Asy. It is, in reality, none of mine; it was long ago recommended by your old acquaintance Horace : it consists in keeping a dairy.

Compile a secret history of your heart and conduct; take notice of the manner in which your time is spent, and of the strain which runs through your discourse; how often the former is lost in trifles, how often the latter evaporates in vanity. Attend to the principle from which your actions flow; whether from the steady habitual love of God, or from some rambling impulse, and a customary propensity to please yourself. Minute down your sins of omission; how frequently you neglect to glorify your Creator, to edify your fellowcreatures, and to improve yourself in knowledge and holiness. Observe the frame of your spiritin religious duties; with what reluctance they are undertaken, and with what indevotion performed; with how many wanderings of thought, and how much dulness of desire; how often, in the common affairs of life, you feel the inordinate sallies of passion, the workings of evil concupiscence, or the intrusion of foolish imaginations.

Register those secret faults to which none but your own conscience is privy, and which none but the allseeing eye discerns. Often review these interesting memoirs; frequently contemplate yourself in this faithful mirror. An artist some time ago took a survey of your estate; drew the form, and measured the dimebsions of each inclosure; pictured out every hedge, and scarce omitted a single tree which grew upon the premises. Act thus with your will, your understanding, your affections. These are your noble internal demesne, of which none but yourself can be a competent surveyor.

Ther. It is unreasonable and preposterous, I must acknowledge, to be minutely exact in meaner matters, and use no accuracy of inspection in the most momentous affairs; to have a correct draught of our lands, which are a transient inheritance, and no map of that everlasting possession, the soul.

Ille velut fidis arcana sodalibus olim

Credebat libris: neque si male cesserat nsquam
Decurrens alio, neque si bene: quo fit, ut omnis
Votiva pateat velutí descripta tabella

Vita senis,-Horat. Sat.

Asp. Gratify me then, my dear Theron, in, this particular. As I purpose to set out very early in the morn ing, I shall insist upon it, that you do not rise before your usual time in order to compliment my departure; but I now make it my last wish, and my parting request, that you will, for some months at least, keep a diary.

You have wondered at my opinion, concerning the corruption of our nature, and the insufficiency of our righteousness. This may seem strange, this may appear shocking to a mind unacquainted with itself; but when you have searched your heart by this probe; when you have felt the pulse of your soul by self-examination, then you will be better able to judge of sentiments, and enter into the reasons of my faith.

my

By this means, we shall also discover the sins that most easily beset us; which most frequently elude our vigilance, and baffle our resolution. We shall learn how to post our guard, when to exercise the strictest watch, and where to direct the artillery of prayer. In a word, we shall learn better than from ten thousand volumes to know ourselves; a knowledge which was supposed by the ancient philosophers to descend from heaven, and which, I believe, our Christian divines will allow has a happy tendency to lead people thither; because, of all other preparatives, it best disposes them for that blessed Redeemer, who is the way, the only way to those blissful mansions.

Now I have mentioned a way, let me suppose you travelling through an unknown country; you come to a place where the road divides itself into two equally. inviting parts; you are at a loss which track to pursue. Whose direction will you choose to follow? that man's who has passed through neither of them? that man's who has passed through one of them only ? or that man's who has passed and repassed them both? To wait for an answer, would be an affront to your judgment. Only let me observe, that the last is your Aspasio's case. He has travelled long, and proceeded far, even in your path; all that circumspection and assiduity, all that prayer and self-denial, all that fast

E cœlo descendit, yvw σeavтov.Juven.

ing and alms, and every other means of grace could do in order to establish a righteousness of his own, has been done, but to no purpose. He has also trod every step in the way which he recommends to his beloved friend; he has made the trial; he can set his probatum est to whatever he advises, and may very truly say, with his divine Master, We speak that we do know, and testify that we have experienced."

Ther: I am sorry to observe that the night is coming on, and our conversation almost at an end. My regret is increased by the consideration of your intended journey. Though business obliges you to depart, it will, I hope, afford you leisure to write; this will be some compensation for the want of your company.

