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good breeding with you which is, in the first place, decent, and which, I am fure, is abfolutely neceffary to make us like one another's company long.

XXII. Addrefs to a young Student.

YOUR parents have watched over your helpless infancy, and conducted you, with many a pang, to an age at which your mind is capable of manly improvement, Their folicitude ftill continues, and no trouble nor expence is fpared in giving you all the inftructions and accomplishments which may enable you to act your part in life, as a man of polifhed fenfe and confirmed virtue. You have, then, already contracted a great debt of gratitude to them. You can pay it by no other method but by ufing properly the advantages which their goodness has afforded you.

If your own endeavours are deficient, it is in vain that you have tutors, books, and all the external apparatus of literary purfuits. You muft love learning, if you would poffefs it. In order to love it, you must feel its delights; in order to feel its delights, you must apply to it, however irksome at first, clofely, conftantly, and for a confiderable time. If you have refolution enough to do this, you cannot but love learning; for the mind always loves that to which it has been long, steadily, and voluntarily attached. Habits are formed, which render what was at firft difagreeable, not only pleafant, but neceffary.

Pleafant, indeed, are all the paths which lead to polite and elegant literature. Yours, then, is furely a lot particularly happy. Your education is of fuch a fort, that its principal fcope is to prepare you to receive a refined pleasure during your life. Elegance, or delicacy of tafte, is one of the firft objects of a claffical difcipline; and it is this fine quality which opens a new world to the scholar's view. Elegance of taste has a connection with many virtues, and all of them virtues of the moft amiable kind. It tends to render you at once good and agreeable. You must therefore be an enemy to your own enjoyments, if you enter on the difcipline which leads to the attainment of a claffical and liberal education with reluctance. Value duly the opportunities you

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enjoy, and which are denied to thousands of your fellow

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Without exemplary diligence you will make but a contemptible proficiency. You may, indeed, pafs through the forms of fchools and univerfities, but you will bring nothing away from thein of real value. The proper fort and degree of diligence you cannot poffefs, but by the efforts of your own refolution. Your inftructor may, indeed, confine you within the walls of a school a certain number of hours. He may place books before you, and compel you to fix your eyes upon them; but no authority can chain down your mind. Your thoughts will efcape from every external restraint, and, amidst the moft ferious lectures, may be ranging in the wild purfuit of trifles or vice. Rules, restraints, commands, and punishments, may, indeed, affift in ftrengthening your refolution; but, without your own voluntary choice, your diligence will not often conduce to your pleasure or advantage. Though this truth is obvious, yet it seems to be a fecret to thofe parents who expect to find their fon's improvement increase in proportion to the number of tutors and external affiftances which their opulence has enabled them to provide. These affitances, indeed, are fometimes afforded, chiefly that the young heir to a title or estate may indulge himself in idleness and nominal pleasures. The leffon is conftrued to him, and the exercife written for him by the private tutor, while the haplefs youth is engaged in fome ruinous pleasure, which, at the fame time, prevents him from learning any thing defirable, and leads to the formation of deftructive ha bits, which can feldom be removed.

But the principal obitacle to your improvement at fchool, especially if you are too plentifully fupplied with money, is a perverfe ambition of being diftinguished as a boy of spirit in mifchievous pranks, in neglecting the tafks and leffons, and for every vice and irregularity which the puerile age can admit. You will have fenfe enough, I hope, to difcover, beneath the mafk of gaiety and good-nature, that malignant fpirit of de raction, which endeavours to render the boy who applies to books, and to all the duties and proper bufinefs of the fchool, ridiculous. You will fee, by the light of your

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reason, that the ridicule is mifapplied. You will dif cover, that the boys who have recourfe to ridicule, are, for the most part, ftupid, unfeeling, ignorant, and vicious. Their noify folly, their bold confidence, their contempt of learning, and their defiance of authority, are, for the moft part, the genuine effects of hardened fenfibility. Let not their infults and ill-treatment difpirit you. If you yield to them with a tame and ab. ject fubmiffion, they will not fail to triumph over you with additional infolence. Display a fortitude in your purfuits, equal in degree to the obftinacy in which they perfift in theirs. Your fortitude will foon overcome theirs; which is, indeed, feldom any thing more than the audacity of a bully. Indeed, you cannot go through alchool with ease to yourfelf, and with fuccefs, withont a confiderable fhare of courage. I do not mean that fort of courage which leads to battles and contentions, but which enables you to have a will of your own, and to pursue what is right, amidst all the perfecutions of furrounding enviers, dunces, and detractors. Ridicule is the weapon made ufe of at fchool, as well as in the world, when the fortreffles of virtue are to be affailed. You will effectually repel the attack by a dauntlefs fpirit and unyielding perfeverance.. Though numbers are against you, yet, with truth and rectitude on your fide, you may, though alone, be equal to an army.

