are apprehenfive; for many of the Romans adopted that mode, as one of the eafieft of putting an end to their existence: and there is nothing truly dishonourable in unmerited poverty. As to the loisf honours and dignities, it will admit of the fame folution. I speak of the first principles, of the fpring of thefe paffions.

"If, therefore, the love of life, and the fear of loting it, be the caufe of most of our uneatinels, the contradiction and falfe reafoning are manifeft, in flying for a remedy to the very evil which is the prime occafion of that mental agitation, which we unde go, and which we wifh to avoid.

"The viciffitudes of all fublunary things contradict the expediency of fuicide on any occafion. Revolutions as fudden as attonithing have taken place in the human conftitution, both with and without the aid of medicine; and experience affures us, that it is abfurd to defpair in any stage of a distemper. As to those evils and afflictions, which depend upon the capricioufnefs of the human mind, it must neceffarily be impoffible to anfwer for their duration. The deaths of Cato and of Brutus have been justly cenfured as premature of the former, I remember lord Bolingbroke has fomewhere afferted, he thould have died at Munda, not at Utica. The trembling Claudius, after the aflaffination of his nephew, expecting immediate death, is accidentally difcovered by a common foldier, and, dragged by the feet from his hiding-place, is faluted emperor. Nor is the unfrequency of fuch events fufficient to warrant the abandoning of ourselves to defpair.

"Though Epicurus is faid by fome to have admitted of the expediency of fuicide on certain occa

fions, his arguments in favour of fortitude under pain and affliction make fo directly against it, that we muft either attribute the charge to the ignorance and mistake of thofe who have commented on his doctrines, or account it one of those contradictions and inconfiftencies too often apparent in the fytems produced by the unaffifted efforts of human reafon. The evils of life, fays this philofopher, are either bodily or mental. As bodily pain is certainly an evil, a wife man wi endeavour to avoid it; but when he cannot, he will be careful not to magnify it by fancy or opinion. If pain be very intenfe, it must prefently ceafe; if it continue long, habit will leffen its rigour; and feveral intervals will occur of eaie, if not of happiness: as he remarks, that most chronical distempers admit of a greater proportion of pleafure in life than of pain.

If patience and fortitude can leffen and alleviate so much of real corporal fuffering as we find they do, much more effectual will they prove in the evils of the mind, fince the greater part of thefe depend upon opinion. If our anxiety proceed from a fenfe of guilt, the true remedy is future virtue and penitence. But if, fays Epicurus, we are made unhappy by the lofs of external goods, it is our own fault that we over-rate their value. Wealth and dignities are mere cheats of the imagination; and even the lofs of friends, though it may leftèn, it cannot defroy the fatisfaction of a wife man, whofe chief fource of pleafure is in himfelf; in the exercife of his faculties, the inveftigation of truth, and those sublimer occupations, which the lofs of externals cannot interrupt. In fine, fince a wife man ought to be informed of the uncertainty of all fuch

the act of suicide as the effect of cowardice. I believe, that, in fuch cafes, fear is not always the predo minant paffion; but that jealousy, reientment, indignation, or remorie, are as frequently the motives of fuicide, as even the apprehenfion of fhme: nor can any confideration move me to enrol a Cato, a Brutus, or even a Clive, in the litt of cowards, Till fome better folution is offered, I fhall, for my own part, continue to admire, with all proper refpect, the ftoical juftice of our inqueft juries, who, with equal fagacity and candour, extenuate the offence against reafon and fociety, by the verdict Lunacy;"

HE following fory is fo

had not had it from good authority in the country where it happened, I fhould have confidered it as the invention of fome poet for the fable of a drama.

"A Portuguese gentleman, whom Ifhall beg leave to defcribe no otherwife than by the naine of Don Juan, was lately brought to trial for poifoning his half-ufter by the fame father, after the was with child by him. This gentleman had for fome years before his trial led a wery folitary life at his caftle in The neighbourhood of Montremos, a town on the road between Litbon and Badajos, the frontier garrifon of Spain: I was fhewn his caftle, as I paffed through that dismal country, about a mile diftant from The road, in a bottom furrounded with cork trees, and never faw a

more melancholy habitation. The made against

this gentleman, were fo ftrong, and the ftory was in fuch general circu lation in the neighbourhood where he lived, that although he laid out the greatest part of a confiderable income in acts of charity, nobody ever entered his gates to thank him for his bounty, or folicit relief, except one poor father of the Jeronymite convent in Montremos, who was his confeffor, and acted as his almoner at difcretion.

"A charge of fo black a nature, involving the crime of inceft as well as murder, at length reached the ears of juice, and a commiffion was fent to Montremos to make inquiry into thecafe. The fuppofed criminal made no attempt to elcape, but readily attended the fummons of the commillioners. Upon the trial it came out, from the confeffion of the pri O z foner,

foner, as well as from the depofition of witnesses, that Don Juan had lived from his infancy in the family of a rich merchant at Lisbon, who carried on a confiderable trade and correfpondence in the Brazils. Don Juan being allowed to take this merchant's name, it was generally fuppofed that he was his natural fon; and a clandestine affair of love having been carried on between him and the merchant's daughter, Jofepha, who was an only child, the became pregnant, and a medicine being administered to her by the hands of Don Juan, fhe died in a few hours after, with all the fymptoms of a perfon who had taken poifon. The mother of the young lady furvived her death but a few days; and the father threw himself into a convent of Mendicants, making over by deed of gift the whole of his property to the fuppofed murderer.

M

In this account there feemed a strange obfcurity of facts; for fome made ftrongly to the crimination of Don Juan, and the last mention ed circumstance was of fo contradictory a nature, as to throw the whole into perplexity; and therefore to compel the prifoner to a farther elucidation of the cafe, it was thought proper to interrogate him by torture.

"Whilft this was preparing, Don Juan, without betraying the leaft alarm upon what was going forward, told his judges that it would fave them and himself fome trouble, if they would receive his confeffion upon certain points, to which he fhould truly fpeak, but beyond which all the tortures in the world could not force one fyllable. He faid that he was not the fon, as was fuppofed, of the merchant, with whom he lived, nor allied to the deceased Jofepha any

otherwife than by the tenderest ties of mutual affection and a promise of marriage, which, however, he acknowledged had not been folemnized: that he was the fon of a gentleman of confiderable fortune in the Brazils, who left him an infant to the care of the merchant in queftion: that the merchant, for reafons best known to himself, chose to call him by his own name, and this being done in his infancy, he was taught to believe that he was an orphan youth, the fon of a dis ftant relation of the person who adopted him. He begged his judges therefore to obferve, that he never understood Jofepha to be his fifter; that as to her being with child by him, he acknowledged it, and prayed God forgiveness for an offence, which it had been his intention to repair by marrying her; that with refpect to the medicine, he certainly did give it to her with his own hands, for that she was fick in confequence of her pregnancy, and being afraid of creating alarm or fufpicion in her parents, had required him to order certain drugs from an apothecary, as if for him felf, which he accordingly did; and he verily believed they were faithfully mixed, inafmuch as he ftood by the man whilst he prepared the medicine, and faw every ingredient feparately put in.

"The judges thereupon afked him, if he would take it on his confcience to fay, that the lady did not die by poifon. Don Juan, bursting into tears for the first time, anfwered, to his eternal forrow he knew that the did die by poifon.Was that poifon contained in the medicine he took? It was-Did he impute the crime of mixing the poifon in the medicine to the apothecary, or did he take it on himfelf? Neither the apothecary nor himielt