ed to lay out upon clothes and jewels for her marriage, to be employed in myrrh and fpices for her funeral? He is a man of great learning and good fenfe, who has applied himself, from his earlieft youth, to the noblest and most elevated ftudies : but all the maxims of fortitude, which he has received from books, or advanced himfelf, he now abfolutely rejects; and every other virtue of his heart gives place to all a parent's tenderness. We fhall excufe, we shall even approve his forrow, when we confider what he has loft. He has loft a daughter who refembled him in his manners, as well as his perfon; and exactly copied out all her father. If his friend Marcellinus fhall think proper to write to him, upon the fubject of fo reasonable a grief, let me remind him not to use the rougher arguments of confolation, and such as feem to carry a fort of reproof with them; but those of kind and fympathifing humanity. Time will render him more open to the dictates of reafon; for as a fresh wound fhrinks back from the hand of the furgeon, but by degrees fubmits to, and even requires the means of its cure; so a mind, under the first impreffion of a misfortune, fhuns and rejects all arguments of confolation; but at length, if applied with tendernefs, calmly and willingly acquiefces in them. Farewell, MELMOTH'S PLINY.

SECTION IV.

On Discretion.

I HAVE often thought, if the minds of men were laid open, we fhould fee but little difference between that of the wife man, and that of the fool.

There are infinite reveries, numberlefs extravagances, and a fucceffion of vanities, which pafs through both. The great difference is, that the first knows how to pick and cull his thoughts for converfation, by fuppreffing fome, and communicating others; whereas the other lets them all indifferently fly out in words. This fort of difcretion, however, has no place in private converfation between intimate friends. On fuch occafions, the wifeft men very often talk like the weakeft; for indeed talking with a friend is nothing else than thinking aloud,

Tully has therefore very juftly expofed a precept, delivered by fome ancient writers. That a man fhould live with

his enemy in fuch a manner, as might leave him room to become his friend; and with his friend, in fuch a manner, that, if he became his enemy, it should not be in his power to hurt him. The first part of this rule, which regards our behaviour towards an enemy, is indeed very reasonable, as well as very prudential; but the latter part of it, which regards our behaviour towards a friend, favours more of cunning than of difcretion; and would cut a man off from the greatest pleafures of life, which are the freedoms of converfation with a bofom friend. Besides that, when a friend is turned into an enemy, the world is juft enough to accufe the perfidioufnefs of the friend, rather than the indifcretion of the person who confided in him.

Difcretion does not qaly fhow itself in words, but in all the circumstances of action; and is like an under agent of Providence, to guide and direct us in the ordinary concerns of life.

There are many more fhining qualities in the mind of man, but there is none fo ufeful as difcretion. It is this, indeed,, which gives a value to all the reft; which fets them at work in their proper times and places; and turns them to the advantage of the perfon who is poffeffed of them. Without it, learning is pedantry, and wit impertinence; virtue itself looks like weakness; the beft parts only qualify a man to be more fprightly in errors, and active to his own prejudice.

Difcretion does not only make a man the mafter of his own parts, but of other men's. The difcreet man finds out the talents of thofe he converfes with; and knows how to apply them to proper ufes. Accordingly, if we look intoparticular communities and divifions of men, we may obferve, that it is the difcreet man, not the witty, nor the learned, nor the brave, who guides the converfation, and gives measures to the fociety. A man with great talents, but void, of difcretion, is like Polyphemus in the fable, ftrong and blind; endued with an irrefiftible force, which, for want of fight, is of no use to him.

Though a man have all other perfections, and want difcretion, he will be of no great confequence in the world; but if he have this fingle talent in perfection, and but a common fhare of others, he may do what he pleafes in his particular ftation of life.

:

At the fame tine that I think difcretion the most useful talent a man can be mafter of, I look upon cunning to be the accomplishment of little, mean, ungenerous minds. Difcretion points out the nobleft ends to us; and purfues the most proper and laudable methods of attaining them; cunning has only private, felfish aims and fticks at nothing which may make them fucceed. Difcretion has large and extended views; and, like a well-formed eye, commands a whole horizon cunning is a kind of short-fightedness, that discovers the minutest objects which are near at hand, but is not able to difcern things at a diftance. Difcretion, the more it is discovered, gives a greater authority to the perfon, who poffeffes it cunning, when it is once detected, lofes its force, and makes a man incapable of bringing about even those events which he might have done, had he paffed only for a plain man. Discretion is the perfection of reafon ; and a guide to us in all the duties of life: cunning is a kind of instinct, that only looks out after our immediate intereft and welfare. Difcretion is only found in men of strong sense and good understandings: cunning is often to be met with in brutes themfelves ; and in perfons who are but the feweft removes from them. In fhort, cunning is only the mimic of discretion; and it may pafs upon weak men, in the fame manner as vivacity is often mistaken for wit, and gravity, for wisdom.