Yonder sun is sinking below the horizon, and just taking his leave of our earth. To retard the departing radiance, at least to alleviate the approaching loss, those western clouds catch the rays, and reflect them to our view in a most amusing diversity of colours. By this means we enjoy the great luminary in his beams, even when his orb is withdrawn from our sight. An epistolary correspondence has something of the same nature. Letters may he called the talk of absent friends. By this expedient they communicate their thoughts, even though countries, kingdoms, or seas intercept their speech. You must, therefore, promise me this satisfaction, and let me converse with my Aspasio by the pen, when I can no longer have an intercourse with him in person.

Asp. You have anticipated me, Theron, otherwise, what is now my promise would have been my request.

I cannot but take notice of another particularity in that magnificent assemblage of clouds. How they varied their appearance as the lamp of day changed its situation. A little while ago, those curtains of the sky were streaked with orange, or tinged with amber; presently they borrowed the blush of the rose, or the softened red of the pink; ere long they glow with vermilion, or deepen into crimson. Soon suceeeds the purple tinctured robe of majesty, and as soon (thus transient is all sublunary grandeur!) gives place to the sable veil John fii. 11.

of evening, or the gloomy pall of night; such, I trust, will be the issue of my Theron's present apprehensions. All his splendid ideas of human excellency and selfrighteousness will become faint, will lose their imaginary lustre, till at length they fade away, and darken into absolute self-abasement. Then the Sun of Righteousness will be amiable, will be desirable, as the beau ties of the dawn breaking upon the shades of night.

A

SERIES OF LETTERS.

LETTER I.

Aspasio opens the correspondence with some important articles of duty, designed to facilitate Self-examination and promote conviction of Sin.

DEAR THERON,

Aspasio to Theron.

I AM now at the seat of my worthy friend Camillus, where business and inclination will fix me for some weeks. This evening 1 had a most pleasing ramble; I have met with nothing so agreeable since I left your house, and lost your company.

The time was just arrived, and the scene was fully opened, which furnished our great poet with his fine description:

Now was the sun in western cadence low,

From noon; and gentle airs, due at their hour,

To fan the earth now waked, and usher in
The evening cool.

At this juncture, Camillus invited me to take the air. We walked several times along a close shady alley, arched with the foliage of filberts. Here, hid from every eye, and the whole world withdrawn from our view, we seemed like monks strolling in theis cloisters. Turning short at the end, we enter a parallel range of walnut trees. This transition was somewhat like advancing through a low porch into the aisles of a magnificent cathedral. The broad leaf and large trunk of

those lordly trees, their very diffusive spread, added to their prodigious height, give them an air of un common dignity. It swells the imagination with vast ideas, and entertains us with a romantic kind of defight, to expatiate amidst such huge columns, and under such superb elevations of living architecture.

Quitting our cathedral, we turn once again, and pass into a grand colonnade of oaks, so regular in their situation, so similar in their size, and so remarkably correspondent in every circumstance, that they looked like the twins of nature; not only belonging to the same family, but produced at the same birth. Through these lay a walk, straight, spacious, and gracefully long; far exceeding the last in the extent of its area, though much inferior in the stateliness of its ceiling. It put me in mind of that divine benignity which has allowed us six days for the prosecution of our own comparatively low affairs, and set apart but one for the more immediate attendance on the sublime exercises of devotion.

This walk was covered with the neatest gravel, and not a weed to be seen, nor one spire of grass through the whole extended surface. It stole into a continual ascent, yet so very gradually that the rise was scarce. discernible, either by the searching eye, the toiling feet, or the panting breath. At the extremity, a handsome summer-house shewed a flight of steps and half a Venetian door; the rest of the building was hid by the clustering branches.

As soon as we enter the apartment, Camillus throws open the left-hand sash, and with it a most enlarged and amusive prospect. The structure appeared si tuate on the brow of a considerable eminence, whose sides were partly confused and wild with broken rocks, partly shagged and perplexed with thorny shrubs. The spectator is agreeably surprised to find himself accommodated with so elegant a mansion on the sum mit of so rude and ruinous a spot; but how greatly is his surprise and his satisfaction augmented, when he casts his eye forward, and beholds the beautiful meads which from the foot of this ragged hill stretch themselves into a space almost unmeasurable!