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fecerunt. Agreeably to this principle, the Roman historian of the life of Alexander, describes that monarch, after having killed his friend Clitus, as confidering, 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 fource of that torrent of 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 antient 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 de* Sat. II. 149.

"struction

"struction of the worship of the antient "world; when the face of religion in their " public assemblies was quite different from " that apprehenfion which men had con" cerning it in private."

NOTHING, most certainly, could less plead the sanction of reason, than the general rites of pagan worship. Weak and abfurd, 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 facred and inviolable: well perfuaded, no doubt, that religion is the strongest cement in the great structure of moral government. I am, &c.

IL

LETTER XLVII.

TO CLEORA.

LOOK upon every day wherein I have not fome communication with my Cleora, as a day lost; and I take up my pen every afternoon to write to you, as regularly 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 eafy kind of magic, thus transports me to your parlor 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 elude, in some degree, the malevolence of fate, and can enjoy an intercourse with each other, tho' the Alps themselves should 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 fupply. The truth is, I have lost all relish for any but yours; and if I were invited to an afsembly of all the wits of the Augustan age, or all the heroes that Plutarchhas 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.

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while she mixed the syllabub. Such happy evenings I once knew: ah Cleora! will. they never return? Adieu.

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LETTER

XLVIII.

To EUPHRONIUS.

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 antient has observed of the same number of Spartans who defended the paffage of Thermopylæ; nunquam vidi plures trecentos! Never, indeed, was there greater energy of language and fentiment united together in the compass of lines: and it would be an injustice to the world, as well as to himself, to fuppress so animated and so useful a composition.

A SATIRIST of true genius, who is warmed by a generous indignation of vice, and whose cenfures are conducted by candor and truth, merits the applause of every friend to virtue. He may be confidered as a fort of fupplement to the legif

lative authority of his country; as assisting the unavoidable defects of all legal institutions for 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 fort 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 disarm it at once of all power of mischief, and to perform a public service of the most advantageous kind, in which any man can imploy his time and his talents. The voice, indeed, of an honest satirist is not only beneficial to the world, as giving an alarm against the designs of an enemy so dangerous to all social intercourse; but as proving like*wise the most efficacious preventive to

others, of assuming the fame character of distinguished

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