carried on under your name? Your ignorance of such injustice will be of little avail, if, through supineness, you have sanctioned abuses which vigilance might have prevented, or exertion punished.

interests, to ask you a few plain questions. Has your power been uniformly employed in discouraging injustice; in promoting particular as well as general good; in countenan cing religious as well as charitable institutions; in protecting the pious, as wel as in • Have you unkindly denied access to your assisting the indigent? Has your influence presence to the diffident solicitor, who has been conscientiously exerted in vindicating no other channel to preferment but your fainjured merit; has it been employed in de- vour; and if not able to serve him, have you fending insulted worth against the indolence softened your refusal by feelingly participaof the unfeeling, the scorn of the unworthy, ting in his disappointment, instead of aggrathe neglect of the unthinking? Has it been vating it by refusing to see and soothe him, exercised in patronizing modest genius, which when you could do no more? Have you would, without your fostering hand, have considered that, to listen to wearisome applisunk in obscurity? cations and pertinacious claims, is among the Have you, in the recommendations which drawbacks of comfort necessarily appended have been required of you, had an eye to the to your station? To examine into interfersuitableness of the candidate for the place, ing pretensions, while it is a duty you owe to rather than to a provision for an unworthy the applicant, is a salutary exercise of paapplicant, to the injury of the office? And tience to yourself; it is also the only certain have you honestly preferred the imperative means you possess of distinguishing the merclaims of the institution to the solicitations, itorious from the importunate.'

by him who is destitute of its opposite,Have you been equally careful, never, for the sake of popularity or the love of ease, to awaken false hopes, and keep alive false expectations in your retainers, though you knew you had no prospect of ever making them good?-thus committing your own honour for the sake of swelling the catalogue of your dependents; and, by insincerity and indecision, feeding them with delusive promises, when a firm negative, by extinguishing hope, might have put them on a more successful pursuit.

or even to the wants, of the individual? We dwell on this part of the subject the Have you never loaded a public, or injured more earnestly, because it is to be feared a private, establishment, by appointing an that even the tender-hearted and the benevunfit agent, because he was a burden on your olent. from the facility of a yielding temper, own hands, or a charge on your own purse? from weariness of importunity, from a wish Have you never promoted a servant who to spare their own feelings, as well as from a had "wasted your goods," and with whom too natural desire to get rid of trouble, are you parted for that very reason, to the super- frequently induced to confer and to refuse intendence of a charity, or to the manage- favours, not only against their principles and ment of an office, where you knew he would their judgment, but against their will. Yet have a wider sphere, and a more uncontrol- as no virtue is ever possessed in perfection led power, of purloining public property, or wasting private bounty, than in that from which your prudence had discharged him?' | To rise a step higher:- Have you never, if intrusted with a patronage over that peculiarly sacred office, which any one may well tremble to give or to receive," been governed by a spirit of nepotism in the disposal of it, which you perhaps severely censure under a certain other establishment most obviously corrupt? Have you never been engaged in promoting men, who, from their destitution of principle, are a dishonour to the profession in which you have been Some striking instances of delicate liberraising them, or, by the want of abilities are ality, recorded of a late lamented statesman, disqualified for it? Have you never conniv- have shown, that it is not too much to expect ed at the preferment of the weak or wicked, from human nature, that a man should exert to the exclusion of others whose virtues and his influence for the benefit of another, even talents eminently fitted them for the situa-though it were to his own disadvantage, and tion? Or. have you. rather, strenuously la- that he should be not only willing, but deboured to fix the meritorious in the place sirous, not to procure for himself the gratithey were so qualified to fill, while you sup- tude of the obliged person, nor to obtain his plied the wants of the undeserving or incom-admiration; but would be contented, that, petent relative out of your own purse? And while he himself afforded all the benefit, an have you habitually made a conscience of intervening agent should have all the credit. recommending adequate persons in prefer- This disinterestedness is among the nicer ence to the unworthy and the unfit, though criteria of a Christian spirit. the latter belonged to your own little senate, or swelled your own large train?

While we can with truth assign the most liberal praise to that spirit of charity which Have you habitually borne in mind that pre-eminently distinguishes the present peimportant, but disregarded, maxim, that riod, we are compelled to lament that justice what you do by another is done by your-is not held in equal estimation by some of self; and not only carefully avoided oppres- those who give the law to manners. This sion in your own person, but, rising superior considerably diminishes their influence, beto that selfish indolence, the bane, the grave cause it is the quality which, of all others, of every nobler quality, have you been care- they most severely require in their dependful that your agents do not exercise a tyranny ents, as being that which is most immediatewhich you yourself abhor, but which may be ly connected with their own interest. And

how far from equitable is it, to blame and punish the statuable offence in petty men, whose breach of integrity is unhappily facilitated by continual opportunity, or induced by the pressure of want, while the rigorous exacter of justice is as defective in the practice, as he is strict in the requisition?

