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LETTER XXIX.

A SHORT time after our last conversation, L-- and myself passed a person who had the appearance of recent recovery from severe illness; he was still pale and thin, but his eyes were lighted up in thankfulness; he leaned on a stick, but there was hope even in his weakness. "There," said my friend, “behold an example of the effect of energy well excited; of human capacity directed to a specific end. That man was assailed by disease; the healing art has baffled the attack, and is fast restoring him to health and wonted activity. Is not that art a full proof of the correctness of my position,-THAT WE ARE LEFT TO THE EXERCISE OF FACULTY, AS THE NOBLEST ATTRIBUTE OF OUR BEING?' Was that art specifically revealed? Was man especially instructed to shun the rattle-snake and the shark, or did experience teach him their deadliness and rapacity? A friend of mine has said to me, 'he was of opinion we knew too much or too little;' but I suspect we know, or which is the same thing, may know, just enough.

Was the telescope revealed to Galileo? the instrument by whose assistance we have succeeded in ranging through a space before unpierced by mortal eye; in exploring and proving wonders till then hidden in gloom impenetrable; whose discovery was as a second morn of Creation: or will Fanaticism, at the last kick, take refuge in brutality, and doggedly pronounce 'all discovery to be Revelation;' because, if so, Count Romford's stove was as much a part thereof, as poor Galileo's invention. Were Haydn and Mozart divinely inspired, or did their excellence result from power inherent, assisted by judicious culture? Revelation and useful knowledge are not always in parallel; and, indeed, it has been a question among the followers of false philosophy, whether the former has at all contributed to the extension of the latter. Certain it is, Galileo was compelled to a recantation and denial of the principles of his discovery, (which to be sure was a trifle, a silly tool,) and the question can hardly be decided at this day, because it is acknowledged Revelation has been made: and it is equally certain, that works of morality, the love and practice of virtue for its own sake, and from a profound sense of its essential necessity as conducive to true happiness, are become as cleanliness to

habitual filth, "works of supererogation." It is certainly insufficient that a man should be a good citizen; nor is it enough to quiet some, that he also discharges all the social duties of domestic life with fidelity and exactness; that he is confessedly a good son, a good father, a good husband. Those are qualities by no means satisfactory; they are ragged virtues, unacceptable: unless he is thus amiable from adherence to some particular doctrine, he is handed over to damnation, betimes; while the consigners talk over him as an absentee, at their protracted gorges of snuff and port. Some have said ridiculously enough, that the operation of grace is chaotic: that an impression founded on the disclaimer of all outward sensible perception, must needs be peculiarly fanciful, inasmuch as the patient may not resort to his senses, as sober interpreters of this inborn emotion; but is bound by the tenure of his new grant, to hold under tribute of the surrender of natural feelings, even to forfeiture, the instant he has recourse to the protection of his old tenure, which virtually became extinct on his admission under the new; which last, these falsely-learned fail not to condemn as unjust and arbitrary. These strictures are too self-evidently absurd to engage our attention, or divert us from more serious en

quiry on another branch of discussion, though, if I mistake not, one of our learned bodies once prize-essay-What

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gave as the theme of a prize-essay,steps did the Heathen philosophers take to prevent the introduction of doctrines opposed to their own, and why?' or very much to that effect; I forget the precise words: of course the essayists argued only on one side of the question, that is, why the Heathens would not receive, &c. the evidences, &c.; but suppose one had chanced to write 'could not,' instead of would,' how that august assembly would have been scandalized! Fortunately no such slip occurred, at least none is recorded.

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"I was once," continued he, "haranguing on my old subject, to a Lady. She heard me descant, with a picquant demureness, effected by joining her feet closely and under shadow of the drapery; clasping her arms midway between wrist and elbow, so as to expose the thumb of the right hand, and the fingers of the left; drawing a saucy dimple in one cheek, and veiling just two thirds of her eyes in their silken fringe. After I had raved a considerable time, exhausting not my argument, but my breath, in a pause for respiration, she said, 'Sir,' in a voice soft as the coo of the Peruvian Nun, and depressing the corners of her mouth, so as to form the arc of a circle

between, 'Sir, I perceive you are a greater fool than even I took you to be, which I am sure is a needless enlargement: you'll excuse my openness, which is an unfortunate propensity I have, perhaps inheritable like the estate-in-tail, which my father constantly bores us with.'-Oh!' said I, 'I can excuse any severity of tone from so pretty an organ, pray dont mind me; go on and let me have the finale; the prelude is very striking.'-'Do not alarm yourself,' she replied, 'I intend going on; I think you are a fool for endeavouring to force on menotions crude and preposterous, because irreducible to practice: which if even partially attempted, would annihilate polished society, reduce family birth and distinction to a vulgar mass, and render us all such low-bred creatures! I suppose the next thing we should do, would be to wear sheepskins in winter, and be cut down to the aprons of our Grandmamma Eve, in summer; positively the last idea is quite shocking; it is a liberty I for one will not submit to, even in thought:' at the conclusion of the last sentence, my accuser veiling the remaining third part of her lucid orbs, in most becoming petulance, passed one knee over the other, so as to expose a tight silk stocking considerably above the boot-lace, and (I have always thought since it must have

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