fraud or a robbery. Now, in cases of this kind, (and many very important cases of this kind there are) to remove, the bars of religion, is to throw open the gates of oppression: it is to leave the honest exposed to the injurious inroads of those (and they are far, perhaps, the greatest part of mankind) who, though they would never " do justice and love mercy," in compliance with the dictates of nature, would scrupulously practise both in obedience to the rules of revelation.

The gross of our species can never, indeed, be influenced by abstract reasoning, nor captivated by the naked charms of virtue: on the contrary, nothing seenis more evident than that the generality of mankind must be engaged by sensible objects; must be wrought upon by their hopes and fears. And this has been the constant maxim of all the celebrated legislators, from the earliest establishment of government to this present hour. It is true, indeed, that none have contended more warmly than the ancients for the dignity of human nature, and the native disposition of the soul to be enamoured with the beauty of virtue: but it is equally true, that none have more strenuously inculcated the expediency of adding the authority of religion to the suggestions of nature, and maintaining a reverence to the appointed ceremonies of public worship. The sentiments of Pythagoras (or whoever he be who was author of those verses which pass under that philosopher's name) are well known upon this subject.

Αθανατους μεν πρωτα θεους, νόμῳ ως διάκειται,

Τιμα.

Many, indeed, are the ancient passages which might be produced in support of this assertion, if it were necessary to produce any passages of this kind to you, whom I have so often heard contend for the same truth with all the awakening powers of learning and eloquence. Suffer me, however, for the benefit of your acquaintance, to remind you of one or two which I do not remember ever to have seen quoted.

Livy has recorded a speech of Appius Claudius Crassus, which he made in opposition to certain demands of the tribunes. That zealous senator warmly argues against admitting the plebeians into a share of the consular dignity, from the power of taking the auspices being eriginally and solely vested in the patrician order. "But, perhaps," says Crassus, "I shall be told, that the pecking of a chicken, &c. are trifles unworthy of regard: trifling, however, as these ceremonies may now be deemed, it was by the strict observance of them that our ancestors raised this commonwealth to its present point of grandeur." Parva sunt hæc: sed parva ista non contemnendo, majores nostri maximam hanc rem fecerunt. Agreeably to this principle, the Roman historian of the life of Alexander describes that monarch, after having killed his friend Clitus, as considering, in his cool moments, whether the gods had not permitted him to be guilty of that horrid act, in punishment for his irreligious neglect of their sacred rites. And Juvenal* imputes the source of that torrent of

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Sat. II. 149.

vice which broke in upon the age in which he wrote, to the general disbelief that prevailed of the public doctrines of their established religion. Those tenets, he tells us, that influenced the glorious conduct of the Curii, the Scipios, the Fabricii, and the Camilli, were in his days so totally exploded, as scarce to be received even by children. It were well for some parts of the Christian world, if the same observation might not with justice be extended beyond the limits of ancient Rome: and I often reflect upon the very judicious remark of a great writer of the last century, who takes notice, that "the generality of Christendom is now well nigh arrived at that fatal condition, which immediately preceded the destruction of the worship of the ancient world; when the face of religion, in their public assemblies, was quite different from that apprehension which men had concerning it in private."

Nothing, most certainly, could less plead the sanction of reason, than the general rites of pagan worship. Weak and absurd, however, as they were in themselves, and, indeed, in the estimation too of all the wiser sort; yet the more thinking and judicious part, both of their statesmen and philosophers, unanimously concurred in supporting them as sacred and inviolable; well persuaded, no doubt, that religion is the strongest cement in the great structure of moral government. Farewell. I am, &c.

XLVII. TO CLEORA.

Sep. 1.

I LOOK upon every day, wherein I have not some communication with my Cleora, as a day lost; and I take up my pen every afternoon to write to you, as regularly as I drink my tea, or perform any the like important article of my life.

I frequently bless the happy art that affords me a means of conveying myself to you, at this distance, and, by an easy kind of magic, thus transports me to your parlour at a time when I could not gain admittance by any other method. Of all people in the world, indeed, none are more obliged to this paper commerce, than friends and lovers. It is by this they clude, in some degree, the malevolence of fate, and can enjoy an intercourse with each other, though the Alps themselves shall rise up between them. Even this imaginary participation of your society is far more pleasing to me than the real enjoyment of any other conversation the whole world could supply. The truth is, I have lost all relish for any but yours; and, if I were invited to an assembly of all the wits of the Angustan age, or all the heroes that Plutarch has celebrated, I should neither have spirits nor curiosity to be of the party. Yet with all this indolence or indifference about me, I would take a voyage as far as the pole to sup with Cleora on a lettuce, or only to hold the bowl while she mixed the syllabub. Such happy evenings I once knew: ah, Cleora! will they never return? Adieu.

XLVIII. TO EUPHRONIUS.

I HAVE read the performance you communicated to me, with all the attention you required; and I can, with strict sincerity, apply to your friend's verses, what an ancient has observed of the same number of Spartans who defended the passage of Thermopylæ; nunquam vidi plures trecentos! Never, indeed, was there greater energy of language and sentiment united together in the same compass of lines and it would be an injustice to the world, as well as to himself, to suppress so animated and so useful a composition.

A satirist, of true genius, who is warmed by a generous indignation of vice, and whose censures are conducted by candour and truth, merits the applause of every friend to virtue. He may be considered as a sort of supplement to the legislative authority of his country; as assisting the unavoidable defects of all legal institutions for the regulating of manners, and striking terror even where the divine prohibitions themselves are held in contempt. The strongest defence, perhaps, against the inroads of vice, among the more cultivated part of our species, is well-directed ridicule: they who fear nothing else, dread to be marked out to the contempt and indignation of the world. There is no succeeding in the secret purposes of dishonesty, without preserving some sort of credit among mankind; as there cannot exist a more impotent creature than a knave convict. To expose, therefore, the false pretensions of counterfeit virtue, is to