loyal and attached, has supplied the armies and navies, and silently bears her share of debt and misfortune.

When the reader has made this survey, he will probably think that virtue and industry will be necessary to retrieve the affairs of Britain, and to render her happy and respectable, if not proud and triumphing. Let him then cast an eye to the motives that influence political conduct, to the characters of the great, to the manners of the capital, and of the people in general, and let him say if he discovers public and private virtue flourishing; if he perceives humility, economy, moderation; or if he discovers selfishness, luxury, supineness, and vicious indulgence of every kind. Does he see the amor patria glow with purity and ardour in the breasts of British Senators? Is faction and party lost in united exertions for the good of the whole? Or, are wealth and power the sole objects of ambition? Are our young men in general trained to manly thinking, and manly virtues, with a contempt for low pleasures and vice? Or, are intemperance, sensuality, and dissipation, from an early period, the objects of pursuit ?-Look to their conversation, and their conduct, and say if ever a nation of abandoned voluptuaries rose to happiness and greatness? Is this the time when

it may be said of Britain, that "all her sons are brave, and all her daughters virtuous ?"

E. C.

THEOPHRASTUS.

[The following paper is taken from the Edinburgh Evening Courant.]

TO THE PRINTER.

SIR,

August, 30. 1783. While the Russians and the Turks are cutting each others throats, in order to fill each others pockets; while the Americans are contending who shall govern, and who shall obey; while the French are using the English, as we are told the English have been wont to use the French; while ministers are fixing themselves firmly in the saddle of their political hobby-horse; while the Irish, by their militia, and the Scotch, by their want of a militia, excite commotions, and revolutions, and liberty, and all that; while great men are ambitious to prove themselves little men; while every man who can write thinks it ought to be in the service of the state; while every man who can eat thinks he has a right to

do it at the public expence; while all these things are in the minds and attentions of the world, and since the sun shines alike on me and on them; while our eyes and ears, and noses and understandings, are made of the same materials and essences as theirs; since time, and chance, and fortune, are the same to us as to them; since death will come on all alike, and seize them like a thief in the night, which, in the case of some, will be setting a thief to catch a thief; since happiness, and every good thing, is as open to us as to them; since the hopes of felicity are not confined to the cabinet, nor to the houses of parliament, nor to the public offices, any more than to the public feasts; and since a man may be completely happy, who neither sells stock nor his conscience; since, I say, all these things are

So,

Let us, since life can little more supply,
Than just to look about us and to die,
Expatiate free o'er all this scene of man,
A mighty maze, but not without a plan.

Yes, let us pursue the innocent delights which the book and the pen afford, and, by persevering in the rigid guardianship of our integrity, enable ourselves to view the fall of states and of ministers, "in the calm light of mild philosophy."

I shall, therefore, by the permission of all great men, and, I hope, the approbation of all good ones, try to find some entertainment from pursuits and lucubrations on which we may look back with satisfaction.

Men are, in every respect, like books: Books live and die, are old and young, are good and bad, are neither good nor bad, just like men; and he who reads bad books will be as bad a man as he who keeps bad company.

According to the best writers on the subject of politeness (among whom I reckon Fielding, Swift, and Lord Chesterfield), "he is the most polite man who makes his company easy and happy in his presence." To apply this to books, that book is the best which tends to make men happy and easy. And this, I trust, will include a very great collection of the best authors in our language, particularly the writers on morality and piety, which therefore ought to be read with more attention, and oftener than any others. In the company of polite men, it is impossible not to imbibe a portion of their spirit; in reading good books, it is equally impossible to escape good and salutary impressions. No man ever was rude and boorish, after spending the evening with Chesterfield, and, I will venture to say, no man ever went from the Whole Duty of Man to

a tavern, from the Bible to a bagnio, or from the Spectator to the seduction of a wife or a daughter. No man ever swore false witness against his neighbour, after reading a Commentary on the Commandments, nor felt an ambition to raise himself to worldly honours by dishonest means, after perusing a Treatise on Death.

But all men are not polite, nor are all books good; infinite is the variety of merit both in men and books. I must take notice but of a very few diversities, which I the less regret, because the subject is open to every man's experience.

Some books contain a great portion of instruction, conveyed in very few words, and the oftener we read them the more we learn ; some men also there are who say little, but what they say is the result of deep judgment and knowledge of the subject. Hence I would rather read Solomon's Proverbs than Seneca's Morals, and listen to Charles Fox in preference to Edmund Burke. Hence one page of Hume's Essays (where he does not betray his infidelity) contains more philosophy than is to be found in all Rousseau's writings; and hence a short speech from Lord Mansfield is in general worth all the speeches of the pleaders who speak before him on a trial. Some men say a great deal about nothing at