of all observers," descends into the social walks of life. The pinnacle on which they stand, makes their most trivial actions, and even words, objects of attention and imitation to those beneath them. The consciousness of this should be an additional motive for avoiding, in their ordinary conversation, not only what is corrupt, but whatever savors of levity and imprudence; the vanity of the little world is ready, not from mischief, but self-importance, to convert the thoughtless slips of the great into consequence; their most frivolous remarks are quoted, merely that the quoter may seize the only occa sion he could ever find of showing that he has been admitted to their company. This harmless little stratagem holds out a strong motive for those whose condition in life makes them subjects of observation, occasionally to let fall something that may be remembered, not merely because they said it, but because it was worth saying. This remark applies to superiority of talents, to be considered in our next head, still more than of rank.

As the great and noble are sufficiently disposed to look with reverted eye back to their ancestral honors, it were to be wished that they were all as ready, as we are happy to say some of them are, to cast the same careful retrospect to the ancient usages of their illustrious houses. There was a time when family devotion was considered as a kind of natural appendage to high rank, when domestic worship was almost as inseparably connected with the aristocracy, as the church with the state. The chapel was as much a part of the splendid establishment as the state-room. When the form of piety was thus kept up, the reality was more likely to exist. Even the appearance was a homage to religion, the very custom was an honorable recognition of Christianity. But, in the way of influence, it must have been of high importance; the domestics would have their sense of duty kept alive, and would with more alacrity serve those who they saw served God. It was a bond of political, as well as of moral union; it was the only occasion on which "the rich and poor meet together." There is something of a coalescing property in social worship. In acknowledging their common dependence on their common Master, this equality of half an hour would be likely to promote subordination through the rest of the day. Take it in an inferior point of view, it was a useful discipline, it was a family muster-roll, a sort of domestic parade, which regularly brought the privates before their commanding officers, and maintained order as well as detected absence. It was also calculated to promote the interests of

the superiors, by periodically reminding their dependents of their duty to God, which necessarily involves every human obligation.

We come now to speak, though cursorily, of another deposit of talent, not less extensive in its immediate effects, and far more important in its consequences the influence of genius and learning. As the influence of well-directed talents is too obvious to require animadversion, we shall confine our brief remarks to their contrary direction. If we could suppose the man whose talents had, by pernicious principles, been diverted from their right channel, to have, at the close of life, that clear view of his own character, and the misapplication of his mental powers, which will be presented to him when he opens his eyes on eternity, we should witness as complete a contrast with his present feelings as any two opposite descriptions of character could exhibit.

Of all the various sentences to be awarded at the dread tribunal, can imagination figure one more severe than will be pronounced against the polluted and polluting wit; the noblest faculties turned into arms against him who gave them, the eloquence which would scarcely have disparaged the tongue of angels, converted to the rhetoric of hell? The mischief of a corrupt book is indefinite, both in extent and duration. When the personal example of the writer has done its worst, and has only ruined his friends and neighbors, the operation of an unprincipled work may be but just beginning. It is a sin, the commission of which carries in it more of the character of its infernal inspirer than any other. It is a crime not prompted by appetite, kindled by passion, or provoked by temptation: but a gratuitous, voluntary, cold-blooded enormity, the offspring of intellectual wickedness, the child of spiritual depravity; the deepest sin without the slightest excuse. Sins of surprise have infirmity to plead, but, in this frigid villany, the badness of the motive keeps pace with the turpitude of the act. The intention is to offend God, the project is to ruin man; the aim is to poison the temporal peace, the design is to murder the everlasting hope of all who come in contact with it.

But the exclusive application of talents to subjects perfectly unexceptionable, and right and valuable, as far as they go, is sometimes an occasion in which we might mingle regret with admiration. We view with reverence the profound scholar, a man, so far from having lost any time in trifling, whose very amusements are labors, and whose relaxation is intensity of thought, and sedulity of study. By unremitting diligence,

he has been daily adding fresh stores to his ponderous mass of erudition, or periodically presenting new tomes to the lite rary world, in return for those he has rifled. But, put the case, that such a man has never so much as conceived the thought of lending to religion his weight of character, or the influence of his reputation, by devoting some little interval to a moral or religious speculation; has never once entertained the idea of occasionally directing his treasures of learning into any channel which leads to the country where he and his volumes together, the durable register of his life, are soon about to land,-who can forbear, in the contemplation of such a possible character, regretting that his too moderate ambition should be satisfied with the applause of an age or an island, without once exercising his talents on some topic which might have included the concerns of his whole species, which might have embraced the interests of both worlds? Who can forbear lamenting, that he has risen so high without reflecting that, in a moral sense, one step higher would set him highest;" that he should have been contented with the idolatrous worship of some pagan sage as editor or annotator; and, for that humble meed, to relinquish the duty of glorifying his Maker, by instructing his fellow-creatures; as if that were a less splendid object, an inferior concern to be turned over to inferior abilities, and to which inferior abilities were adequate?