The species of injustice alluded to, consists much in that laxity of principle which admits of a scale of expense disproportion ate to the fortune: this creates the inevitable necessity of remaining in heavy arrears to those who can ill afford to give long credit: in return, it induces in the creditor the habit, and almost the necessity, of enhancing the price of his commodity. The evil would be little, if the encroachment were only felt by those whose tardy payment renders exorbitance almost pardonable: but others, who practise the most exact justice, are involved in the penalty, without partaking in the offence and the correct are taxed for the improbity of the dilatory. This dilapi dating habit leads to an indolence in inspecting accounts; and the increasing unwillingness to examine into debts, increases the inability to discharge them; for debts, like sins, become more burdensome in proportion as people neglect to inquire into them.-| Perhaps there is no instance of misconduct which tends more directly to diminish influence than the imprulence of contracting debts, and the irregularity and consequent injustice of which it is sometimes unintentionally the cause.

:

liarly ill-formed, the call to beneficence is the call to enjoyment.

But to return.-The influence of the great, the observed of all observers,' descends into the social walks of life. The pinnacle on which they stand, makes their most trivial actions, and even words, objects of attention and imitation to those beneath them. The consciousness of this should be an additional motive for avoiding, in their ordinary conversation, not only what is corrupt, but whatever savours of levity and imprudence; the vanity of the little world is ready, not from mischief, but self-importance, to convert the thoughtless slips of the great into conse quence; their most frivolous remarks are quoted, merely that the quoter may seize the only occasion he could ever find of showing that he has been admitted to their company. This harmless little stratagem holds out a strong motive for those whose condition in life makes them subjects of observation, occasionally to let fall something that may be remembered, not merely because they said it, but because it was worth saving. This remark applies to superiority of talents, to be considered in our next head, still more than of rank.

As the great and noble are sufficiently disposed to look with reverted eye back to their ancestral honours, it were to be wished that they were all as ready, as we are happy to say some of them are, to cast the same careful retrospect to the ancient usages of their illustrious houses. There was a time when And here, if we might be allowed a remark family devotion was considered as a kind of somewhat foreign to our immediate subject, natural appendage to high rank, when doit may be observed, that the low conception mestic worship was almost as inseparably of justice of which we complain has infected connected with the aristocracy, as the church not only morals, but religion; or rather, with the state. The chapel was as much a what began in our principle towards God, part of the splendid establishment as the extends to our practice towards man. It is state-room. When the form of piety was the attribute of which we make the least thus kept up, the reality was more likely to scruple to rob the Almighty; for it is a fash-exist. Even the appearance was a homage ionable, though covert, mode of arranging to religion, the very custom was an honourahis justice, when we affect to exalt bis character by representing him as too merciful to punish. Justice is not only eminently conspicuous in her own central station, but gives life and light to other attributes. By cutting off superfluous expenses, temperance and sobriety grow out of justice; and, what is subtracted from luxury, is carried over, without additional expense, to the account of beneficence

ble recognition of Christianity. But, in the way of influence, it must have been of high importance; the domestics would have their sense of duty kept alive, and would with more alacrity serve those who they saw served God. It was a bond of political, as well as of moral union; it was the only occasion on which the rich and poor meet together.' There is something of a coalescing property in social worship. In acknowledgThe Holy Scriptures lay down some pre-ing their common dependance on their comcise and indispensable rules for the practice mon master, this equality of half an hour of justice, while they leave great latitude, at would be likely to promote subordination least as to the selection of its individual acts, through the rest of the day. Take it in an to charity. Justice can be maintained only inferior point of view, it was a useful disciby this distinct demand and rigid acquies- pline, it was a family muster-roll, a sort of cence, while charity would lose the nature domestic parade, which regularly brought and quality of benevolence, if it were under the privates before their commanding offiany such express and definite rules. Charity cers, and maintained order as well as detectmay chuse her object, but those of justice are ed absence. It was also calculated to prochosen for her. It was, doubtless, in mercy, mote the interests of the superiors, by perithat no absolute rule or limitation is made odically reminding their dependants of their respecting charity, that we might have the duty to God, which necessarily involves evgratification of a voluntary delight in its ex-ery human obligation.

