riods, infancy, youth, and manhood; the first includes that portion of time before reason shews itself; in the second it appears indeed, but being incompetent to the proper government of the creature, requires the aid, support, and correction of education; in the third it attains to its maturity.

Now as a person's responsibility bears respect to his reason, so do human punishments bear respect to his responsibility: Infants and boys are chastised by the hand of the parent or the master; rational adults are amenable to the laws, and what is termed mischief in the first case, becomes a crime in the other. It will not avail the man to plead loss of reason by temporary intoxication, nor can he excuse himself by the plea of any sudden impulse of passion. If a prisoner tells his judge that it is his nature to be cruel, that anger, lust, or malice are irherent in his constitution, no human tribunal will admit the defence: yet thus it is that all people deal with God and the world, when they attempt to palliate their enormities, by pleading the uncontroulable propensity of their natural desires, as if the Creator had set up a tyrant in their hearts, which they were necessitated to obey.

This miserable subterfuge is no less abject than impious; for what can be more degrading to a being, whose inherent attribute is free-agency and whose distinguishing faculty is reason, than to shelter himself from the dread of responsibility under the humiliating apology of mental slavery? It is as if he should say Excuse the irregularities of my conduct, for I am a brute and not a man; I follow instinct and renounce all claim to reason; my actions govern me, not I my actions;'-and yet the people, to whom I allude, generally set up this plea in excuse for those passions in particular, which have their origin in that stage of life, when the hu

man mind is in the use and possession of reason; an imposition so glaring that it convicts itself; notwithstanding this it is too often seen, that whilst the sensualist is avowing the irresistible violence of his propensities, vanity shall receive it not only as an atonement for the basest attempts, but as an expected tribute to the tempting charms of beauty; nay, such is the perversion of principle in some men, that it shall pass with them as a recommendation even of that sex, the purity of whose minds should be their sovereign grace and ornament.

The passion of fear seems coeval with our nature; if they, who have our infancy in charge, suffer this passion to fix and increase upon us; if they augment our infant fears by invented terrors, and present to our sight frightful objects to scare us; if they practise on our natural and defenceless timidity by blows and menaces, and crush us into absolute subjection of spirit in our early years, a human creature thus abused has enough to plead in excuse for cowardice; and yet this, which is the strongest defence we can make upon the impulse of passion, is perhaps the only one we never resort to: In most other passions we call that constitution, which is only habit.

When we reflect upon the variety of passions, to which the human mind is liable, it should seem as if reason, which is expressly implanted in us for their correction and controul, was greatly overmatched by such a host of turbulent insurgents; but upon a closer examination we may find that reason has many aids and allies, and though her antagonists are also many and mighty, yet that they are divided and distracted, whilst she can in all cases turn one passion against another, so as to counterbalance any power by its opposite, and make evil instruments in her hands conducive to moral ends:

Avarice, for instance, will act as a counterpoise to lust and intemperance, whilst vanity on the other hand will check avarice; fear will keep a bad man honest, and pride will sometimes make a coward brave.

Observe the manners of Palpatius in company with his patron; assiduous, humble, obliging; for ever smiling, and so supple and obsequious, you would think he had no will of his own, and was born for the uses and occasions of others: Follow Palpatius to his house, see him with his wife and children, hear him dictate to his servants and the needy dependants, who make suit through him to his principal, you will find all things reversed; the sycophant turns out a tyrant, and he is only indebted to his hypocrisy for keeping his insolence out of sight.

Procar is one of the most dissolute men living; he is handsome, impudent, and insinuating, qualifications that ensure his success with the ladies: He professed the most vehement passion for Fulvia; but Fulvia was on the point of marrying Vetulus, a rich old man, who wanted an heir, and till that event took place she held out against Procax upon motives of convenience only: Fulvia soon became the wife of Vetulus; she had no longer any repugnance to be the mistress of Procax; but the same man, who had pleaded the irresistible violence of his desires before marriage, now pretended conscience, and drew back from her advances; nay he did more, he put Vetulus upon his guard, and Fulvia's virtue was too closely watched to be in any future danger: What sudden change was this in Procax? Vetulus had no heirs, and Procax had a contingent interest in the entail of his estate.

Splendida, in one of her morning airings, was solicited for charity by a poor woman with an infant in her arms. It is not for myself, madam,' said the

" --

my husband, who lies

wretched creature, it is for 6 under that hedge tormented with a fever, and dying for want of relief.'-Splendida directed her eyes towards the spot, and saw a sickly object stretched upon the ground, clad in the tattered regimental of a foot soldier: Her heart was touched, and she drew out her purse, which was full of guineas: The blood rushed into the beggar's meagre visage at the sight; Splendida turned over the gold; her hand delayed for a moment, and the impulse was lost; unhappily for the suppliant, Splendida was alone and without a witness: She put her hand once more into her pocket, and taking out a solitary shilling, dropped it into the shrivelled palm that was stretched out to receive it, and drove on. Splendida returned home, drest herself, and went to a certain great lady's assembly; a subscription was put about for the benefit of a celebrated actress; the lady condescended to receive subscriptions in person, and delivered a ticket to each contributor: Splendida drew forth the same purse, and wrapping twenty guineas in a paper, put them into the hand of the noble beggar: The room rang with applauses of her charity I give it,' says she,' to her virtues, rather than to her talents; I bestow it on the wife and mother, not upon the actress.' Splendida on her return home took out her accompt-book, and set down twenty-one pounds one shilling to the article of charity; the shilling indeed Heaven audited on the score of alms, the pounds were posted to the account of vanity.

NUMBER XLVIII.

An toti morimur?

SENECA IN TROAD.

I BELIEVE there are few people, who have not at some time or other felt a propensity to humour themselves in that kind of melancholy, which arises in the mind upon revisiting the scene of former happiness, and contemplating the change that time has wrought in its appearance by the mournful comparison of present with past impressions.

I

In this train of thought I was the other day carried almost imperceptibly to the country seat of a deceased friend, whose loss I must ever lament. had not been there since his death, and there was a dreariness in the scene as I approached, that might have almost tempted me to believe even things inanimate partook of my sensations. The traces of my friend, whose solicitude for order and seemliness reached to every thing about him, were no longer to be seen: The cottages and little gardens of his poor neighbours, which used to be so trim and neat, whilst his eye was over them, seemed to be falling into neglect; the lawn before his house was now become a solitude; no labourers at their work; no domestics at their sports and exercises: I looked around for my old acquaintance, that used to be grazing up and down upon their pensions of pasturage; they had probably been food for hounds long ago; Nature had lost her smile of hospitality and benevolence; methought I never saw any thing more dis-` consolate.