the most violent and painful emotions; and their eagerness, apprehensions, and solicitude, poison the enjoyment after they have obtained the possession. The nature of their pleasures is at best gross, sensual, violent, and transitory. They are always dissatisfied, always envious, always malignant. Their souls are bent

down to the earth; and destitute of all elevated and heavenly ideas, cælestium inanes. They have not powers of perception for the sublime or refined satisfactions; and are no less insensible to the tranquil delights of innocence and simplicity, than the deaf and blind to the beauty of colours, and the melody of music.

To the wicked, and indeed to all who are warmly engaged in the vulgar pursuits of the world, the contemplation of rural scenes, and of the manners and nature of animals, is perfectly insipid. The odour - of flowers, the purling of streams, the song and plumage of birds, the sportive innocence of the lamb, the fidelity of the dog, are incapable of attracting, for one moment, the notice of him whose conscience is uneasy, and passions unsubdued. Invite him to a morning walk through a neighbouring wood, and he begs to be excused; for he loves his pillow and can see no charms in trees. Endeavour to allure him, on a vernal evening, when, after a shower, every leaf breathes fragrance and freshness, to saunter with you in the garden; and he pleads an engagement at whist, or at the bottle. Bid him listen to the thrush, the blackbird, the nightingale, the woodlark, and he interrupts you by asking the price of stocks, and inquiring whether the West India fleet is arrived. As you walk over the meadows enamelled with cowslips and daisies, he takes no other notice, but inquires who is the owner, how much the land lets for an acre, what hay sold for at the last market. He prefers the gloomiest day in November, on which pecuniary bu siness is transacted, or a feast celebrated, or a public diversion afforded, to all the delights of the merry

month of May. He who is constantly engaged in gratifying his lust, or in gaming, becomes in a short time so very wise, as to consider the study of the works of God in the creation, and the external beauty both of vegetable and animated nature, as little superior to a childish entertainment. How grave his aspect! No Solon ever looked so sapient as he does, when he is on the point of making a bet, or insidiously plotting an intrigue. One might con clude, from his air of importance, that man was born to shake the dice, to shuffle the cards, to drink claret, and to destroy, by debauchery, the innocence of individuals, and the peace of families. Ignorant and mistaken wretch! He knows not, that purity and simplicity of heart would furnish him with delights, which, while they render his life tranquil and pleasurable, would enable him to resign his soul at death. into the hands of his Maker unpolluted. What staina and filth it usually contracts by an indiscriminate commerce with the world! how comparatively pure amidst the genuine pleasures of a rural and philosophical life!

As a preservative of innocence, and as the means of a most agreeable pastime, the love of birds, flowers, plants, trees, gardens, animals, when it appears in boys, as indeed it usually does, should be encou raged, and in a subordinate degree cultivated. Farewell innocence, when such things cease to be capable of affording pleasure! The heart gradually becomes hardened and corrupted, when its objects are changed to those of a worldly and a sensual nature.

Man may indeed be amused in the days of health and vigour with the common pursuits of ordinary

life; but they have too much agitation in them for the feeble powers of old age. Amusements are then required which are gentle, yet healthy; capable of engaging the thoughts, yet requiring no painful or continued exertion. Happy he who has acquired and preserved to that age a taste for simple pleasures. A fine day, a beautiful garden, a flowery field, are to him enjoyments similar in species and degree to the bliss of Elysium. A farm-yard, with all its inhabitants, constitutes a most delightful scene, and furnishes him with a thousand entertaining ideas. The man who can see without pleasure a hen gather her chickens under her wing, or the train of ducklings following their parent into a pond, is like him who has no music in his soul, and who, according to Shakespeare, is fit for treasons, murders, every thing that can disgrace and degrade humanity. Vetabo iisdem sub trabibus, fragilemque mecum solvat phaselum. I will forbid him, says Horace on another occasion, to be under the same roof with me, or to embark in the same vessel.

Let it operate as an additional motive in stimulating us to preserve our innocence, that with our innocence we preserve our sensibility to the charms of nature. It is indeed one of the rewards of innocence, that it is enabled to taste the purest pleasure which this world can bestow, without the usual consequences of pleasures, remorse and satiety. The man of a bad heart can find no delight but in bad designs and bad actions-nominal joys and real torHis very amusements are of necessity connected with the injury of others, and with a thousand painful sensations which no language can express.

ments.