and froward, not knowing how to yield, though we gently point out their frailty, and endeavour to assist them to correct it. At first assiduous, faithful, generous, while fortune smiles on us: but presently, if she betray us, a thousand times more faithless, ungrateful, and perfidious than she. What an airy phantom is human friendship!

I wish, however, through the favour of heaven, that what is only an airy nothing to other men may become a reality in regard to you, and I will take it for granted, that you have found what so many others have sought in vain. Alas! I must, yes, here I must deplore your destiny. Multiplied, so to speak, in the person of that other self, you are going to multiply your troubles. You are going to feel in that other self ills which hitherto you have felt only in yourself. You will be disgraced in his disgraces, sick in his sicknesses. If for a few years you enjoy one another, as if each were a whole world, presently, presently death will cut the bond, presently death will dissolve the tender ties, and separate your intwined hearts. Then you will find yourself in an universal solitude. You will think the whole world is dead. The universe, the whole universe will seem to you a desert uninhabited, and uninhabitable. Ah! You who experience this, shall I call you to attest these sorrowful truths? Shall I open again wounds which time hath hardly closed? Shall I recall those tremolous adieus, those cruel separations, which cost you so many regrets and tears? Shall I expose to view bones, and infection, and putrefaction, the only remains of him who was your support in trouble,

your counsel in difficulty, your consolation in adversity?

Ah, charms of friendship, delicious errors, lovely chimeras, you are infinitely more capable of deceiving than of satisfying us, of poisoning life than of sweetening it, and of making us break with the world than of attaching us to it! My soul, wouldst thou form unalterable connections? Set thy love upon thy treasure, esteem God, obey his holy voice, which from the highest heavens saith to thee, Give me thine heart! In God thou wilt find a love fixed and faithful, a love beyond the reach of temporal revolutions, which will follow thee, and fill thee with felicity for ever and ever.

3. In fine, I will venture to affirm, that if any thing seem capable to render life agreeable, and if any thing in general render it disagreeable, it is rectitude, and delicacy of conscience. I know Solomon seems here to contradict himself, and the author of the book of Proverbs seems to refute the author of the book of Ecclesiastes. The author of the book of Ecclesiastes informs us, that virtue is generally useless, and sometimes hurtful in this world: but according to the author of the book of Proverbs virtue is most useful in this world. Hear the author of Ecclesiastes. "All things have I seen in the days of my vanity there is a just man that perisheth in his righteousness, and there is a wicked man that prolongeth his life in his wickedness. All things come alike to all, there is one event to the righteous and to the wicked; to him that sacrificeth, and to him that sacrificeth not; as is the good so is the sinner;

and he that sweareth, as he that feareth an oath," chap. vii. 15. ix. 2. Hear the author of the book of Proverbs. "My son forget not my law: but let thy heart keep my commandments; for length of days, and long life, and peace shall they add to thee. Let not mercy and truth forsake thee: bind them about thy neck, write them upon the table of thine heart. So shalt thou find favour, and good understanding in the sight of God and man. Happy is the man that findeth wisdom, and the man that getteth understanding. For the merchandize of it is better than the merchandizze of silver, and the gain thereof than fine gold. She is more precious than rubies: and all the things thou canst desire are not to be compared unto her," chap. iii. 1, 2, 3, 13, 14, 15.

How shall we reconcile these things? To say, as some do, that the author of Proverbs speaks of the spiritual rewards of virtue, and the author of Ecclesiates of the temporal state of it, is to cut the knot instead of untying it. Of many solutions, which we have no time now to examine, there is one that bids fair to remove the difficulty; that is, that when the author of the book of Proverbs makes temporal advantages the rewards of virtue, he speaks of some rare periods of society, whereas the author of the book of Ecclesiastes describes the common general state of things. Perhaps the former refers to the happy time, in which the example of the piety of David being yet recent, and the prosperity of his successor not having then infected either the heart of the king or the morals of his subjects, reputation, riches and honours were bestowed on good men; but the second,

probably, speaks of what came to pass soon after. In the first period life was amiable, and living in the world delicious: but of the second the wise man saith, I hated life because the work that is wrought under the sun is grievous unto me.

To which of the two periods doth the age in which we live belong? Judge by the description given by the preacher, as he calls himself.

Then mankind were ungrateful, the public did not remember the benefits conferred on them by individuals, and their services were unrewarded. There nas a little city besieged by a great king, who built great bulwarks against it, and there was found in it a poor nise man, who by his wisdom delivered the city, yet no man remembered that same poor man, chap. ix. 14, 15.

Then courtiers mean and ungrateful hasely forsook their old master, and paid their court to the heir apparent. I saw all the living under the sun walking after the child, who shall stand up next instead of the king,* chap. iv. 15.

Then the strong oppressed the weak. I considered all the oppressions that are done under the sun, and behold, the tears of such as were oppressed, and they had no comforters, and on the side of their oppressors there was power, but they had no comforter.

*The sense given to this passage by our author is agreeable both to the French version, and to the original. J'ai oui tous les vivans qui marchent sous le soleel aprés l'enfant, qui est la seconde personne qui doit étre en la place du roi. Per puerum secundum intellige, regis filium et hæredem, quod a rege secundus est, ac post eum regnaturus. Poli. Synops. in loc.

Then the courts of justice were corrupt. I saw the place of judgment, that wickedness was therechap. iii. 16. We will not finish this disagreeable picture. I hated life, because the work that is wrought under the sun is grievous unto me.

Such is the idea the wise man gives us of the world. Yet these vain and precarious objects, this world so proper to inspire a rational mind with disgust, this life so proper to excite hatred in such as know what is worthy of esteem, this is that which hath always fascinated, and which yet continues to fascinate the bulk of mankind.

This it was that infatuated the inhabitants of the old world, who, even after God had pronounced this dreadful decree, My spirit shall not always strive with man, for he is flesh, and after an hundred and twenty years he shall be no more,* forgot themselves in the pursuit of present pleasure, They were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage until the day that the flood came, and took them all away, Matt. xxiv. 38, 39.

This was what bewitched the whole heathen world, who lived without hope, and without God in the world, Eph. ii. 12.

This was what enchanted that highly favored nation, which God distinguished from the rest of the world, and to which he gave his laws, and intrusted his prophecies, yet they forsook the fountain of living

*

Gen. vi. 3. The sense given by Mr. Saurin is that of many commentators, and seems preferable to our English text, which is obscure. Accipiunt de spatio pœnitentiæ isti ætati concesso, &c.