ercise, for our nature is, in this respect, so We come now, to speak, though cursorily, kindly constituted, that, in minds not pecu- of another deposit of talent, not less exten

sive in its immediate effects and far more tion of such a possible character, regretting important in its consequences; the influence that his too moderate ambition should be of Genius and Learning. As the influence satisfied with the applause of an age or an of well-directed talents is too obvious to re-island, without once exercising his talents quire animadversion, we shall confine our on some topic which might have included brief remarks to their contrary direction.- the concerns of his whole species, which If we could suppose the man whose talents might have embraced the interests of both had, by pernicious principles, been diverted worlds? Who can forbear lamenting, that from their right channel, to have, at the he has risen so high without reflecting that, close of life, that clear view of his own char- in a moral sense, one step higher would acter, and the misapplication of his mental set him highest;' that he should have been powers, which will be presented to him when contented with the idolatrous worship of he opens his eyes on eternity, we should wit-some pagan sage as editor or annotator; and, ness as complete a contrast with his present for that humble meed, to relinquish the duty feelings as any two opposite descriptions of of glorifying his Maker, by instructing his character could exhibit.

fellow-creatures; as if that were a less splendid object, an inferior concern to be turned over to inferior abilities, and to which inferior abilities, were adequate?

Of all the various sentences to be awarded at the dread tribunal, can imagination figure one more severe than will be pronounced against the polluted and polluting If the awful apprehension of a future ac wit; the noblest faculties turned into arms count could, at the close of life, lead even against him who gave them, the eloquence the illustrious Grotius, who had with equal which would scarcely have disparaged the ability cultivated both secular and sacred tongue of angels, converted to the rhetoric studies, to wish that he could change charof hell? The mischief of a corrupt book is acters with a poor pious peasant, who used indefinite, both in extent and duration. to spend most of his time in reading the BiWhen the personal example of the writer ble at his gate, what may finally be the wish has done its worst, and has only ruined his of those who, having quitted a far less useful friends and neighbours, the operation of an life without any such contrite confession, unprincipled work may be just beginning - are brought to witness at once the retribuIt is a sin, the commission of which carries tion as signed to the conscientious use of one in it more of the character of its infernal solitary talent, and to feel that awarded to inspirer than any other. It is a crime not their own vast but abused allotment? That prompted by appetite, kindled by passion, or awakening parable of the Divine Teacher provoked by temptation: but a gratuitous, which presents so terrible a view of the voluntary, cold blooded enormity, the off- great gulf' which irrevocably separated spring of intellectual wickedness, the child two other neighbours, whose respective lots of spiritual depravity; the deepest sin with- in worldly circumstances resembled the out the slightest excuse. Sins of surprise distinctions of intellect in the preceding inhave infirmity to plead, but, in this frigid stance that gulf' which eternally divided villany, the badness of the motive keeps the holy beggar from the opulent sensualist pace with the turpitude of the act. The in--is equally applicable to the present case. tention is to offend God, the project is to ruin If any thing could deepen or widen a barrier man; the aim is to poison the temporal already hoplessly impassable, might it not be peace, the design is to murder the everlast- the substitution of ill-applied abilities for ing hope of all who come in contact with it. misemployed riches?* But the exclusive application of talents to An affecting thought involuntarily forces subjects perfectly unexceptionable, and itself upon us, on the departure of distinright and valuable, as far as they go, is some-guished genius. All those shining talents times an occasion in which we might mingle which had hitherto too exclusively filled our regret with admiration. We view with rev minds, sink at once in our estimation, beerence the profound scholar, a man, so far cause we know they are now nothing to from having lost any time in trifling, whose their possessor but as they were used, worse very amusements are labours, and whose re- than nothing if they were not used wisely.-laxation is intensity of thought, and sedulity In the court where he now stands for trial, of study. By unremitting diligence he has neither the cogent argument nor the pointed been daily adding fresh stores to bis pon- wit can secure his acquittal; happy if they derous mass of erudition, or periodically appear not strong evidences against it. The presenting new tomes to the literary world, qualities of his heart, which, perhaps, dazzled in return for those he has rifled. But, put by those of his head, we had not taken into the case, that such a man has never so much the account-his errors having been lost in as conceived the thought of lending to reli- his brightness-now come forward as the gion his weight of character, or the influ- others recede. Our feelings are solely occuence of his reputation, by devoting some pied with what may be now available to him little interval to a moral or religious specu- to whom we have owed pleasure or informalation; has never once entertained the idea tion. That fame which we lately thought so of occasionally directing his treasures of solid a good, seems now a painted cloud meltlearning into any channel which leads to the ing into air-that proud FOR EVER for which country where he and his volumes together, he wrote, seems dwindled to a point-that the durable register of his life, are soon about Let no one apply this to the great statesman to land,-who can forbear, in the contempla- of Holland.

