trary to our comfort, health, and happiness success. Honour and glory crown our land. here, as it is fatal to our eternal interests; But honour and glory are not primary stars; and should be equally avoided on the ground they borrow their lustre from that immortal of natural and spiritual judgment Nay, if principle which is the fountain of all moral Christians are accused by the infidel of self-illumination. Let us bear in mind that to ish motives, in obeying God for their own be prosperous without piety, or joyful withinterest; is there not more absurdity in dis-out gratitude, or thankful without repentobeying Him, when, by so doing, we forfeit ance, or penitent without amendment, is to every thing which a well-directed self-love would show to be our highest advantage, and which common sense, human prudence, worldly wisdom, would teach us to pursue.

forfeit the favour of HIM from whom all prosperity is derived. We are told in the oracles of God, that the corruptions of an irreligious nation converted blessings into sins, when pride and abundance of idleness' were the ungrateful returns for fullness of bread.'

Saint Paul combats all those partialities of judgment which arise from the understanding submitting itself to the will, from conviction yielding to inclination. As it was Though we no longer perceive that open the truth of the principle, the rectitude of alienation from God, so apparent in the comthe act, which determined his judgment, so mencement of the French Revolution, yet do we read him to little purpose, if the same we perceive that return to Him which the qualities do not also determine ours. But restoration of our prosperity demands? Has men submit to unexamined predilections; the design of the Almighty, in visiting us they do not allow themselves to be convin- with the calamities of a protracted war been ced of any thing with which they are not answered by a renunciation of the sins for first pleased. Practical errors are rarely which it was sent? Has his goodness, in putadopted from conviction, but almost always from inclination.

ting a happy period to these calamities, been practically acknowledged? acknowledged, Our apostle frequently includes lovers of not merely by the public recognition of a their ownselves' in his catalogue of grievous wisely appointed day but by a visible reoffenders. He considers selfishness as a formation of our habits and manners? state of mind inconsistent with Christianity. We are now most imperatively called upNo other religion, indeed, had ever shown on to give unequivocal proof, that our devothat it was sinful; no other had ever taught tion, in the late twenty years succession of its followers to resist it; no other had fur-national fasts, had some meaning in it, benished arms against it, had enabled its disci-yond the bare compliance with authority, ples to conquer it. Yet, may we not venture beyond the mere impulse of terror. Let it to assert, that among the prominent faults of not be inferred, from any apparent slackness this our age, is a growing selfishness. We of principle, that ours was the prayer of namean not that sullen selfishness which used ture for relief, more than of grace for parto display itself in penurious habits, in shab- don; the cry for escape from danger, rather by parsimony, and a sordid frugality, which than for deliverance from sin. received part of its punishment in the selfinflicted severities of its votary, and part in the discredit and contempt which attended it. But we mean, that luxurious selfishness which has its own gratification in the vanity it indulges; and its own reward in the envy it secretly awakens, in the admiration it openly excites.

learn righteousness, what should we not learn, what should we not practice, when blessings are accumulated upon us-blessings, more multiplied in their number, more ample in their extent, more valuable in their nature, more fraught with present advantages, more calculated for our eternal good, than ever were experienced by our ancestors in any period of our history?

As God has abundantly granted us all the temporal blessings for which we then solicited, let us give full proof that our petitions were spiritual as well as political; as He, in pity, has withdrawn the anger of his chastisements, let us, in gratitude, take away the provocation, of our offences. He has long tried us with correction, he is now trying us The tide of an increasing dissipation, gor- with mercies. If, as we are told, when his geous, costly, and voluptuous beyond all pre-judgments are abroad in the earth, we should cedent, has swept away the mounds and ramparts within which prudence in expense, and sobriety in manners, had heretofore confined it. Strange! that fashion and custom, and the example of others, are brought forward as a vindication by beings, who know they must be themselves individually responsible for the errors and the sins into which they are plunged by imitation, as well as by original evil. Numbers are pleaded as a valid Let us not triumphantly compare ourselves apology for being carried headlong down the with worse nations, unless we know what use torrent. But have we ever heard that the they would have made of mercies which we plague was thought a slighter distemper from have neglected; let us not glory in our suthe greatness of the numbers infected? On periority to countries who have had to plead the contrary, is not the extent of the ravage a bad government, and a worse religion. Its most alarming symptom? and is not the To be better than those who are bad, is a weekly diminution in the numbers publicly low superiority now, and will not be admitregistered as the only signal of returning ted as a reason for our acquittal hereafter. health? Corrupt Tyre, profligate Zidon, whose exGod has blessed the late unparalleled extinction the prophet Ezekiel had predicted erfions of this country with a proportionate in the most portentous menaces, were pro

nounced by Infinite Compassion to be far less criminal than the instructed people to whom the pathetic admonition was addressed. If blindness and ignorance might be offered as a plea for those heathen cities, what should extenuate the guilt of the enlightened regions of Galilee.

sociations with which they may be accom panied?

