to the wants of posterity, or to secure successions of charity, for successions of distress.

Compassion is by some reasoners, on whom the name of philosophers has been too easily conferred, resolved into an affection merely selfish, an involuntary perception of pain at the involuntary sight of a being like ourselves languishing in misery. But this sensation, if ever it be felt at all from the brute instinct of uninstructed nature, will only produce effects desultory and transient ; it will never settle into a principle of action, or extend relief to calamities unseen, in generations not yet in being.

The devotion of life or fortune to the succour of the poor, is a height of virtue, to which humanity has never risen by its own power. The charity of the Mahometans is a precept which their teacher evidently transplanted from the doctrines of Christianity; and the care with which some of the Oriental sects attend, as is said, to the necessities of the diseased and indigent, may be added to the other arguments, which prove Zoroaster to have borrowed his institutions from the law of Moses.

The present age, though not likely to shine hereafter among the most splendid periods of history, has yet given examples of charity, which may be very properly recommended to imitation.1

1 Goldsmith had this passage in mind when, four years later, he wrote in his Life of Nash :-"If I were to name any reigning and fashionable virtue in the present age, I think it should be charity. The numberless benefactions privately given, the various public solicitations for charity,

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The equal distribution of wealth, which long commerce has produced, does not enable any single hand to raise edifices of piety like fortified cities, to appropriate manors to religious uses, or deal out such large and lasting beneficence as was scattered over the land in ancient times, by those who possessed counties or provinces. But no sooner is a new species of misery brought to view, and a design of relieving it professed, than every hand is open to contribute something, every tongue is busied in solicitation, and every art of pleasure is employed for a time in the interest of virtue.

The most apparent and pressing miseries incident to man, have now their peculiar houses of reception and relief ;1 and there are few among us raised however little above the danger of poverty, who may not justly claim, what is implored by the Mahometans in their most ardent benedictions, the prayers of the poor.

Among those actions which the mind can most securely review with unabated pleasure, is that of having contributed to an hospital for the sick. Of some kinds of charity the consequences are dubious; some evils which beneficence has been

and the success they meet with, serve to prove that though we may fall short of our ancestors in other respects, yet in this instance we greatly excel them."-Goldsmith's Works, iv. 78.

"There are some parishes in these cities [London and Westminster] in which all the children die in the hands of parish nurses. Out of 174 brought into one parish workhouse in two years only eleven survived."- Hanway's Journal of Eight Days' Fourney, ed. 1756, p. 235.

busy to remedy, are not certainly known to be very grievous to the sufferer, or detrimental to the community; but no man can question whether wounds and sickness are not really painful; whether it be not worthy of a good man's care to restore those to ease and usefulness, from whose labour infants and women expect their bread, and who, by a casual hurt, or lingering disease, lie pining in want and anguish, burthensome to others, and weary of themselves.

Yet as the hospitals of the present time subsist only by gifts bestowed at pleasure, without any solid fund of support, there is danger lest the blaze of charity, which now burns with so much heat and splendor, should die away for want of lasting fuel; lest fashion should suddenly withdraw her smile, and inconstancy transfer the public attention to something which may appear more eligible, because it will be new.

Whatever is left in the hands of chance must be subject to vicissitude; and when any establishment is found to be useful, it ought to be the next care to make it permanent.

But man is a transitory being, and his designs must partake of the imperfections of their author. To confer duration is not always in our power. We must snatch the present moment, and employ it well, without too much solicitude for the future, and content ourselves with reflecting that our part is performed. He that waits for an opportunity to do much at once, may breathe out his life in idle wishes, and regret, in the last hour, his useless intentions, and barren zeal.

The most active promoters of the present schemes of charity, cannot be cleared from some instances of misconduct, which may awaken contempt or censure, and hasten that neglect which is likely to come too soon of itself. The open competitions between different hospitals, and the animosity with which their patrons oppose one another, may prejudice weak minds against them all. For it will not be easily believed, that any man can, for good reasons, wish to exclude another from doing good. The spirit of charity can only be continued by a reconciliation of these ridiculous feuds ; and therefore, instead of contentions who shall be the only benefactors to the needy, let there be no other struggle than who shall be the first.1

1 Fielding, in his Covent Garden Journal, No. 44, had six years earlier written in a very different strain. He says: ---“If a man hath lived any time in the world, he must have observed such horrid and notorious abuses of all public charities, that he must be convinced (with a very few exceptions) that he will do no manner of good by contributing to them. Some, indeed, are so very wretchedly contrived in their institution that they seem not to have had the public utility in their view; but to have been mere jobs ab initio. Such are all hospitals whatever, where it is a matter of favour to get a patient admitted, and where the forms of admission are so troublesome and tedious, that the properest objects (those, I mean, who are most wretched and friendless) may as well aspire at a place at Court as at a place in the hospital."

No. 8. SATURDAY, JUNE 3, 1758.

SIR,

TO THE IDLER.

N the time of public danger,1 it is every man's duty to withdraw his thoughts in some measure from his private interest, and employ part of his time for the general welfare. National conduct ought to be the result of national wisdom, a plan formed by mature consideration and diligent selection out of all the schemes which may be offered, and all the information which can be procured.

In a battle every man should fight as if he was the single champion; in preparations for war, every man should think as if the last event depended on his counsel. None can tell what discoveries are within his reach, or how much he may contribute to the public safety.

Full of these considerations, have carefully reviewed the process of the war, and find, what every other man has found, that we have hitherto added nothing to our military reputation: that at

1 On June 1, an armament had sailed for St. Malo, on one of those ill-planned and ill-conducted expeditions in the beginning of Pitt's administration, which were speedily to be followed by a succession of victories and conquests. Johnson's mockery of the army in a time of war is worthy of remark. In the fifth number he had described how "the soldiers must obey the call of their duty, and go to that side of the kingdom which faces France."