to the same conclusion with myself. And having decided upon this point, I would entreat him further to consider, whether he can employ for himself, or impart to his children, a safer rule for the selection of friends, than the oldfashioned saying of my dear aunt Rachel— "Take for your friends those, and those only, who are the friends of God."

CHAP. X.

A MERE HONEST MAN" IS NOT THE

NOBLEST WORK OF GOD."

IT was scarcely possible that the events recorded in the last chapter should not have filled me with disgust for extravagance, and all its train of associate vices. But this was not their only, nor, as my aunt would have said, their happiest result: they left me in the best possible mood for carrying into effect the prudential maxims contained in the second department of her code. He has a very limited acquaintance with human nature, who does not know our tendency in avoiding one extreme to run into the opposite. Accordingly, I sat down to the study of this division of the code with the keenest possible appetite, and rose up determined, whatever might be my practice as

to other points, to become a prudent and an honest man.

But, having before discovered the uselessness of all vague and general resolutions, I determined to begin by accurately ascertaining the meaning of the words "honesty" and "prudence," as employed in my aunt's code. And, after nearly a day's severe study, I came to the conclusion, that "prudence" meant "a rigid attention to our own worldly interest;" and honesty," the "exact payment of our debts."

As, moreover, I had previously felt the inconvenience of being called into action before I had proved my principles, I resolved, in the present instance, to prepare myself for action by much private discipline. Accordingly, I accustomed myself to hold long mental dialogues with "Prudence;" and, having an excellent portrait of my aunt suspended over the fire-place, I used, in order to give these dialogues more effect, to personify Benevolence, or any gentle

virtue, myself,-and to make her, by means of her picture, personify Prudence. Thus circumstanced, I was accustomed to hold dialogues with the picture, of which, I venture to say, Erasmus himself need scarcely have been ashamed. Such, indeed, was the sort of familiarity I acquired in this sort of silent converse, that at length, whatever might be the occasion, I had nothing to do but to look at the picture, and I seemed to hear all that prudence and my aunt had to say on the occasion.it is time the reader should be permitted to judge for himself of the effects produced by these dialogues upon my character and conduct.

-But

In the first place, then, I was soon very sensibly mortified by finding myself altogether without a friend. For the fact is, that, in the eagerness of my conformity to my aunt's maxim, I had become either too prudent to choose a friend, or, if chosen, to commit myself to him. Friendship requires unreserve-which prudence,

F

in my aunt's sense of the word, sternly prohibits. Friendship must be generous-mere prudence is harsh. Friendship must be a little blind and deaf-whereas mere prudence is all eye and ear for the faults of others. I remember, that, once or twice, when I was in danger of being betrayed into something like candour and openness by the frankness of a visitor, my aunt's picture seemed, like the celebrated Madona at Rome, almost to frown upon me for my imbecility.

In the next place, I soon became such an inveterate enemy to every thing new, as sometimes to involve myself in the most unpleasant consequences. Twice, for instance, I nearly forfeited my life by my pertinacious and romantic adherence to the practices of antiquity-first, by my resolute rejection, in a violent attack of smallpox, to the then somewhat novel remedy of inoculation; and, secondly, by resolutely excluding, upon the authority of the ancients, every breath