sus, your benefactor! is there nothing engaging in those titles? or rather, are they not words of the most sacred importance? Make it not the future interest of mankind to be your foes.

A man of your pretended honour could not bear the reproach of a lie, and yet you are acting a lie, practising the vilest treachery, and exposing a person of merit to ridicule. This, however unjust, must be the consequence of your success, while he, secure in his own worth and integrity, continues to caress the wretch that injures him. How can you support the stings of his kindness to you?

To this injured this generous man, you owe the height of your fortune. It was his interest alone that brought you into public trust and reputation : to requite him you are violating all the laws of humanity, bringing infamy on his family, and secretly endeavouring to rival him in the affections of his charming wife, the object of all his virtuous joys; of which, from whom could he more properly exact the protection than from you!

Can you unmoved recall the distress into which a crime of this nature plunged my heedless youth? What remorse, what confusion, a moment's madness cost me ! you was the only confident to whom I discovered the secret wound it gave my bleeding

soul.

But how fatal was that one sally of an extravagant passion to all my future repose! Despair and

horror filled my breast, when I considered the in-
jury I had done was beyond reparation: retire-
ment was no more my sanctuary from the noisy
crowd; the image of my crime pursued me with
inexpressible terrors; the innocent diversions of
life were tasteless, music and wit had lost their
charms; the proposals of pleasure were like jests
to dying men, like recreations to the damned.
Whatever decency appeared in my public behavi-
our, you were witness to the private intervals of
my grief, and gave some relief to my anguish,
by hearing my complaints with an obliging atten-
tion: but Nature, after all its efforts, sunk; the
pride of my youth yielded to the gloomy distem-
per, yet the sincerity of my repentance found ac-
ceptance and, as my last hour approached, some
propitious spirit breathed peace and divine consol-
ation to my soul, and in these gentle whispers re-
proved my infidelity.

Why should presumptuous man, with feeble doubt,
And impotence of thought, mark out the bounds
Of Clemency divine?-What tongue shall dare
Pronounce, with impious vanity, these words?
"Thus far, nor farther, thy exulting waves,
"O thou abyss of sacred Love! shall roll;
"Here thy triumphant billows shall retire,
"Nor pass the bounds of human diffidence."

But, however serene the last scene of my life was, I would not for all the joys the lower creation could give, endure the distraction and re

morse that one error cost me.

Are you softened at the complaints of my misery? be terrified at the approaches of your own.

Thus warned, I hope you will retire; a thousand accidents have hitherto prevented your guilt, and crossed the madness of your love: some pause of reason, some effort of virtue, may at last recover you from the paths of Ruin. Comply with Reason and Virtue, with Honour and Friendship, with your own happiness and that of others; with the interest of the living, and the desires of the dead..

THEODOSIUS.

7

ON

DEATH.

TRANSLATED

FROM THE moral esSAYS OF MESSIEURS DE

PORT-ROYAL.

BEYOND the address which men have never to think of Death but as at a very great distance, nor to view it but in some other person, without puting themselves one moment in the place of the dying, they have yet a farther art to delude themselves, by forming such a general and confused idea as conceals from them all that is most terrible in Death; they conceive little else of this state but as a privation of sense, and a separation from the commerce of life; so that, when they say a man is dead, they only mean that they see him no more, and that he shares no longer in the affairs of the world. In a word, their idea of Death is only formed on what men cease to do in dying, and not on what they begin to do and feel, though it be that which constitutes its most dreadful circumstance.

Death is indeed a privation of life and human action, but it is a privation which is felt, and pro

duces surprising effects in the soul. In order to comprehend these effects, it is necessary to consider, that while the soul is united to the body, its attention is divided by divers kinds of sensations, imaginations, and passions; it feels the objects which act on the body according to their different manner of influence; and these different ways of perceiving are called sensations: on these the soul forms its ideas of all things to which it is united by its passions, and is always employed about these objects; and not only employed, but leans and reposes on them, when it is not entirely united to God for not being made with a capacity to sustain itself, the soul necessarily seeks some foreign support. It was formed to know and love, but finding nothing within sufficient to satisfy these inclinations, it is forced with some other objects to fill the void it finds in itself. Some of these objects make agreeable impressions on the sense, others content our curiosity and vanity; others relieve the mind, by turning it from things which appear disgusting; some nourish its hopes, while others fortify it against its fears. The soul inclines to all the objects of sense, and is engaged and supported by them in such a manner, that it cannot prove a separation w ith out pain and emotion.

We are not always sensible of these ties; but the soul begins to feel them when it comes to be separated from what it loves; it has then a sense