Have we forgotten, that the mother of the fine arts, licentious Greece, injured Rome in her vital interests, her character, her honour, and her principles, more irretrievably, than all her losses during her military conflict with them had done? that this great peo ple, the England of antiquity, never lost sight of her grandeur. never sacrificed her superiority, but when she stooped to imitate the vices, to adopt the manners, and to import the philosophy of the vanquished enemy and, in short, that Greece amply revenged herself on her conqueror by a contact, which communicated an inextinguishable moral contagion?

To revert to a remoter, and a higher source; did not the chosen people of God suffer more essentially in their most important interests, by their familiar communications, after their conquest, with the polluted Canaanites, than in their long and perilous warfare with them?

It was on the most solemn of all occasions, that of a description of the general resurrection, that St. Paul breaks in on his own awful discussion, to suggest the corruption of manners' inseparable from evil communications.' Does it not give an alarming idea of his serious view of the subject, that he should so intimately connect it with the immediate concerns of the eternal world? Can we safely separate a cause and a consequence which he has so indissolubly joined? As the joy felt by the patriarchal family in the ark, when the bird of peace, with its symbol in her mouth, returned to this little remnant of an annihilated world; such, in its kind, was the joy experienced when the voice of the charmer was recently heard on our shores, and throughout an almost deso- Let not these necessary inquiries be conlated quarter of the globe. But let not our strued into the language of vulgar prejudice, own country forget that this peace, so fer- into the unchristian wish to perpetuate an vently desired, and so graciously accorded, unjustifiable aversion to a nation, because may, by our neglecting to improve the bless- they have been our political enemies. We ing, become more fatally and irretrievably feel no desire, like the Carthagenian father, injurious, than that state of hostility which to entail our own hatred on our offspring, to we have so long and so justly deplored. Let make our posterity vow interminable hostilius not forget, that shutting the gates of the temple of Janus, by opening those of Paris, may only have changed the nature, while it has deteriorated the character, of the war

fare.

ty to a people, because their predecessors have suffered by them. We have no wish to persist in personal alienation from any country, especially from one which Divine Providence has made our nearest neighbour. God forbid !

What incantation is there in the name of Peace, that could, as by the touch of a ma- But may we not venture, with all diffigician's wand, produce, at once, a total re- dence, to ask, should there not be a little volution in the character of a people, and in space allowed them, after their deep pollu our opinion of them? What charm is there tion, to perform that quarantine, which even in a sound that could so transform a great our ships are obliged to undergo, before we nation, abandoned for a quarter of a century receive them on our own shores? May we to boundless vice, and avowed infidelity, as not further ask, in the present instance, if to render familiar intercourse with them by plunging into the infection on theirs, we profitable, or their society even safe; which do not fearfully aggravate the peril of the could instantaneously convert this scene of pestilence?

alarm, into a scene of irresistible attraction; In these observations we are conscious of could cause, at once, this land of terror to be wandering into illimitable topics-topics desired as impatiently, and sought as im- which may appear irrelevant to our general petuously, as if it had been the Land of object. It is fit we should resume that obPromise? ject, and draw to a close.

Will the borrowed glory, or rather the Let us observe, for our own imitation, that stolen renown, arising from pilfered pic- what Saint Paul might be called to do, or to tures, or plundered statues; will the splen- suffer, in the intermediate stages to his final dour of public buildings, buildings cemented rest, he knew not, nor was he solicitous to with the blood of millions; will all the works know. Of one thing he was assured, that a of art, however exquisite, atone for the de- day was coming, when, whatever now ap gradation of the human, and it may be al- peared mysterious, would be made clear.most said the extinction of the Christian While others only knew Him of whom they character? Will marbles, and paintings, had heard, he knew Him in whom he believ and edifices, expiate the utter contempt of ed. He desired no other ground of confi morality, and all the other still lingering ef- dence. All those superior concerns, on fects of the legal abolition of Christianity which his heart was set, lay beyond the and the public disavowal of God? Will the grave; lay in the hands of Him to whom he flower of England, the promising sons and had trusted all which he accounted valuable. blooming daughters of our nobles and our The soul which he had committed to his Sagentry reap a measure of improvement from viour, he knew that this Saviour was able these exhibitions of genius, which may be to preserve against that day.' Swallowed likely to compensate for the pernicious as-up in the grandeur of the thought, he disre

gards the common forms of speech, and we have, beyond any other age or people, leaves it to his friend to supply what was seen the kingdoms of this world transferred, rather understood than expressed-what day depopulated, destroyed: there we are promhe meant. ised a kingdom which cannot be moved.

