infallibly borrow its hue from the humour or the accident of the moment in which it is written. Now if it has, as it no doubt often has, so happened that you have taken up in a merry humour what I have written in a grave one, or, vice versâ, that you have been very solemn when I have been disposed to be very witty, it is ten to one but both my wit and my gravity have been totally lost upon you; that the sprightliest sallies of the former have been unable to derange the phlegmatic primness of your muscular economy, and that instead of receiving with due reverence the precepts of the latter, you have been wickedly inclined to treat me and my morality with most unchristian ridicule. Hearing the other day that a fellow-citizen of mine had exercised his genius in the composition of a tragedy, I took the liberty of inquiring the subject of it, and was informed by him, after considerable hesitation, that it was "on no particular subject." This is, I believe, nearly the predicament in which my present paper stands; for though I flatter myself I have pointed out in it what a paper ought to be, it has been rather by example than precept-by instancing, in an eminent degree, what it ought not to be. But, as I have gone on thus far without selecting any particular subject, and as I am now too far advanced to dip for a new one in any of the books which lie upon my table, I shall conclude my paper with a letter, in which my fellow-citizens will find such rules laid down, as will, if well observed, contribute, no doubt, to render them good and useful citizens of the greater world. And I flatter myself my correspondent will forgive my publishing it with such a view, though contrary to his express desire. "TO GREGORY GRIFFIN, Esq. "DEAR SIR-' Do what you are bid;' come when you are called;'-' speak when you are spoken to;'-and shut the door after you.' Such were the precepts, Mr. Griffin, which, in my earlier days, I imbibed from the tongue of my grandmother; such was the path of morality chalked out for me, by following which I was to become an honour to my family, a credit to my country, and Lord Chancellor. For you must know, sir, that, from my infancy, this was the destined goal to which my course of glory was to be directed. As I was the darling of my grandmother, to her was left the sole care and superintendance of my education. For the furtherance, therefore, of her projects in my favour, it was resolved, when I was eight years old, to send me to Eton. At my setting out, her former maxims were reinforced by the addition of a few more equally serviceable exhortations, viz. To be a good boy-mind my book -never to get on horseback till I could ride, nor to venture into the water till I could swim'-and, above all, not to make myself sick by the too hasty expenditure of the sixpence which she bestowed on me at parting. All these maxims, Mr. Griffin, comprehensive as they are, I have carefully treasured up in mind; and I write now, merely to ask your opinion of their efficacy to make me an honour to my family, and every thing else which her fond hopes have cut me out for. At any rate, Mr. Griffin, there are, I am confident, many of our fellow-citizens, who have far inferior precepts for their moral conduct than myself; and I must beg, therefore, that you will not take advantage of my letter, by betraying my secret assurances of success, to raise me up competitors in my progress to the woolsack. "I am, sir, your's, 66 B. No. 33. MONDAY, JULY 2, 1787. Alia, nullis hominum cogentibus, ipsæ, Some, without man's compulsive art, Shoot forth self.born. VIRGIL. THE philosopher Xanthus, says L'Estrange, going one day, attended by his slave, Æsop, to a garden near the city, was asked by its owner, (who, in course, as a classical gardener, had an exclusive privilege of philosophising,) why, notwithstanding the high culture and artificial nourishment he applied to his exotics, the native weeds, under the disadvantage of a barren soil, were stronger in their growth and more luxurious in their vegetation? Xanthus, who, though he could not close with his adversary, knew how to parry his thrust, after some reflection, turned to Æsop, and, with seeming contempt of the question, commanded him to answer it. "All power of vegetation," replied the slave," is in the hands of nature, who, in this instance, acts with the usual partiality of a stepmother, depressing the produce of art, and invigorating her own hardy offspring with the profusion of parental fondness." What was, in the instance of the vegetable world, so well applied by this self-instructed philosopher, may, with equal propriety, be observed in the seemingly partial distribution of natural endowments to the human mind; and history does not, perhaps, furnish us with a more striking instance than his own, of the decided superiority nature will, in all her operations, maintain over the feeble imitations of art. Even under the complicated discouragements of low origin, depressed condition, and want of education, the naturally quick conception of this unenlightened slave, reflected a brightness which the artificial polish of acquired knowledge was unable to equal. As we believe that our souls are originally of one substance, and will hereafter universally return to their pristine state, the manifest difference in our powers of mind can only be referred to the different organization of our bodies; and we may conclude, that the different degrees of susceptibility, in those secret channels of connection through which our living agents act, has, in some degree, the same effect on the mental faculties, which dress has in ornamenting or disfiguring our bodies themselves. It is evident, then, by so remarkable a provision against it, that nature never designed a universal equality in the human species; that she has wisely and impartially divided the orders of mankind, by raising a chosen few to act in a conspicuous sphere, as the objects of laudable emulation, or the melancholy warnings to overbearing ambition-by conducting others, and of these a larger number, by a safer, but less popular, road, to honest reputation-and by filling up the vacuum with those, by far the most considerable part of the species, who glide through" the calm sequestered vale of life" with uninterrupted tranquillity, and have no care of protracting their existence beyond the burial service. Human ingenuity, however, convinced, from early experience, that nature, though an excellent mother, was too capricious in the distribution of her favours for a good politician, has invented a system, (the best criterion of which is that it has stood the test of so many ages,) not only calculated to restrain the irregular sallies of genius, but even, by adscititious knowledge, to render the most barren minds capable of rivalling, on some occasions, the fertility of original imagination. Education, however differently modelled by capacities endowed with the united advantages of art and nature-however its complexion may vary in the campus martius at Eton, and the paved courtyard of a private academy, "originally undertaken at the particular request of a few select friends, by a clergyman of unquestionable probity, who will pay the strictest attention to the diet, morals, clothes, and improvement of the young gentlemen committed to his care," is in its object still the same. Taught by experience that a knowledge of the belles lettres is an universal recommendation, without which unpolished virtue may indeed command respect, but can seldom excite esteem, we make an advantageous exchange of the unthinking leisure of childhood, for laying the permanent foundation of a future benefit. But though classical knowledge is an essential part of a liberal education, it by no means comprehends the whole of it; nor does it follow that a man, who is totally devoid of it, may not fulfil, with the greatest propriety, the social as well as moral duties. It must be obvious to the eye of the most superficial observer, that all capacities are not adapted to the same path of study, and on that account the idea of loading the mind indiscriminately with what it can neither relish nor digest, is so palpably misconceived as hardly to require confutation. Yet how many Quixotic enthusiasts are there, who, unaccustomed to study mankind otherwise than through the interpretation of the bigotry of the historian, the spleen of the satirist, or the flattering misrepresentations of the poet, and tinctured with |