visionary immortality which he had assigned would add to our happiness; while, with peras his meed, compared with the eternity on verted energy, we eagerly pursued what we which he has entered, is become less than had reason to think was contrary to our inthe shadow to the substance, less than the terest, duty, and happiness. But excuses halo to the sun. satisfy us now, to which we shall not then This idea strikes the mind with peculiar give the hearing for a moment. The thin force upon the recent decease of two writers disguise which the illusion of the senses now of uncommon reach of thought, profound casts over vanity, sloth, and error, will then research, and unbounded philological learn- be as little efficient as consolatory. ing. Had these two eminent men been pos He who carefully governs his mind will sessed of inferior minds, or a more dubious conscientiously regulate his time. To him fame, their death would have sounded the sig who thus accurately distributes it, who apnal of silence, no less to the moralist than to propriates the hour to its due employment, the satirist, as to the gross sensuality and cor- life will never seem tedious, yet counted by rupt principles of the one, the avowed athe- this moral arithmetic it will be really long. ism and profligate political doctrines of the If we compute our time as critically as our other. As it is, we cannot but refer to them, other possessions; if we assign its proporthough with feelings of pungent regret, and tions to its duties, though the divisions will only under a strong sense of the atonement then be so fully occupied that they will nevwhich such examples owe to the world for er drag, yet the aggregate sum will be found the mischief they do it, as a melancholy illus- sufficiently long for all the purposes to which tration of some of the preceding remarks. life is destined. It is to be feared that the unmixed commendation of their talents and erudition, without the gentlest censure of their principles and practices with which some of our journals abounded on the loss of these able but unhappy men, might tend to impress the ardent youthful student with an over-valuation of genius, unsanctified by Christian principles, of erudition undignified by virtuous

conduct.

Far, very far, from my heart be the ungenerous thought of treating departed eminence with disrespect, but in analyzing striking characters, is it not a duty to separate the precious from the vile,' lest unqualified admiration, where there is such large room for censure, should, while profusely embalming the dead, allure the ingenuous living to an imitation as unlimited as the panegyric was undistinguishing ?*

CHAP. VIII.

On time, considered as a Talent. If we already begin to feel what a large portion of life we have improvidently squandered-what days and nights have been suffered to waste themselves, if not criminally, yet inconsiderately if not loaded with evil, yet destitute of good-how much time has been consumed in worthless employments, frivolous amusements, listless indolence, idle reading, and vain imaginations-if things already begin to appear wrong, which we once thought at least harmless, though not perhaps useful-what appearance will they assume in that inevitable hour when all things will be seen in their true light, and appreciated according to their intrinsic value? We shall then feel in its full force how often we neglected what we knew to be our duty, shunned what we were aware was our interest, and declined what we yet believed

* To prevent any mistaken application of these remarks, it may be proper to avow that Professor Porson and Mr. Horne Tooke are the persons to whom they allude.

It is not a little absurd that they who most wish to abolish time would be the least willing to abridge life. But is it not unreasonable to endeavour to annihilate the parcels of which life is composed, and at the same time to have a dread of shrinking the stock? They who most pathetically lament the want of time, are either persons who plunge themselves into unnecessary concerns, or those who manage them ill, or those who do nothing. The first create the deficiency they deplore; the second do not so much want time as arrangement; the last, like brute animals laden with gold, groan under the weight of a treasure of which they make no use, and do not know the value.

They will never make a right use of time
who turn it over to chance, who live without
any definite scheme for its employment, or
any fixed object for its end. Such desultory
beings will be carried away by every trifle
that strikes the senses, or any whim that sei-
zes the imagination. They who live without
any ultimate point in view, can have no reg-
ular process in the steps which lead to it.
But though in order to prevent confusion,
to animate torpor, and tame irregularity, it
is always a duty to form a plan; occasions
will arise when it may be a higher duty to
break it. Both ourselves and our plans must
ever be kept subject to the will of a higher

wears life away without any settled scheme
power. That is an ill-regulated mind which
of action; that is a little mind which makes
itself a slave to any preconceived rule, when
a more imperative duty may arise to demand
its infraction. Providence may call us to
some work during the day which we did not
foresee in the morning.
sign must be relinquished to make way for
Even a good de-
a better, nor must we sacrifice a useful to a
favourite project, nor must we scruple to re-
nounce our inclinations at the call of duty
or of necessity, for God loves a cheerful doer
as well as a cheerful giver.'