If it is astonishing that any should disbelieve a religion, which has such unparalleled attestations to its truth, as the religion which Saint Paul preached, is it not far more astonishing that, professing not to have any doubt of its truth, any should continue to live as if they believed it to be false; that any should live without habitual reference to that day, to which his writings so repeatedly point, without labouring after a practical conviction of that paramount doctrine on which he so unweariedly descants, the benefits of the death of Christ?

This doctrine our apostle has, beyond all other writers, irrefragably proved to be the only argument of real efficacy against our own fear of death. All the reasonings of philosophy, all the motives drawn from natural religion, all the self-complacent retrospection of our own virtues, afford no substantial support against it. This great doctrine, as the apostle also repeatedly proves, supplies the only principle which can set us above the sorrows of life. Mere morality often raises us above the grosser corruptions of sense, but it does not raise us above the entanglements of the world; it does not lift us above perplexing fears and anxious solicitudes; it does not raise us above the agitations of desire; it does not rescue us from the doubts and harassings of an unsettled mind; it does not deliver us from the pangs of an awakened conscience. A mere moral taste may sustain character and support credit, but it does not produce present holiness, nor peace, nor a hope full of immortality. It neither communicates strength to obey, nor power to resist, nor a heart to love, nor a will to serve.

Let us then study with holy Paul, that Gospel wherein the true secret of happiness, as well as the great mystery of godliness, is revealed. Our Divine Teacher does not say read, but search the Scriptures. Its doctrines are of everlasting interest. All the great objects of history lose their value, as through the lapse of time they recede farther from us; but those of the book of God are commensurate with the immortality of our nature. All existing circumstances, as they relate to this world merely, lose their importance as they lose their novelty; they even melt in air as they pass before us.

With Holy Paul then let us take the Bible for the subject of our meditation, for the ground of our prayer, the rule of our conduct, the anchor of our hope, the standard of our faith. Let us seriously examine whether this faith is built on the same eternal basis with that of the apostle, whose character we have been contemplating, whether we are endeavouring to erect upon it a superstructure of practical goodness worthy of the broad and sure foundation?

Let us close our frequent reference to Saint Paul as a pattern for general imitation, by repeating one question illustrative of those opposite qualities which ought to meet in every Christian. If the most zealous advocate of spiritual influences were to select, from all the writers of sacred antiquity, the most distinguished champion of his great cause, on whom would he fix his choice? And if the most strenuous assertor of the duty of personal activity in moral virtue were to choose from all mankind the man who most completely exemplified this character in himself, where must he search? Would not the two antagonists, when they meet in the field of controversy, each in defence of his favourite tenet, find that they had fixed on the same man,--Paul, the Apostle of the Gentiles? If then we propose him as our model, let us not rest till something of the same combination be formed in ourselves.

To this end let us diligently study his epistles, in which the great doctrines of Salvation are amply unfolded, and the mode of its attainment completely detailed. In contemplating the works of this great master of the human mind, we more than perceive, we feel their applicableness to all times, places, circumstances, and persons; and this, not only because the Word of Eternal Life is always the same; but because the human heart, which that word reveals to itself, is still the same also. We behold, as in a mirror, the fidelity, we had almost said the identity, of his representation, face answering to face. We feel that we are personally interested in every feature he delineates. He lets us into the secrets of our own bosoms. He discloses to us the motives of our own conduct. He touches the true springs of right and wrong, lays bare the moral quality of actions, brings every object to the true point of comparison with each other, and all to the genuine standard of the unerring Gospel. By him we are clearly taught that the same deed done from the desire of pleasing God, or the desire of popular favour, becomes as different in the eye of religion, as any two actions in the eye of men.

While we are discussing events they cease to be; while we are criticising customs they become obsolete; while we are adopting fashions they vanish; while we are condemning or defending parties, they change sides. While we are contemplating feuds, opposing factions, or deploring revolutions, they are extinct. Of created things, mutability is There we shall see also, that Saint Paul their character at the best, brevity their du- evinced the sincerity of his eternal hopes by ration at the longest. But the word of the constantly preparing himself for their fruíLord endureth for ever' All that the heart tion. These hopes shaped his conduct, and craves, that word supplies. This state of moulded his spirit to a resemblance of the things is all instability; the Gospel points state he hoped for: and he best proved his 'to a city which hath foundations.' Here belief that there really was such a state by VOL. II.

