REFLECTION. AN undervaluing of talent or of taste, is, I apprehend, to certain descriptions of men, more mortifying and irksome than an aspersion on moral character. If this were true of the worthless and the licentious only, the fact might be permitted to explain itself—but it is otherwise: the remark is by no means confined to the profligate, and the libertine: it may be illustrated among such as justly lay claim to the opposites of these; to men, I mean, of acknowledged correctness in moral observance; and, as charity should direct us to conclude, cherishers of moral sentiment. -How is this? is it that, in such cases, an effectual principle of piety is wanting; and, above all, that result of it, which constitutes a main and distinguishing characteristic of such principle, the formation of a pure and Christian humility? I instance more especially the virtue of humility, because, until this is thoroughly mature, until it has become intimately mingled with the qualities of our hearts; until it is incorporated with our constant habits of perceiving, thinking, and acting, true piety cannot be established and fostered in the mind; and where this principle is lax and unfashioned, the moral character is loose and insecure. That, under circumstances such as these, greater offence should be taken at a depreciation of the prouder qualities, of genius, talent, taste, &c. admits of obvious expli cation. But, it may, charitably, be argued, that, to a man, conscious, or, who thinks himself conscious, of moral worth, appertains a sort of secret assurance, that it cannot, by any" cunning sleight," or, by the daring injustice of men, be successfully assailed, or dextrously hid he even feels, that the appreciation of moral character belongs to a higher tribunal of appeal than that erected on the estimate and decision of mankind: and he is satisfied. But if the more brilliant endowments which we have instanced, fail of present distinction and reward, they appear to their inheritor, notwithstanding the support afforded him by the pride of conscious superiority, to be disowned and set aside by their proper and their legitimate judges: by those, in whose courts such pretensions are examined, and in whose, only, though they should even be substantiated and approved, will they ever claim successfully the meed of consolation, or the honours of a triumph. He becomes an indignant mourner over the failure, or at least, in his conception, the inactivity of justice; while the scanty and inadequate opportunities, presented to him, of asserting, and of establishing the justness of his claim to the consideration of mankind, are, as disgust or indifference shall preponderate, correspondently lost in apathy, or rejected with disdain, |