In our use of time we frequently practise a delusion which cheats us of no inconsiderable portion of its actual enjoyment. The now escapes us while we are settling future

points not only of business, of ease, or of love, and of throwing away what we most pleasure, but of benevolence, of generosity, ear to lose, that time of which life is made of piety. These imaginary points to which up. If God does not give us a short time, we impatiently stretch forward in idea, we we can contrive to make it short by this fix at successive but distant intervals, en-wretched husbandry. It is not so much indeavouring by the rapid march of a hurry-digence of time as a prodigality in the waste ing imagination to annihilate the intervening of it, that prevents life from answering all spaces. One great evil of reckoning too ab- the ends for which it is given Few things solutely on marked periods which may never make us so independent of the world as the arrive, is, that, by this absorption of the prudent disposition of this precious article. mind, we neglect present duties in the anti-It delivers people from hanging on the charcipation of events not only remote but un-ity of others to emancipate them from the certain. Even if the anticipated period does slavery of their own company. We should arrive, it is not always applied to the pur- not only be careful not to waste our own pose to which it was pledged; and the event time, but that others do not rob us of it.— which was to feel the full weight of our inter- The distinction of crime between 'stealing ference and commanding influence, when it our purse' and stealing our good name' has has taken place, sinks into the undistin- been beautifully contrasted. That the purse guished mass of time and circumstances. is trash' is a sentiment echoed by many The point which we once thought, if it ever who yet set no small value on the trash so lícould be attained. would supply abundant berally condemned; while the waster of his matter, not only for present duty or pleasure, own, or the pilferer of another's time, esbut for delightful retrospection, loses itself, capes a censure which he ought more heavias we mingle with it, in the common heap ly to incur. It is a felony for which no reof forgotten things; and as we recede from it, pentance can make restitution, the commomerges in the dim obscure of faded recollec-dity being not only invaluable but irrecovertions Having arrived at the era, instead of seizing on that present so impatiently desired Considerable evil, with respect to the while it was future, we again send our ima economy of time, arises from an error which ginations out to fresh distances in search of infects some minds of a superior cast-a nofresh deceits. While we are pushing it on tion that contempt of order and custom are to objects still more remote, the large uncal-indications of genius, that great minds canculated spaces of comfort and peace, or of languor and discontent, which fill the chasm, and which we scarcely think worth taking into the account, make up far the greater part of life.

able.

not be tied to times, nor enslaved by seasons. They value themselves on being systematie only in their disdain of method, on being regular in nothing but irregularity; with them accident gives the law to action. They All this would be only foolish, and would pride themselves in not despatching business hardly deserve a harsher name, if these large but postponing it, and this in order to show uncultivated wastes, these barren interstices, with what ability they can retrieve time to these neglected subdivisions, had not all of which they are always in arrears. From them imperious demands of their own-if this vanity of intimating that they can exethey were not to be as rigorously accounted cute in hours what costs slower souls days or for, as the vivid spots and shining prospects weeks, the most pressing business is deferwhich promise so much and produce so lit-red to some indefinite period, and duties thus postponed are not seldom omitted.

tle.

really to be achieved without the old ingredients, time and study, what might he not expect would be accomplished with their assistance. Those who are now marvels would then be miracles! The too common consequence of this impatience of application, is to affect to despise whatever knowledge requires time to attain, and to consider whatever demands industry to acquire, as not worth acquiring.

Let us not then compute time by particu- The same confidence in his own powers lar periods or signal events. Let us not which leads a young man of genius to believe content ourselves with putting our festal days he can catch knowledge by intuition, see only into the calendar, but remember that every thing at a glance, and comprehend from the hour when reason begins to oper- every thing in a moment, tempts him to put ate, to the hour in which it shall be extin-off that moment. But if such wonders are guished, every particle of time is valuable; that no day can be insignificant, when every day is to be accounted for; that each one possesses weight and importance, because of each the retribution is to be received. In the prospect therefore of our coming time, let us not make great leaps from the expectation to the occurrence; but bearing in mind that small concerns make up the larger share of life, let us aim to execute well those which lie more immediately before us. For the instant occasion we have life and time in hand, for that which is prospective, we may no longer be in possession of either: and it is an argument of no small cogency, that he who devotes time to its best purposes, secures eternity for its best enjoyments

But we are guilty of the strange inconsistency of being most prodigal of what we best Vor. II.

21

Nor is this error monopolized by talents. We have known some, who, having no other evidence of genius to produce, never failed to be unpunctual. It is a wonder that the more intellectual, seeing their province thus invaded by dunces, do not become regular through mere contempt of their imitators, and abandon the abuse of time to those who know not how to spend it wisely.