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and benevolence which every species of creatures has a right to from us. It is to be regretted that this generous maxim is not more attend to, in the affair of education, and preffed home upon tender minds in its full extent and latitude. I am far, indeed, from thinking that the early delight which children discover in tormenting flies, &c. is a mark of any innate cruelty of temper; because this turn may be accounted for upon other principles, and it is entertaining unworthy notions of the Deity to fuppose he forms mankind with a propenfity to the most deteftable of all dispositions. But most certainly, by being unrestrained in sports of this kind, they may acquire by habit, what they never would have learned from nature, and grow up into a confirmed inattention to every kind of fuffering but their own. Accordingly the supreme court of judicature at Athens thought an instance of this fort not below its cognizance, and punished a boy for putting out the eyes of a poor bird, that had unhappily fallen into his hands.

IT might be of service therefore, it should feem, in order to awaken as early

as

as possible in children an extensive sense of humanity, to give them a view of several forts of infects, as they may be magnified by the afsistance of glasses, and to shew them that the same evident marks of wifdom and goodness prevail in the formation of the minutest insect, as in that of the most enormous Leviathan: that they are equally furnished with whatever is necessay, not only to the prefervation, but the happiness of their beings, in that class of existence to which providence has assigned them: in a word, that the whole construction of their respective organs distinctly proclaims them the objects of the divine benevolence, and therefore that they justly ought to be so of ours. I am, &c.

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I am the only person, perhaps, among your friends, who have ventured to omit a congratulation in form. I am not, however, intentionally guilty; for I really defigned you a visit before now: but hearing that your acquaintance flowed in upon you from all quarters, I thought it would be more agreeable to you as well as to myself, if I waited till the inundation was abated. But if I have not joined in the general voice of congratulation; I have not, however, omitted the fincereft, tho' filent, wishes, which friendship can suggest upon the occafion. Had I not long fince forsaken the regions of poetry, I would tell you in the language of that country, how often I have faid, may

congrawhom

all beav'n,

And happy constellations on that hour

Shed their felecteft influence!

MILT.

But plain prose will do as well for plain truth: and there is no occafion for any art to perfuade you, that you have, upon every occurrence of your life, my best good wishes. I hope shortly to have an opportunity of making myself better known to Afpafia. When I am so, I shall rejoice with her, on the choice she has made of a man, from

whom I will undertake to promise her all the happiness, which the state she has entered into can afford. This much I do not scruple to say of her husband to you: the rest I had rather say to her. If upon any occafion you should mention me, let it be in the character which I most value myself upon, that of your much obliged and very affectionate friend.

I

LETTERXVIII.

To HORTENSIUS.

July 5, 1739.

CAN by no means subscribe to the fentiments of your last letter, nor agree with you in thinking, that the love of Fame is a paffion, which either reason or religion condemn. I confefs, indeed, there are fome who have represented it as inconfiftent with both; and I remember, in particular, the excellent author of The religion of nature delineated, has treated it as highly irrational and absurd. As the passage falls

in so thoroughly with your own turn of thought, thought, you will have no objection, I imagine, to my quoting it at large; and I give it you, at the same time, as a very great authority on your fide." " In reality (says "that writer) the man is not known ever

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"the more to pofterity, because his name " is tranfmitted to them: He doth not

"live because his name does.

When it

" is faid, Julius Cæfar subdued Gaul, con"quered Pompey, &c. it is the same thing " as to say, the conqueror of Pompey was "Julius Cæfar, i. e. Cæfar and the con

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queror of Pompey is the same thing; " Cæfar is as much known by one de"fignation as by the other. The amount "then is only this: that the conqueror of "Pompey conquered Pompey; or rather, "fince Pompey is as little known now as "Cæfar, fomebody conquered fomebody. Such "a poor business is this boasted immorta"lity! and such is the thing called Glory

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among us! To difcerning men this fame " is mere air, and what they despise, if not "shun."

Bur surely, 'twere to confider too curioufly (as Horatio says to Hamlet) to confider

thus. For tho' fame with pofterity should be,

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