By laying in a store of useful knowledge, adorning your mind with elegant literature, improving and eftablishing your conduct by virtuous principles, you cannot fail of being a comfort to thofe friends who have fup. ported you, of being happy within yourfelf, and of being well received by mankind. Honour and fuccefs in life will probably attend you. Under all circumstances you will have an internal fource of confolation and entertainment, of which no fublunary viciffitude can deprive you. Time will fhow how much wiler has been your choice than that of your idle companions, who would gladly have drawn you into their affociation, or rather into their confpiracy, as it has been called, against good manners, and against all that is honourable and ufeful, While you appear in fociety as a refpectable and va

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luable member of it, they will, perhaps, have facrificed, at the fhrine of vanity, pride, extravagance, and false pleasure, their health and their fenfe, their fortunes and their characters.

XXIII. Advantages of, and Motives to, Cheerfulness. CHEERFULNESS is, in the first place, the best promoter

of health. Repinings and fecret murmurs of heart give imperceptible ftrokes to thofe delicate fibres of which the vital parts are compofed, and wear out the machine infenfibly; not to mention thofe violent ferments which they ftir up in the blood, and those irregular difturbed motions which they raife in the animal pirits. I fcarce remember, in my own obfervation, to have met with many old men, or with fuch who (to use our English phrafe) wear well, that had not at least a certain indolence in their humour, if not a more than ordinary gaiety and cheerfulness of heart. The truth of it is, health and cheerfulnefs mutually beget each other; with this difference, that we feldom meet with a great degree of health which is not attended with a certain cheerfulnefs, but very often fee cheerfulness where there is no great degree of health.

Cheerfuluefs bears the fame friendly regard to the mind as to the body: it banifhes all anxious care and difcontent, foothes and composes the paffions, and keeps the foul in a perpetual calm.

If we confider the world in its fubferviency to man, one would think it was made for our ufe; but if we confider it in its natural beauty and harmony, one would be apt to conclude it was made for our pleasure. The fun, which is as the great foul of the univerfe, and produces all the neceffaries of life, has a particular influence in cheering the mind of man, and making the heart glad.

Those several living creatures which are made for our fervice or fuftenance, at the fame time either fill the woods with their mufic, furnish us with game, or raise pleafing ideas in us by the delightfulness of their appearance. Fountains, lakes, and rivers, are as refrething to the imagination, as to the foil through which liey pafs.

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There are writers of great distinction, who have made it an argument for Providence, that the whole earth is covered with green, rather than with any other colour, as being fuch a right mixture of light and fhade, that it comforts and strengthens the eye inftead of weakening or grieving it. For this reafon, feveral painters have a green cloth hanging near them, to eafe the eye upon, after too great an application to their colouring. A famous modern, philofopher accounts for it in the following manner: All colours that are more luminous, overpower and diffipate the animal fpirits which are employed in fight; on the contrary, thofe that are more. obfcure do not give the animal spirits a fufficient exercife: whereas the rays that produce in us the idea of green, fall upon the eye in fuch a due proportion, that they give the animal fpirits their proper play, and by keeping up the struggle in a juft balance, excite a very pleating and agreeable fenfation. Let the caufe be what it will, the effect is certain; for which reason the poets > aferibe to this particular colour the epithet of Cheerful.

To confider further this double end in the works of nature, and how they are at the fame time both useful and entertaining, we find that the most important parts in the vegetable world are thofe which are the most beautiful. Thefe are the feeds by which the feveral races of plants are propagated and continued, and which are always lodged in flowers or bloffoms. Nature feems to hide her principal defign, and to be industrious in making the earth gay and delightful, while the is car-rying on her great work, and intent upon her own prefervation. The hufbandman, after the fame manner, is employed in laying out the whole country into a kind of garden or landfkip, and making every thing fimile about him, whilft, in reality, he thinks of nothing but of the: harvest, and increafe which is to arife from it.

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We may farther obferve how Providence has taken care to keep up this cheerfulness in the mind of man, by having formed it after fuch a manner, as to make it ca pable of conceiving delight from feveral objects which feem to have very little ufe in them; as from the wildnels of rocks and deferts, and the like grotefque parts of nature. Thofe who are verfed in philofophy may fil

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