These are the calamities by which Providence gradually difengages us from the love of life. Other evils. fortitude may repel, or hope may mitigate; but irreparable privation leaves nothing to exercise refolution or flatter expectation. The dead cannot return, and nothing is left us here but languishment and grief.

Yet fuch is the courfe of nature, that whoever lives long muft outlive thofe whom he loves and honours. Such is the condition of our prefent exiftence, that life must one time lofe its affociations, and every inhabitant of the earth muft walk downward to the grave alone and unregarded, without any partner of his joy or grief, without any interested witness of his misfortunes or fuccefs.

Misfortune, indeed, he may yet feel; for where is the bottom of the mifery of man? But what is fuccefs to him that has none to enjoy it? Happiness is not found in felf-contemplation; it is perceived only when it is reflected from another.

We know little of the ftate of departed fouls, becaufe fuch knowledge is not neceffary to a good life. Reafon deferts us at the brink of the grave, and can give no further intelligence. Revelation is not wholly filent. There is joy in the angels of Heaven over one finner that repenteth; and furely this joy is not incommunicable to fouls difentangled from the body, and made like angels.

Let hope therefore dictate, what revelation does not confute, that the union of fouls may ftill remain; and that we who are struggling with fin, forrow, and infirmities, may have our part in the attention and kindnefs of thofe who have finished their course, and are now receiving their reward.

Thefe are the great occafions which force the mind to take refuge in religion: when we have no help in ourselves, what can remain but that we look up to a higher and a greater Power? and to what hope may we not raise our eyes and hearts, when we confider that the greatest POWER is the BEST?

Surely there is no man who, thus afflicted, does not feek fuccour in the gospel, which has brought life and immortality to light. The precepts of Epicurus, who teaches us to endure what the laws of the univerfe make neceffary, may filence, but not content us. The dictates of Zen, who commands us to look with indifference on external things, may difpofe us to conceal our forrow, but cannot affuage it. Real alleviation of the lofs of friends, and rational tranquillity in the profpect of our own diffolution, can be received only from the promises of him in whofe hands are life and death, and from the affurance of another and better flate, in which all tears will be wiped from the eyes, and the whole foul fhall be filled with joy. Philofophy may infufe ftubbornnefs, but religion only can give patience.

I am, &c.

NUMB. 42. SATURDAY, February 3, 1759.

THE

HE fubject of the following letter is not wholly unmentioned by the RAMBLER. The SPECTATOR has also a letter containing a cafe not much different. I hope my correfpondent's performance is more an effort of genius, than effufion, of the pasfions; and that fhe hath rather attempted to paint fome poffible diftrefs, than really feels the evils which the has defcribed.

SIR,

To the ID LE R.

THERE is a caufe of mifery, which, though

certainly known both to you and your predeceffors, has been little taken notice of in your papers; I mean the fnares that the bad behaviour of parents extends over the paths of life which their children are to tread after them; and as I make no doubt but the Idler holds the fhield for virtue, as well as the glafs for folly, that he will employ his leifure hours as much to his own fatisfaction in warning his readers against a danger, as in laughing them out of a fashion: for this reafon I am tempted to ask admittance for my story in your paper, though it has nothing to recommend it but truth, and the honest wish of warning others to fhun the track which I am afraid may lead me at last to ruin.

I am the child of a father, who, having always lived in one spot in the country where he was born, and having had no genteel education himself, thought no qualifications in the world defireable but as they led up to fortune, and no learning neceffary to happiness but fuch as might most effectually teach me to make the best market of myfelf: I was unfortunately born a beauty, to a full fenfe of which my father took care to flatter me; and having, when very young, put me to a fchool in the country, afterwards tranfplanted me to another in town, at the inftigation of his friends, where his ill-judged fondness let me remain no longer than to learn just enough experience to convince me of the fordidnets of his views, to give me an idea of perfections which my prefent fituation will never fuffer me to reach, and to teach me fufficient morals to dare to defpile what is bad, though it be in a father.

Thus equipped (as he thought completely) for life, I was carried back into the country, and lived with him and my mother in a fimall village, within a few miles of the county-town; where I mixed, at first with reluctance, among company which, though I never defpifed, I could not approve, as they were brought up with other inclinations, and narrower views than my own. My father took great pains to fhew me every where, both at his own houfe, and at fuch publick diverfions as the country afforded: he frequently told the people all he had was for his daughter; took care to repeat the civilities I had received from all his friends in London; told how much I was admired,

and

and all his little ambition could fuggeft to fet me in

a ftronger light.

Thus have I continued tricked out for fale, as I may call it, and doomed, by parental authority, to a state little better than that of proftitution. I look on myself as growing cheaper every hour, and am lofing all that honeft pride, that modeft confidence, in which the virgin dignity confifts. Nor does my misfortune ftop here: though many would be too generous to impute the follies of a father to a child whofe heart has fet her above them; yet I am afraid the most charitable of them will hardly think it poffible for me to be a daily fpectatrefs of his vices without tacitly allowing them, and at last confenting to them, as the eye of the frighted infant is, by degrees, reconciled to the darkness of which at first it was afraid. It is a common opinion, he himself must very well know, that vices, like diseases, are often hereditary; and that the property of the one is to infect the manners, as the other poisons the fprings of life.

Yet this, though bad, is not the worst; my father deceives himself the hopes of the very child he has brought into the world; he fuffers his house to be the feat of drunkenness, riot, and irreligion: who feduces, almost in my fight, the menial fervant, converfes, with the prostitute, and corrupts the wife! Thus I, who from my earliest dawn of reason was taught to think that at my approach every eye sparkled with pleasure, or was dejected as conscious of fuperior charms, am excluded from fociety,. through fear left I fhould partake, if not of my father's crimes, at leaft of his reproach. Is a parent,