42

labouring to acquire the dispositions which comparison? Are we not alarmed at the might qualify him for its enjoyment. Without bare idea of bringing reproach on his Gospel, this aim, without this effort, without this per- or dishonour on his name? severance, his faith would have been fruitless, Christians! why would you wait till you his hope delusive, his profession hypocrisy, arrive at heaven, before you contribute to and his preaching vain.' the great end of every dispensation,-nameLet us image to ourselves the Saviour of ly, that God may be glorified in his Saints, the world, holding up professing Christians and admired in all them that believe? Even as a living exemplification of his religion; now, something of that assimilation should of that religion which he taught by his doc-be taking place, which will be perfected trines, and ratified by his blood. Let us re- when we shall see Him as He is,' and which present him to our imagination as referring will never take place if the resemblance be to the lives of his followers for the truth of his gin not here. Beatification is only the finword Do we not tremble at such a respon-ishing of the likeness. Intuition will only sibility? Do we not shrink from such a complete the transformation.

CŒLEBS IN SEARCH OF A WIFE.

COMPREHENDING

OBSERVATIONS ON DOMESTIC HABITS AND MANNERS, RELIGION AND MORALS.

WHEN I quitted home on a little excursion in the spring of this present year, 1808, a thought struck me, which I began to put into immediate execution. I determined to commit to paper any little circumstance that might arise, and any conversations in which I might be engaged, when the subject was at all important, though there might be nothing particularly new or interesting in the discussion thereof. I fulfilled my intention as occasions arose to furnish me with materials, and on my return to the north, in the autumn of this same year, it was my amusement on my journey to look over and arrange these papers.

As soon as I arrived at my native place, I lent my manuscript to a confidential friend, as the shortest way of imparting to him whatever had occurred to me during our separation, together with my reflec tions on those occurrences. I took care to keep his expectations low, by apprizing him, that in a tour from my own house in Westmoreland, to the house of a friend in Hampshire, he must not look for adventures, but content himself with the every day details of common life, diversified only by the different habits and tempers of the persons with whom I had conversed.

He brought back my manuscript in a few days, with an earnest wish that I would consent to its publication; assuring me that he was of opinion it might not be altogether useless, not only to young men engaged in the same pursuit with myself, but to the general reader. He obviated all objections arising from my want of leisure, during my present interesting engagements, by offering to undertake the whole business himself, and to release me from any further trouble, as he was just setting out for London, where he proposed passing more time than the printing would require.

Thus I am driven to the stale apology for publishing what perhaps it would have been more prudent to have withheld the importunity of friends; an apology so commonly unfounded, and so repeatedly alleged, from the days of John Faustus to the publication of Calebs.

But whether my friend or my vanity had the largest share of influence, I am willing to indulge the hope that a better motive than either friendship or vanity was an operating ingredient in my consent. Be that as it may, I sent him my copy, "with all its imperfections on its head." It was accompanied by a letter, of which the following extract shall conclude these short prefatory remarks:

"I here send you my manuscript, with permission to make what use of it you please. By publish ing it I fear you will draw on me the particular censure of two classes of critics. The novel reader will reject it as dull. The religious may throw it aside as frivolous. The one will accuse it of exces sive strictness; the other of censurable levity. Readers of the former description must be satisfied with the following brief and general answer

"Had it been my leading object to have indulged in details that have amusement only for their end, it might not have been difficult to have produced a work more acceptable to the tastes accustomed to be gratified with such compositions. But to entertain that description of readers makes no part of my design.

"The persons with whom I have associated in my excursion, were, principally, though not exclu sively, the family of a country gentleman, and a few of his friends-a narrow field, and unproductive of much variety! The generality of these characters move in the quiet and regular course of domestic life. I found them placed in no difficult situations. It was a scene rather favourable to reflection than description. Social intercourse, and not striking events, marked the daily progress of my visit. I had little of pathetic scenes or trying circumstances to work on my own feelings, or, by the relation of them, to work on the feelings of others. My friend's house resembled the reign of some pacific sovereigns.

It was the pleasantest to live in, but its annals were not the most splendid to record. The periods which make life happy, do not always render history brilliant.

