and that is, a fine state of our whole machine, suitable for all the delicacy and dignity both of thought and moral deportment. These blooming graces, these tender shoots of pure nature I was going to describe, but alas! the saturnine bias of my soul carries me another way. I must tell you, what I am better acquainted with, how a chilling frost, called time and truth, experience and the circle of human life, will shortly kill or wither all these beauties, and with them our very brightest expectations in this world. For, will the loftiness of your speculations, the generosity of your spirit, the strength and lustre of your personal and social character be the same, when your blood ceases to flow as it now does, when the imagination is cold, and the wheels of nature move with harshness and pain? Will again the subordinate perfections to these, the gaiety and sweetness of temper, the significancy of aspect, the enforcement of wit, the inexplicable rays of soul that recommend all you do, abide with you, when the body begins to deceive you? But what am I doing? Have I begun to carry the charge of vanity even against those higher goods of life, knowledge and friendship; which are the refuge of the best, and the veneration of all men? Friendship is a sacred enclosure in life, where the bravest souls meet together, to defy and refine upon the common lot. Disgust at this vain and sullen world, and the overflowings of a strong, serene mind, lead them to this union. But how will it answer? To say nothing of our friends, will not the sinking of our own hearts below the generous tenor of friendship, blast the fruits of it to us? Did we use so little affectation in making a friend, that we Must not we be always minute cautions and in need none to keep him? upon the stretch in some dustries, in order to content that tender affection we would have in our friend? Can we make our love to him visible, amidst the reserve and abstraction of a pensive mind? In our sanguine hours do we not assume too much, and in our melancholy, think ourselves despised? Naturally, the end and pleasure of friendship is, to have an admirer; will our friendship then lose nothing when humility comes to search it? Knowledge is so great a good in the eyes of man, that it can rival friendship, and most other enjoyments at once. Some have sequestred themselves from all society in order to pursue it. But whosoever you be that are to be made happy by knowledge, reflect first on your changes of opinion. It was some casual encounter in life, or some turn of complexion, that bid you delight in such or such opinions: And they will both change together: you need but run the circle of all your several tempers, to see every notion, every view of things that now warms and transports you, cooled and reduced. This revolution in his sentiments, a man comes at last even to expect; is a fool to himself, and depends upon none of them. Reflect next upon the shortyour discoveries. Some points of great importance to us, we despair of deciding. How little is the mind satisfied in the common road; yet how it trembles in leaving it! There seems to be a certain critical period or boundary set to every man's ness of understanding, to which when it comes, it is struck back and recoils upon itself. As a bird, that has fled to the utmost of its strength, must drop down upon whatever ground is under it; so the mind henceforth will not be able to strike out any new thought, but must subsist on the stock of former conclusions, and stand to them, however defective. Reflect, lastly, on the impertinence of your thinking. Life is something else than thought, why then do we turn life into it? He that does so, shall feel the pain of breaking in upon nature; the mind will devour and consume itself for want of outward employment. It will also enlarge its capacity of prevarication and of applying false colours to things. Little does the warm theorist think, that he is not to be perfected by any of his fine schemes, but by a coolness to them all. The utmost end he can attain by theory, is to revere, and to be resigned to God; and that a poor mechanic does as well, perhaps better than he. But enough of this. I should ask pardon for the tediousness of my epistle, if it had not greater faults that needed your candour, though faults that perhaps you looked for in me, the pedantry of a didactic manner of writing, and that upon the old topic of the vanity of all human or worldly attainments. From what motive I chose this subject, I know not, unless it be an infirmity like that of some old people, who seem impatient to have young persons like themselves before the time: and to what end I know not; though you will kindly suppose, that in the way of my function, I am disparaging earthly goods and perfections to you, that you may not leave off a mo derate application to them, for that is neither possible nor rational, but only seek for true satisfaction elsewhere, by a hearty sense, and sincere practice of religion. For the world passeth away, and the desires, advantages and ideas thereof, but he that doth the will of God abideth for ever. J. G. LETTER TO A STUDIOUS YOUNG LADY, MADAM, I WILL no more speak against reading, since, as you say, you take pleasure in nothing else in the world; for I cannot deny, but I should be glad myself to have some object of pleasure in the world; something, whether great or mean, I do not care, so it be innocent, that might be a relief to my weary mind. In the situation I am in, not yet admitted to the glorious comforts of faith, and yet sick of the burden of corrupt nature, a nature pretty long and nicely examined into, and discovered (let me assume so much to myself, for it is all I can pretend to) it seems necessary sometimes to set aside the dejecting prospect, though not to set it quite out of sight, which indeed I cannot, by some amusement, however low. The lower it is, the fitter for me, till faith in Christ raises me from spiritual darkness and death. Then I would hope for such solid consolation, as may well supersede the poor amusements and delights of the natural man. Thus I readily permit you to go to a book, as I myself do sometimes, to divert and deceive a heavy heart. Suppose, after pouring out your grief in prayer, and settling your judgment and will as well as you can; by meditation you should then endeavour to forget yourself over a book of history or travels. But perhaps I mistake you all this while; it is no amusement, but some intellectual attainments you seek. Indeed, by such humble, religious reading, as is only used to awaken, direct, and comfort you in a devotional way, your mind and heart will be bettered, and that everlastingly. But if you suppose, it will be a future, or even a present solid advantage to your mind, to be well furnished with several points of knowledge in a philosophical way, I am afraid you will be disappointed. But is it not found, you will say, that such an employment of the mind deadens the senses and passions, and lifts us above this world; that it makes us more cheerful and humane? It is true, when a man's ruling passion is philosophy, or the love of science, like every other ruling passion, it swallows up the lesser passions. And this it would do, it will have the same effect, whatever the darling science be, whether metaphysics, morality, heraldry, or riding the great horse. For even those sciences, that are built on the eternal and necessary relation of things, except where they immediately direct practice; and there every plain man is equally animated and elated with them, only without the quaint terms, are no more perfective of the mind, than the most trifling ones are, when a man is but equally animated and elated with them. There is no more difference between the greatness N |