The caft of mind which is natural to a difcreet man, makes him look forward into futurity, and confider what will be his condition millions of ages hence, as well as what it is at prefent. He knows that the mifery or happiness which is reserved for him in another world, lofes nothing of its reality by being placed at fo great a distance from him. The objects do not appear little to him because they are remote. He confiders, that thofe pleasures and pains which lie hid in eternity, approach nearer to him every moment; and will be prefent with him in their full weight and measure, as much as thofe pains and pleafures which he feels at this very instant. inftant. For this reafon, he is careful to fecure to himfelf that which is the proper happinefs of his nature, and the ultimate defign of his being He carries his thoughts to the end of every action; and confider the most diftant, as well as the most immediate effects of it. He fuperfedes every little profpect of gain and

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advantage which offers itself here, if he does not find it co fiftent with his views of an hereafter. In a word, his hopes are full of immortality; his fchemes are large and glorious; and his conduct fuitable to one who knows his true intereft, and how to purfue it by proper methods.

SECTION V.

On the Government of our Thoughts.

ADDISON.

À MULTITUDE of cafes occur, in which we are no less áccountable for what we think, than for what we do.

As, firft, when the introduction of any train of thought depends upon ourselves, and is our voluntary act; by turning our attention towards fuch pbjects, awakening fuch paffions, or engaging in fuch employments, as we know must give a peculiar determination to our thoughts. Next, when thoughts, by whatever accident they may have been originally fuggefted, are indulged with deliberation and complacency. Though the mind has been paffive in their reception, and, therefore, free from blame; yet if they be active in their continuance, the guilt becomes its own. They may have intruded at first, like unbidden guefts; but if when entered, they are made welcome, and kindly entertained, the cafe is the fame as if they had been invited from the beginning. If we be thus accountable to God for thoughts either voluntarily introduced, or deliberately indulged, we are no less fo, in the last place, for those which find admittance into our hearts from fupine negligence, from total relaxation of attention, from allowing our imagination to rove with entire licence, "like the eyes of the fool, towards the ends of the earth." Our minds are, in this cafe, thrown open to folly and vanity. They are proftituted to every evil thing which pleases to take poffeffion. The confequences muft all be charged to our account; and in vain we plead excufe from human infirmity. Hence it appears, that the great object at which we are to aim in governing our thoughts, is, to take the moft effectual measures for preventing the introduction of such as are finful, and for haftening their expulfion, if they fhall have introduced themfelves without confent of the will.

But when we descend into our breasts, and examine how far we have studied to keep this object in view, who can tell

he hath offended ?" In no article of religion or are men more culpably remifs, than in the unreftraindulgence they give to fancy; and that too, for the most t, without remorfe. Since the time that reafon began to exert her powers, thought, during our waking hours, has been active in every breaft, without a moment's fufpenfion or paufe. The current of ideas has been always flowing. The wheels of the fpiritual engine have circulated with perpetual motion. Let me afk, what has been the fruit of this inceffant activity with the greater part of mankind? Of the innumerable hours that have been employed in thought, how few are marked with any permanent or useful effect? How many have either paffed away in idle dreams; or have been abandoned to anxious discontented mufings, to unfocial and malignant paffions, or to irregular and criminal defires? Had I power to lay open that ftore houfe of iniquity which the hearts of too many conceal; could I draw out and read to them a lift of all the imaginations they have devised, and all the paffions they have indulged in fecret; what a picture of men fhould I prefent to themselves! What crimes would they appear to have perpetrated in fecrecy, which to their moft intimate companions they durst not reveal !

Even when men imagine their thoughts to be innocently employed, they too commonly fuffer them to run out into extravagant imaginations, and chimerical plans of what they would wish to attain, or choofe to be, if they could frame the courfe of things according to their defire. Though fuch employments of fancy come not under the fame defcription with those which are plainly criminal, yet wholly unblameable they feldom are. Befides the wafte of time which they occafion, and the mifapplication which they indicate of thofe intellectual powers that were given to us for much nobler purposes, fuch romantic fpeculations lead us always into the neighbourhood of forbidden regions. They place us on dangerous ground. They are for the moft part connected with fome one bad paffion; and they always nourish a giddy and frivolous turn of thought. They unfit the mind for applying with vigour to rational purfuits, or for acquiefcing in fober plans of conduct. From that ideal world in which it allows itfelf to dwell, it returns to the commerce of men, unbent and re