unpretending, diffident, but simple and principled character, is more to be relied upon, than the boastful, empty, and careless arrogant professor, who fails in the hour of greatest need; and perhaps also from the excitement of the imagination, occasioned by the character being viewed through a veil, which prevents its several points from standing out to naked observation, and therefore gives room for investing it with a greater degree of power and influence than it really deserves.

But again, the possession of this virtue preserves the individual from the blast of envy, which superciliously overlooks the modest as too lowly and insignificant for its envenomed shaft; and by allaying the selfishness of temper, and controuling the pride of intellect, and teaching the weight of attention due to the views and opinions of contemporaries, and inculcating a distrust of our own judgment, and a high estimation of that of others; and teaching us not to make a display of our feelings, which cannot possibly be generally interesting; and instructing us to be kind towards all men, and lenient to their prejudices; and shewing us the value of the quiet self-possession of principle, it renders our intercourse with society, far more useful and agreeable.

And finally, modesty exerts no trifling power, in strengthening our good resolutions, and in restraining at the same time our evil inclinations; adding to the growth of virtue, and repressing the dominion of vice, extending the agency of good

principle, and diminishing the power of temptation; ensuring the conformity of the good man to his great pattern and exemplar, and placing a barrier to the downward road of the wicked.

SECTION III. On Idleness.

THE man of business sighs for leisure; for that intermission of action, which is the fondly anticipated termination of fatigue; the daily labourer, exhausted under the fervid ray of a meridian sun, watches with anxiety its western journey, and hails with delight its lengthened ray as announcing the cessation of his toil; and on the last day of the week, looks forward with solid pleasure to his sabbath of rest; the man who has lived much in the world, and has grown tired of its pleasures, and has been disgusted with its selfishness, who is wearied with the incessant demands upon his attention and exertion, who has been worn by the injustice and ingratitude of mankind, disappointed by the hypocrisy of friends, and worried by the thousand occasions, on which his interests and feelings have been sacrificed for any trifling whim, or caprice, or inadequate motive, by those to whom it was entrusted, earnestly longs to be enabled to exchange the present contentions and irritation of his mind, for that retreat from the world, in which all its duplicity and falsehood, all its low intrigues and petty in

terests, all its flattering and fawning smiles, all its paltry acts of disingenuous concealment, all its disgraceful evasions of duty, all its bigotry and intolerance, all its frowns and sarcasms and ridicule, all its calumny and scandal, all its impatience, and ready wilful misconstruction of action and motive, all its restless ambition and its sordid avarice, all its intolerable pride, all its envy and jealousy, all its hatred and resentment, all its contempt and scorn, all its splendid fooleries, and its lightly esteemed wisdom, all its discountenanced virtues, and its fostered vices, all its wild amusements and dissipation, all its narrow doctrines, its changing opinions, and its delusive maxims; all shall be excluded from his notice, or if not entirely shut out from his senses, shall be mellowed by distance, and will be seen and heard through such a medium as shall enable him to contemplate with interest, yet to review without passion. In all these instances, leisure is desired and desirable; but here also there must not be idleness, or there will not be happiness; there must be action, and motive, or there will be misery. Thus the man of business, when he flies from the toils of his counting-house, must have pursuit, or he will sigh for his books and his papers; the Sunday of the labourer will be a weariness to him, the hardest labour of the week, unless it may bring with it, its appropriate employment; and his yawning and exhausted system will betray the suffering it has undergone from the absence of his customary toil, and from

the want of an adequate substitute, as pleasure and duty combined, which will bear its impress upon the mind, during the week, and create a goût for its periodically returning pleasures. The man who retires from the world will soon grow weary of his solitude, unless his hours be enlivened by literary or benevolent, or some inferior pursuit ; he will find that unparticipated pleasure is but half enjoyed; and he will feel, that in the monotony of his own reflections, he possesses a far greater evil, a far worse oppression, and more intolerable burden than would be all the turmoils of the world.

It has been said that nature abhors a vacuum; she acknowledges not an empty space; all is created for use, to do, or to suffer, to employ, or to be employed. And so does intellect abhor the absence of exertion; that vacuity of thought, and feeling, and action, which is its grand aversion; it knows not of one useless attribute; every manifestation has its object, every object its peculiar utility, and each the specific labour necessary to obtain it, the labour of desire, the stimu lus of hope, the reward of enjoyment; since that which is obtained with difficulty is valued, while that which is procured without effort is very little esteemed. A state of indolence is then a morbid state, a condition of disease, as if the heart could cease to act from mere fatigue, without the greatest danger; there may be lessened, there may be varied action: there may be considerable exertion now, and a slighter effort presently; a

comparative degree of quiescence, and then again succeeded by a mighty striving after some important good; but there must be action, or there will be misery; and there must be good action, or there will be vice! How comes it then, that we trace so much indolence, such a strange propensity to inertness in the world? How is it that we see the evil spirit of idleness, subjugating the industrious principle, and bearing down before it every motive to exertion, as in the luxurious and feeble inhabitant of an Indian or African soil, or in the hardy, but scarcely less indolent Aborigines of the North American continent? A similar cause will be found operative upon both, viz. the dearth of sufficient motive to exertion, the absence of social stimulus, the want of education, the paucity of intellectual acquirement, and the neglect of moral and religious sanction. Both are only anxious to supply the immediate necessities of to-day, and are thoughtless of to-morrow; while their wants are almost entirely limited to the cravings of appetite; in one case, the fertile soil brings forth in such abundance, that a supply for these necessities is easily obtained; and in the other, the successful hunter feasts to-day, and retires to his natural indolence till again roused by the stimulus of hunger; both esteem themselves too free to labour, and will not continue their exertions, whatever may be the prize set before them; both feel that to eat and sleep form the great aim of existence; they will accomplish the former, till they