this mistake is the effect of weakness or vanity, which is common to all mankind: the character of both would then assume a very different aspect, love would again be excited by the return of its object, and each would be impatient to exchange acknowledgments, and recover the felicity which was so near being lost.

But if after we have admitted an acquaintance to our bosom as a friend, it should appear that we had mistaken his character; if he should betray our confidence, and use the knowledge of our affairs, which perhaps he obtained by offers of service, to effect our ruin: if he defames us to the world, and adds perjury to falsehood; if he violates the chastity of a wife, or seduces a daughter to prostitution; we may still consider him in such circumstances as will incline us to fulfil the precept, and to regard him without the rancour of hatred or the fury of revenge.

Every character, however it may deserve punishment, excites hatred only in proportion as it ap pears to be malicious; and pure malice has never been imputed to human beings. The wretch, who has thus deceived and injured us, should be considered as having ultimately intended, not evil to us, but good to himself. It should also be remembered that he has mistaken the means; that he has forfeited the friendship of Him whose favour is better than life, by the same conduct which forfeited ours; and that to whatever view he sacrificed our temporal interest, to that also he sacrificed his own hope of immortality; that he is now seeking felicity which he can never find, and incurring punishment that will last for ever. And how much better than this wretch is he, in whom the contemplation of his condition can excite no pity? Surely if such an enemy hungers, we may, without

suppressing any passion, give him food; for who that sees a criminal dragged to execution, for whatever crime, would refuse him a cup of cold water?

On the contrary, he whom God has forgiven must necessarily become amiable to man: to consider his character without prejudice or partiality, after it has been changed by repentance, is to love him; and impartially to consider it, is not only our duty but our interest.

Thus may we love our enemies, and add a dignity to our nature of which pagan virtue had no conception. But if to love our enemies is the glory of a Christian, to treat others with coldness, neglect, and malignity, is rather the reproach of a fiend than a man. Unprovoked enmity, the frown of unkindness, and the menaces of oppression, should be far from those who profess themselves to be followers of Him who in his life went about doing good; who instantly healed a wound that was given in his defence; and who, when he was fainting in his last agony, and treated with mockery and derision, conceived at once a prayer and an apology for his murderers; Father, forgive them, they know not what they do.

THE character of the scholars of the present age will not be much injured or misrepresented by saying, that they seem to be superficially acquainted with a multitude of subjects, but to go to the bottom of very few. This appears in criticism and polite learning, as well as in the abstruser sciences: by the diffusion of knowledge its depth is abated.

Eutyches harangues with wonderful plausibility on the distinct merits of all the Greek and Roman classics, without having thoroughly and attentively perused, or entered into the spirit and scope of one of them. But Eutyches has diligently digested the dissertations of Rapin, Bouhours, Felton, Blackwall, and Rollin; treatises that administer great consolation to the indolent and incurious, to those who can tamely rest satisfied with second-hand knowledge, as they give concise accounts of all the great heroes of ancient literature, and enable them to speak of their several characters, without the tedious drudgery of perusing the originals. But the characters of writers, as of men, are of a very mixed and complicated nature, and are not to be comprehended in so small a compass; such objects do not admit

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of being drawn in miniature, with accuracy, and distinctness.

To the present prevailing passion for French moralists and French critics, may be imputed the superficial shew of learning and abilities of which I am complaining. And since these alluring authors are become not only so fashionable an amusement of those who call themselves the polite world, but also engross the attention of academical students, I am tempted to inquire into the merits of the most celebrated among them of both kinds.

That Montagne abounds in native wit, in quick penetration, in a perfect knowledge of the human heart, and the various vanities and vices that lurk in it, cannot justly be denied. But a man who undertakes to transmit his thoughts on life and manners to posterity, with the hopes of entertaining and amending future ages, must be either exceedingly vain or exceedingly careless, if he expects either of these effects can be produced by wanton sallies of the imagination, by useless and impertinent digressions, by never forming or following any regular plan, never classing or confining his thoughts, never changing or rejecting any sentiment that occurs to him. Yet this appears to have been the conduct of our celebrated essayist: and it has produced many awkward imitators, who, under the notion of writing with the fire and freedom of this lively old Gascon, have fallen into confused rhapsodies and uninteresting egotisms.

But these blemishes of Montagne are trifling and unimportant, compared with his vanity, his indecency, and scepticism. That man must totally have suppressed the natural love of honest reputation, which is so powerfully felt by the truly wise and good, who can calmly sit down to give a

catalogue of his private vices, and publish his most secret infirmities, with the pretence of exhibiting a faithful picture of himself, and of exactly pourtraying the minutest features of his mind. Surely

he deserves the censure Quintilian bestows on Demetrius, a celebrated Grecian statuary, that he was • nimius in veritate, et similitudinis quam pulchritudinis amantior;' more studious of likeness than of beauty.

Though the maxims of the Duke de la Rochefoucault, another fashionable philosopher, are written with expressive elegance, and with nervous brevity; yet I must be pardoned for affirming, that he who labours to lessen the dignity of human nature, destroys many efficacious motives for practising worthy actions, and deserves ill of his fellow-creatures, whom he paints in dark and disagreeable colours. As the opinions of men usually contract a tincture from the circumstances and conditions of their lives, it is easy to discern the chagrined courtier, in the satire which this polite misanthrope has composed on his own species. According to his gloomy and uncomfortable system, virtue is merely the result of temper and constitution, of chance, or of vanity, of fashion, or the fear of losing reputation. Thus humanity is brutalized; and every high and generous principle is represented as imaginary, romantic, and chimerical; reason, which by some is too much aggrandized and almost deified, is here degraded into an abject slave of appetite and passion, and deprived even of her just and indisputable authority. As a Christian, and as a man, I despise, I detest such debasing principles.

Rochefoucault, to give a smartness and shortness to his sentences, frequently makes use of the antithesis, a mode of speaking the most tiresome and