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If the awful apprehension of a future account could, at the close of life, lead even the illustrious Grotius, who had with equal ability cultivated both secular and sacred studies, to wish that he could change characters with a poor pious peasant, who used to spend most of his time in reading the Bible at his gate, what may finally be the wish of those who, having quitted a far less useful life without any such contrite confession, are brought to witness at once the retribution assigned to the conscientious use of one solitary talent, and to feel that awarded to their own vast but abused allotment? That awakening parable of the Divine Teacher which presents so terrible a view of the "great gulf" which irrevocably separated two other neighbors, whose respective lots in worldly circumstances resembled the distinctions of intellect in the preceding instance that "gulf" which eternally divided the holy beggar from the opulent sensualist-is equally applicable to the present case. If any thing could deepen or widen a barrier already hopelessly impassable, might it not be the substitution of ill-applied abilities for misemployed riches ?*

* Let no one apply this to the great statesman of Holland.

An affecting thought involuntarily forces itself upon us, on the departure of distinguished genius. All those shining talents which had hitherto too exclusively filled our minds, sink at once in our estimation, because we know they are now nothing to their possessor but as they were used, worse than nothing if they were not used wisely. In the court where he now stands for trial, neither the cogent argument nor the pointed wit can secure his acquittal; happy if they appear not strong evidences against it. The qualities of his heart, which perhaps, dazzled by those of his head, we had not taken into the account-his errors having been lost in his brightness-now come forward as the others recede. Our feelings are solely occupied with what may be now available to him to whom we have owed pleasure or information. That fame which we lately thought so solid a good, seems now a painted cloud melting into air; that proud FOREVER for which he wrote, seems dwindled to a point; that visionary immortality which he had assigned as his meed, compared with the eternity on which he has entered, is become less than the shadow to the substance, less than the halo to the

sun.

This idea strikes the mind with peculiar force, upon the recent decease of two writers of uncommon reach of thought, profound research, and unbounded philological learning. Had these two eminent men been possessed of inferior minds, or a more dubious fame, their death would have sounded the signal of silence, no less to the moralist than to the satirist, as to the gross sensuality and corrupt principles of the one, the avowed atheism and profligate political doctrines of the other. As it is, we cannot but refer to them, though with feelings of pungent regret, and only under a strong sense of the atonement which such examples owe to the world for the mischief they do it, as a melancholy illustration of some of the preceding remarks. It is to be feared that the unmixed commendation of their talents and erudition, without the gentlest censure of their principles and practices, with which some of our journals abounded on the loss of these able but unhappy men, might tend to impress the ardent youthful student with an overvaluation of genius, unsanctified by Christian principles, of erudition undignified by virtuous

conduct.

Far, very far, from my heart be the ungenerous thought of treating departed eminence with disrespect; but in analyzing striking characters, is it not a duty to separate "the precious from the vile," lest unqualified admiration, where there is VOL. III. 4

such large room for censure, should, while profusely embalıning the dead allure the ingenuous living to an imitation as unlimited as the panegyric was undistinguishing ?*

CHAP. VIII.

On Time, considered as a Talent.

If we already begin to feel what a large portion of life we have improvidently squandered-what days and nights have been suffered to waste themselves, if not criminally, yet inconsiderately; if not loaded with evil, yet destitute of good— how much time has been consumed in worthless employments, frivolous amusements, listless indolence, idle reading, and vain imaginations-if things already begin to appear wrong, which we once thought at least harmless, though not perhaps useful, what appearance will they assume in that inevitable hour when all things will be seen in their true light, and appreciated according to their intrinsic value? We shall then feel in its full force how often we neglected what we knew to be our duty, shunned what we were aware was our interest, and declined what we yet believed would add to our happiness; while, with perverted energy, we eagerly pursued what we had reason to think was contrary to our interest, duty, and happiness. But excuses satisfy us now, to which we shall not then give the hearing for a moment. The thin disguise which the illusion of the senses now casts over vanity, sloth, and error, will then be as little efficient as consolatory.

He who carefully governs his mind will conscientiously regulate his time. To him who thus accurately distributes it, who appropriates the hour to its due employment, life will never seem tedious, yet counted by this moral arithmetic it will be really long. If we compute our time as critically as our other possessions; if we assign its proportions to its duties, though the divisions will then be so fully occupied that they will never drag, yet the aggregate sum will be found sufficiently long for all the purposes to which life is destined.

It is not a little absurd that they who most wish to abolish time would be the least willing to abridge life. But is it not

*To prevent any mistaken application of these remarks, it may be proper to avow that professor Porson and Mr. Horne Tooke are the persons to whom they allude.