wretches like these it is no wonder if the vilest arts of detraction are practised without scruple, since both their resentment and their interest direct them to depress those whose influence and authority will be employed against them.

But what can be said of those who, without being impelled by any violence of passion, without having received any injury or provocation, and without any motives of interest, vilify the deserving and the worthless without distinction; and, merely to gratify the levity of temper and incontinence of tongue, throw out aspersions equally dangerous with those of virulence and enmity?

These always reckon themselves, and are commonly reckoned by those whose gaiety they promote, among the benevolent, the candid, and the humane; men without gall and malignity, friends to good humour, and lovers of a jest. But, upon a more serious estimation, will they not be, with far greater propriety, classed with the cruel and the selfish wretches that feel no anguish at sacrificing the happiness of mankind to the lowest views, to the poor ambition of excelling in scurrility? To deserve the exalted character of humanity and good nature, a man must mean well; it is not sufficient to mean nothing. He must act and think with generous views, not with a total disregard of all the consequences of his behaviour. Otherwise, with all his wit and all his laughter, what character can he deserve, but that of "the fool, who scatters firebrands, arrows, and death, and says, Am I not in sport?"

The consequences of this crime, whatever be the inducement to commit it, are equally perni

cious. He that attacks the reputation of another invades the most valuable part of his property, and perhaps the only part which he can call his his own. Calumny can take away what is out of the reach of tyranny and usurpation, and what may enable the sufferer to repair the injuries received from the hand of oppression. The persecutions of power may injure the fortune of a good man; but those of calumny must complete his ruin.

Nothing can so much obstruct the progress of virtue as the defamation of those that excel in it: for praise is one motive, even in the best minds, to superior and distinguishing degress of goodness; and, therefore, he that reduces all men to the same state of infamy, at least deprives them of one reward which is due to merit, and takes away one incitement to it. But the effect does not terminate here. Calumny destroys that influence, and power of example, which operates much more forcibly upon the minds of men than the solemnity of laws or the fear of punishment. Our natural and real power is very small; and it is by the ascendant which he has gained, and the esteem in which he is held, that any man is able to govern others, to maintain order in society, or to perform any important service to mankind, to which the united endeavours of numbers are required. This ascendant, which, when conferred upon bad men by superiority of riches or hereditary honour, is frequently made use of to corrupt and deprave the world, to justify debauchery, and shelter villany, might be employed, if it were to be obtained only by desert, to the

noblest purposes. It might discountenance vanity and folly; it might make the fashion cooperate with the laws, and reform those upon whom reason and conviction have no force.

Calumny differs from most other injuries in this dreadful circumstance-he who commits it never can repair it. A false report may spread where a recantation never reaches; and an accusation must certainly fly faster than a defence while the greater part of mankind are base and wicked. The effects of a false report cannot be determined or circumscribed. It may check a hero in his attempts for the promotion of the happiness of his country, or a saint in his endeavours for the propagation of truth.

JOHNSON.

ON A FUTURE STATE.

HERE then, as upon a rock, the Christian takes his stand, in sure and certain hope, that the same Almighty arm, which, in the revolution of light and darkness, in the resuscitation of the vegetable world around him from the wintry grave, restores every thing to man, shall restore also man to himself. He rests assured that when his earthly tabernacle shall be resolved into dust, and return to the ground from whence it came, that by the mighty power of God the same shall rise again, and appear before the judgment seat of Christ to receive its doom; and, being washed and made pure in the blood of the Lamb, shall admit a glorified and an incorruptible form. In the season of temptation, this powerful thought

shall raise him above the sink and pollutions of the flesh; in the day of disease and anguish, this shall sustain his fainting heart, this shall cheer and support his sinking spirits. In the hour of impending dissolution, will he resign with humble and unabated assurance his mortal frame to the power of death, and the corruption of the tomb. With his last breath will he join in the comforting voice of the suffering Patriarch--" I know that my Redeemer liveth, and that he shall stand at the latter day upon the earth; and though after my skin worms destroy this body, yet in my flesh shall I see God, whom I shall see for myself, and mine eyes shall behold and not another."

RENNELL.

OF TRUTH.

WHAT is truth? said jesting Pilate, and would not stay for an answer. Certainly there be that delight in giddiness, and count it a bondage to fix a belief; affecting free will in thinking, as well as in acting and though the sects of philosophers of that kind be gone, yet there remain certain discoursing wits which are of the same veins, though there be not so much blood in them as was in those of the ancients. But it is not only the difficulty and labour which men take in finding out of truth; nor again, that, when it is found, it imposeth upon men's thoughts, that doth bring lies in favour; but a natural though corrupt love of the lie itself. One of the later schools of the Grecians examineth the matter,

and is at a stand to think what should be in it, that men should love lies, where neither they make for pleasure, as with poets; nor for advantage, as with the merchant; but for the lie's sake. But I cannot tell: this same truth is a naked and open daylight, that doth not show the masques, and mummeries, and triumphs of the world, half so stately and daintily as candlelights. Truth may perhaps come to the price of a pearl, that showeth best by day; but it will not rise to the price of a diamond or carbuncle, that showeth best in varied lights. A mixture of a lie doth ever add pleasure. Doth any man doubt, that if there were taken out of men's minds vain opinions, flattering hopes, false valuations, imaginations as one would, and the like, but it would leave the minds of a number of men poor shrunken things, full of melancholy indisposition, and unpleasing to themselves? One of the fathers, in great severity, called poesy, ❝ vinum dæmonum," because it filleth the imagination, and yet it is but with the shadow of a lie. But it is not the lie that passeth through the mind, but the lie, that sinketh in and settleth in it, that doth the hurt, such as we spake of before. But howsoever these things are thus in men's depraved judgments and affections, yet truth, which only doth judge itself, teacheth that the inquiry of truth, which is the love-making, or wooing of it; the knowledge of truth, which is the presence of it; and the belief of truth, which is the enjoying of it; is the sovereign good of human nature. The first creature of God, in the works of the days, was the light of the sense;