But though we have ventured to suggest thus far, by way of apology for those, who may sometimes be thus overtaken with a fault, let not the Drunkard or the Sot dare to presume, that any palliation is here offered for the contemptible and destructive habits of him, who either drivels like an idiot, or raves as a madman. Well might the Lacedæmonians, therefore hope, that by representing in their slaves, the degrading appearance of drunkenness, it would be sufficient to deter others from the vice.

Whatever may be the motives of different characters of mankind to a life of sobriety, the salutary effects are the same.

If the knave be sober through design, and the invalid from necessity; the wise man will be so from choice, and the good man from a sense of duty.

There

There are, says an eminent Poet,

Yet unnumber'd ills that lie unseen

In the pernicious draught: the word obscene,
Or harsh, (which once elanc'd must ever fly
Irrevocable ;) the too prompt reply,

Seed of severe distrust, and fierce debate,
What we should shun, and what we ought to hate.
Add too, the blood impoverish'd, and the course
Of health suppress'd by wine's continued force.
Unhappy man! whom sorrow thus, and rage,
To different ills alternately engage.

Who drinks, alas! but to forget; nor sees
That melancholy sloth, severe disease,
Memory confus'd, and interrupted thought,
Death's harbingers lie latent in the draught;

And in the flowers that wreathe the sparkling bowl,
Fell adders hiss, and poisonous serpents roll."

This Essay shall now conclude, with a short, but pithy anecdote.

It is somewhere said, "That the Devil gave to an Hermit the choice of three crimes: two of them were of the most atrocious nature, the third was to be drunk." The poor man made choice of the last, as seemingly the most innocent; but mark the sequel; when he was drunk, he committed the other two dreadful sins!

ESSAY XIV,

DEATH.

A Persian King, after he had stedfastly beheld an immense army from his magnificent throne in the plains of Asia, was observed to shed a torrrent of tears! on being asked by one of his Generals the cause of that dejection, he gave this answer:

"I weep," says the feeling monarch,

"when I consider, that before one hundred years, all this company will be in the grave!"

The consideration was great and awful; and while Xerxes delighted himself in so grand a spectacle; the knowledge that so fine and proud an assemblage of warriors must, in the natural order of things, be so quickly reduced to dust and ashes, shook his firmness, humbled his ambition, and penetrated him with distress!

In the momentous concerns of our present Essay; writers, as well as speakers have found a very sublime topic, on which, they could alarm the passions, and effectually display the pomp of declamation: but in this attempt, we will take a view of the subject, in a manner more interesting and plain.

In our Essay against Self-murder, it has been stated, that the fear of death is implanted in us by the author of nature, with the wise design of exciting a proper solicitude for the preservation of life; and death for this reason, and especially the consequences

of

of it, in some future state of existence, has been truly called, the "King of Terrors.

Nor is it a philosophic contempt of death, unsupported by the testimony of a good con science, and the well-grounded hopes of a better life, which can render its approach to the Christian believer, in any character, less formidable than that, which has been mentioned: "but calm and serene as the glassy sea," unruffled by fears, or disturb ed by anxieties; the virtuous and the pious cordially receive the advances of that messenger, who is destined to deliver them

from the burden of the flesh." From the anxious concerns of prosperity-the several trials of adversity-the unmerited cruelty of enemies the heart-felt solicitude about friends the delusions of hope and the satieties of possession; from each and all of these, and others without end, in the unmeasured catalogue of human sufferings, either in mind, body,

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