said he: "she is not pleased with me, or my most intimate friends, and she does nothing but preach to me. I have had so many of her sermons, that I am grown quite weary of them."

"I am sorry," said Mr. Howard, "you have brought your mind to treat her advice with indifference. She wishes nothing but your welfare. She has given you many proofs, yea, innumerable proofs, of her abounding kindness. She is a most excellent and judicious woman."

"I never," said Mr. Wallace, "knew any one, whose principles were correct, who contemned the advice of an affectionate mother.

I hope I was never an undutiful son; but yet, frequently, since I have lost this endeared relative, the language of Cowper has occurred to

me:

'We lov❜d, but not enough, the tender hand
That rear'd us.""

"Oh! I beg, Sir, you will not imagine that I do not love my mother. Certainly, I do. But then, my brother Dick is her favourite. She has cast me off as incurable; and truly, because I have parties on Sunday, and am not quite so religious as she would wish me, or as Dick is, she says I shall come to no good, and is always preaching to me. Now, uncle, would you like this?"

"I am sure your mother would do you nothing but good," said Mr. Howard, "if you would permit her. Certainly, I think with her, that no good can come to you, whilst you live in the breach of God's commandments."

"But, uncle, you would not have me be so religious as my brother Dick, would you? Why, he won't go to the theatre; and when he has been at my house, we could not get him to play at cards or backgammon. When my friends, the Racketts, wanted him to join the hunting club, he refused. And, on the Sunday, he was at church, or alone in his chamber, almost the whole of the day: we could hardly get him to say any thing. Indeed, all my servants are afraid that he is going out of his mind. For my own part, I think him far gone from rationality."

"I fear, Mr. George," said Mr. Howard, "you do not look at your brother with the eye of candour. Indeed, I am certain you do not judge righteous judgment. And I must beg leave to say, that I do deliberately think, that your mother and brother are right, and you are undoubtedly wrong."

"Yes, but uncle, I am of age now, and am I to be in leading-strings all my days? No young man of any spirit, I am sure, would endure it."

"You call things, my dear young friend, like many others, by their wrong names. Because your inestimable mother, by her wise and pious counsels, would save you from ruin here and hereafter, and render you truly respectable and useful, this you strangely call being kept in leading-strings. If you felt, Sir, as you ought, you would be happy in paying practical attention to the counsels of so faithful a friend."

"Truly," said Mr. Wallace, "there is young Spendthrift, my neighbour, who has been obliged to mortgage his estate for nearly the whole of its value, and who, by his excesses, has ruined a fine constitution; truly, it would have been well for him if he had been in leadingstrings all the days of his life. Poor creature! I am sure, however highly he might think of himself, he was never fit to go alone."

"I beg, Sir," said Mr. Blunt, "not to be named with young Spendthrift. I trust I have a little more common sense than he has. I do not want any one's advice: I am old enough to manage my own affairs."

"It would be well, George," said Mr. Howard, "if age and wisdom always went hand in hand. Faithfulness obliges me to say, that I much fear this is not the case with you: if it were, you would not despise the counsels of

your pious mother, or censure your brother on account of his piety." “Uncle, you quite mistake me. Dick for his religion! no, not I.

I censure Let every

one do as he pleases. I go to church when the Racketts do not come, at least, once on the Sunday; and when one does not sit up too late at billiards on the Saturday evening. Then, you know, one cannot reasonably be expected to be there. No, no, I don't object to Dick's religion; only, I do think he should not have so much as to act in so senseless a way as he does."

"I think," said Mr. Wallace, "that every one, whatever their situation or circumstances are, may be reasonably expected to keep God's commands. To hallow his holy day is one of them. And truly, I can say, from the experience of many years, that in keeping this commandment there is great reward."

"And so far," said his uncle, "from your brother Richard's having taken leave of his rational faculties, he alone is truly in his senses. Sir," said Mr. H. raising his voice to a key unusually high for him, "it would not be difficult unanswerably to prove, that the want of rationality is altogether on your own part.

"Is it rational, Sir, (let me appeal to the dictates of common sense,) to disregard the great

end of our existence? Every irreligious man does this; and, if he who profanes God's holy day be not irreligious, no man is. Every object has some chief end: it is absurd to suppose that infinite wisdom created any thing in vain. The chief end of the sun is to enlighten, warm, and fertilize the world. The chief end of the creatures is the good of man. And the chief end of man must be to glorify God.

"Is it rational, Sir, for a man to take pains to do himself real and lasting injury? This every irreligious man does. Whilst he is very busy with his vices, and has no time for any serious thought, he is himself gradually opening those flood-gates which will drown him in perdition. He is laboriously pursuing that which will profit him nothing. He is very much occupied with trifles, whilst his chief business is neglected. He is like the husbandman who will not sow his fields till the time when he ought to be reaping. Would this be reasonable? When the bridegroom came, the foolish virgins went to seek for oil, when they wanted it to burn, and they were left in outer darkness. The history of every ungodly man proves that misery has ever been connected with the breach of the divine commandments.

"Is it rational, Sir, to value what is comparatively worthless, and to contemn objects of the