raneous. Not a corner to seek the genial warmth of a meridian sun. Fine prospects indeed all around. But you cannot stay to look at them. You fly to your chimney corner, happy if the persecuting blast pursues you not to your last recess. We allow all that taste can claim. We admire and love her beauties; but they are dearly bought at the expense of comfort.

A little and enclosed garden adds greatly to the real enjoyment of a rural retreat. Though taste has thrown down the walls, and laid all open, I venture to predict that before the lapse of half a century, good sense and the love of comfort will rebuild them. The grounds beyond may still be laid out in the grandest and most beautiful style; but let the house stand in the midst of a little cultivated spot, where every vegetable beauty and delicacy may be displayed, and where the rigours of our inclement clime may be softened with elegant enclosures. The contrast between this, which I would call the domestic, and the other which might be named the outer garden or the grove, would produce an effect by no means unpleasing. They who have no taste for flowers, and the thousand beauties of an enclosed garden, are but pretenders to any kind of taste in the graces of horticulture.

Indeed, such is the nature of man, we commonly advance improvement to the verge of impropriety. We now loathe the idea of a straight line, and a regular row of trees. But let us not, in the pride of our hearts, flatter ourselves with the unerring rectitude of our taste. Many of the ancients who possessed the best taste, not only in poetry and eloquence, but in arts, in painting, sculpture, architecture, were great admirers of plantations perfectly regular, and laid out in quincunxes. However vanity and fashion may dictate and declaim, the

world will not always believe that Homer, Virgil, Cyrus, Cicero, Bacon, and Temple, were totally mistaken in their ideas of horticultural beauty.

Cicero informs us, in a fine quotation from Xenophon's Economics, that when Lysander came to Cyrus, a prince equally distinguished for his glorious empire and his genius, Cyrus showed him a piece of ground well enclosed and completely planted. After the visitor had admired the tall and straight trees, and the rows regularly formed in a quincunx, and the ground clear of weeds, and well cultivated, and the sweetness of the odours which exhaled from the flowers, he could not help expressing his admiration not only of the diligence, but the skill of him by whom all this was measured and marked out: upon which Cyrus answered, "It was myself who measured every thing, the rows of trees are of my disposing, the plan is mine, and many of the trees were planted with my own hand." An illustrious pattern, which I hope our English noblemen and gentlemen will not be afraid to follow. Why always employ a professed plan maker? Why sacrifice their own amusement and inclination to the will of another, and to the imperious edicts of capricious fashion.

No. CLIX.

On the Example of Henry the Fifth, and the Opinion that a profligate Youth is likely to terminate in a wise Manhood.

THERE are those who consider early profligacy as a mark of that spirit which seldom fails to produce, in the subsequent periods of life, a wise and a virtuous character. The example of Henry the Fifth is often cited in confirmation of their opinion. Shakspeare has indeed represented his errors and reformation in so amiable a light, that many are not displeased when they see a young man beginning his career in riot and debauchery. While there is an appearance of spirit, they regard not the vice.

The example of Henry the Fifth has been applied particularly to heirs apparent of a crown. If the future king is found to be early initiated in the excesses of sensuality, it is a favourable presage, and we are referred to the example of Falstaff's Hal. If he devote his time to drinking, and be actually involved in continual intoxication, it is all the better, for do we not recollect Hal's exploits at the Boar's Head, in Eastcheap? Dame Quickly, Doll Tearsheet, are-illustrious instances to prove what company a prince should keep in order to become hereafter a great king. It is in the haunts of intemperance and vice, and in the company of sycophants and knaves, that he is, according to the vulgar phrase, to sow his wild oats, to spend the exuberance of his spirit, to subdue the ebullition of his blood, and to acquire a valuable species of moral experience.

It is true, indeed, that Henry the Fifth is a remark

able instance of early profligacy and subsequent reformation. He is a remarkable because he is a rare instance. For one who succeeds as he did, a thousand become either incurable debauchees, drunkards, and rogues, ruin their character and fortunes, or die under the operation of so rough an experiment. We hear not of those who are obliged to go to the East Indies, to hide themselves on the Continent, to skulk in the garrets of blind alleys, to spend their days in gaols, or are early carried to the churchyard, amidst the thanks and rejoicings of their friends for so happy a deliverance from shame and ruin. But if one wild youth becomes but a tolerably good man, we are struck with the metamorphosis, as we are with every thing uncommon. We exaggerate his goodness, by comparing it with his previous depravity. We cite the example, as a consolatory topic, wherever we behold a young man, as the Scripture beautifully expresses it, walking in the ways of his own heart, and in the sight of his own eyes. We talk as if we al most congratulated a parent when his son has spirit enough to violate, not only the rules of decency, but also the most sacred laws of morality and religion.

Such fatal ideas have broken the heart of many a virtuous and feeling father. They have brought his hairs, before they were gray, to the grave. I have been much pleased with a passage in the sermons of the late worthy Dr. Ogden, in which he recommends regularity and virtue to young men solely for the sake of their parents. Stop, young man," says he, "stop a little to look towards thy poor parents. Think it

not too much to bestow a moment's reflection on those who never forget thee. Recollect what they have done for thee. Remember all-all indeed thou canst not; alas! ill had been thy lot, had not their care begun before thou couldst remember or know any thing.

"Now so proud, self-willed, inexorable, then couldst thou only ask by wailing, and move them with thy tears. And they were moved. Their hearts were touched with thy distress; they relieved and watched thy wants before thou knewest thine own necessities, or their kindness. They clothed thee; thou knewest not that thou wast naked: thou askedst not for bread; but they fed thee. And ever since--for the particulars are too many to be recounted, and too many surely to be all utterly forgotten, it has been the very principal endeavour, employment, and study of their lives to do service unto thee. If by all these endeavours they can obtain their child's comfort, they arrive at the full accomplishment of their wishes. They have no higher object of their ambition. Be thou but happy, and they are so.

"And now tell me, is not something to be done, I do not now say for thyself, but for them? If it be too much to desire of thee to be good, and wise, and virtuous, and happy for thy own sake; yet be happy for theirs. Think that a sober, upright, and let me add, religious life, besides the blessings it will bring upon thy own head, will be a fountain of unfeigned comfort to thy declining parents, and make the heart of the aged sing for joy.

"What shall we say? which of these is happier? the son that maketh a glad father? or the father, blessed with such a son?

"Fortunate young man! who hast a heart open so early to virtuous delights, and canst find thy own happiness in returning thy father's blessing upon his own head!

"And happy father! whose years have been prolonged, not, as it often happens, to see his comforts fall from him one after another, and to become at once old and destitute; but to taste a new pleasure,

VOL. III.

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