"Great passions, therefore, and great trials growing out of them, as I did not witness, I have not attempted to delineate. Love itself appears in these pages, not as an ungovernable impulse, but as a sentiment arising out of qualities calculated to inspire attachment in persons under the dominion of reason and religion, brought together by the ordinary course of occurrence, in a private family party.

"The famliar conversations of this little society comprehend a considerable portion of this slender work. The texture of the narrative is so slight, that it barely serves for a ground into which to weave the sentiments and observations which it was designed to introduce.

"It may not be unnecessary to anticipate an objection to which these conversations may sometimes be thought liable. In a few instances, the speeches may be charged with a degree of stiffness, and with a length not altogether consistent with familiar dialogue. I must apologize for this by observing, that when the subjects were serious, the dialogue would not, in every instance, bend to such facilities, nor break into such small parcels, as may easily be effected in the discussion of topics of gayer inter

course.

"But it is time to meet the objections of the more pious reader, if any such should condescend to peruse this little performance. If it be objected, that religious characters have been too iudustriously brought forward, and their faults somewhat too severely treated, let it be remembered, that while it is one of the principal objects of the work to animadvert on those very faults, it has never been done with the insidious design of depreciating the religion, but with the view, by exposing the fault, to correct the practice. Grossly vicious characters have seldom come in my way, but I had frequent occasion to observe the different shapes and shades of error in various descriptions of society, not only in those worldly persons who do not quite leave religion out of their scheme, but on the mistakes and inconsistencies of better characters, and even on the errors of some who would be astonished not to find themselves reckoned altogether religious. I have not so much animadverted on the unavoidable faults and frailties inseparable from humanity, even in the best characters, and which the best characters most sensibly feel, and most feelingly deplore, as on those errors which are often tolerated, justified, and in some instances systematized.

"If I have been altogether deceived in the ambitious hope that these pages may not be entirely useless; ifI have failed in my endeavours to show how religion may be brought to mix with the concerns of ordinary life, without impairing its activity, lessening its cheerfulness, or diminishing its usefulness; if I have erred in fancying that material defects exist in fashionable education; if I have been wrong in supposing that females of the higher class may combine more domestic knowledge with more intellectual acquirement, that they may be at the same time more knowing and more useful, than has always been thought necessary or compatible; in short, if I shall be found to have totally disappointed you, my friend, in your too sanguine opinion that some little benefit might arise from the publication, Ishall rest satisfied with a low and negative merit. I must be contented with the humble hope that no part of these volumes will be found injurious to the important interests, which it was rather in my wish than in my ability to advance; that where I failed in effecting good, little evil has been done: that if my book has answered no valuable purpose, it has, at least, not added to the number of those publications, which, by impairing the virtue, have diminished the happiness of mankind: that if I possessed not talents to promote the cause of Christian morals, I possessed an abhorrence of those principles which lead to their contamination.

"CŒLEBS."

CELEBS.

CHAP. I.

affirm that it is the perfection of the character of a wife,

I HAVE been sometimes surprised, when in "To study household good, conversation I have been expressing my adAnd good works in her husband to promote." miration of the character of Eve in her state of innocence, as drawn by our immortal poNow, according to my notion of houseet, to bear objections stated by those, from hold good,' which does not include one idea whom, of all critics, I should have least ex- of drudgery or servility, but which involves pected it-the ladies. I confess that, as the a large and comprehensive scheme of excelSophia of Rousseau had her young imagin- lence, I will venture to affirm, that let a woation captivated by the character of Fene- man know what she may, yet if she knows lon's Telemachus, so I early became enam- not this, she is ignorant of the most indispenoured of that of Milton's Eve. I never form-sable, the most appropriate branch of female ed an idea of conjugal happiness, but my knowledge. Without it, however, she may mind involuntarily adverted to the graces inspire admiration abroad, she will never exof that finished picture. cite esteem, nor of course durable affection at home, and will bring neither credit nor comfort to her ill-starred partner.

The ladies, in order to justify their censure, assert, that Milton, a harsh domestic tyrant, must needs be a very inadequate The domestic arrangements of such a wojudge, and, of course, a very unfair delinea- man as filled the capacious mind of the poet, tor of female accomplishments. These fair resembles, if I may say it without profanecavillers draw their inference from premises, ness, those of Providence, whose under-agent from which I have always been accustomed she was. Her wisdom is seen in its effect. to deduce a directly contrary conclusion. Indeed it is rather felt than seen. It is senThey insist that it is highly derogatory from sibly acknowledged in the peace, the happithe dignity of the sex, that the poet should ness, the virtue of the component parts; "in