messenger, 'which thou was preparing to plunge into thine own heart. Exchange complaint for silence, and doubt for adoration. Can a mortal look down, without giddiness and stupefaction, into the vass abyss of Eternal Wisdom? Can a mind that sees not infinitely, perfectly comprehend any thing among an infinity of objects mutually relative? Can the channels, which thou commandest to be cut to receive the annual inundations of the Nile, contain the waters of the Ocean? Remember, that perfect happiness cannot be conferred on a creature; for perfect happiness is an attribute as incommunicable as perfect power and eternity.' The Angel, while he was speaking thus, stretched out his pinions to fly back to the Empyreum; and the flutter of his wings was like the rushing of a cataract. Z N° 77. TUESDAY, JULY 31, 1753. -Peccare docentes Fallax historias monet, To tint th' attentive mind she tries HOR. SIR, TO THE ADVENTURER. I SHALL make no apology for the trouble I am about to give you, since I am sure the motives that induce me to give it, will have as much weight with you as they have with me: I shall, therefore, without farther preface, relate to you the events of a life, which, however insignificant and unentertaining, affords a lesson of the highest importance; a lesson, the value of which I have experienced, and may, therefore, recommend. I am the daughter of a gentleman of good family, who, as he was a younger brother, purchased with the portion that was allotted him, a genteel post under the government. My mother died when I was but twelve years old; and my father, who was excessively fond of me, determined to be himself my preceptor, and to take care that my natural genius, which his partiality made him think above the common rank, should not want the improvements of a liberal education. He was a man of sense, with a tolerable share of learning. In his youth he had been a free-liver, and perhaps for that reason took some pains to become what is called a free-thinker. But whatever fashionable frailties he might formerly have allowed in himself, he was now in advanced life, and had at least worldly wisdom enough to know, that it was necessary his daughter should be restrained from those liberties, which he had looked upon as trifling errors in his own conduct. He, therefore, laboured with great application to inculcate in me the love of order, the beauty of moral rectitude, and the happiness and self-reward of virtue; but at the same time professed it his design to free my mind from vulgar prejudices and superstition, for so he called Revealed Religion. As I was urged to choose virtue, and reject vice, from motives which had no necessary connection with immortality, I was not led to consider a future state either with hope or fear: my father indeed, when I urged him upon that subject, always intimated that the doctrine of immortality, whether true or false, ought not at all to influence my conduct or interrupt my peace; because the virtue which secured happiness in the present state, would also secure it in a future: a future state, therefore, I wholly disregarded, and, to confess a truth, disbelieved: for I thought I could plainly discover that it was disbelieved by my father, though he had not thought fit explicitly to declare his sentiments. As I had no very turbulent passions, a ductile and good disposition, and the highest reverence for his understanding, as well as the tenderest affection for him, he found it an easy task to make me adopt every sentiment and opinion which he proposed to me as his own; especially, as he took care to support his principles by the authority and arguments of the best writers against Christianity. At the age of twenty I was called upon to make use of all the philosophy I had been taught, by his death; which not only deprived me of a parent I most ardently loved, but with him of all the ease and affluence to which I had been accustomed. His income was only for life, and he had rather lived beyond than within it; consequently, there was nothing left for me but the pride and helplessness of genteel life, a taste for every thing elegant, and a delicacy and sensibility that has doubled all my sufferings. In this distress a brother of my mother's, who was grown rich in trade, received me into his house, and declared he would take the same care of me as if I had been his own child. When the first transports of my grief were abated, I found myself in an easy situation, and from the natural cheerfulness of my temper, I was beginning once more to taste of happiness. My uncle, who was a man of a narrow understanding and illiberal education, was a little disgusted with me for employing so much of my time in reading; but still more so, when, hap pening to examine my books, he found by the titles that some of them were what he called blasphemy, and tended, as he imagined, to make me an Atheist. I endeavoured to explain my principles, which I thought it beneath the dignity of virtue to disguise or disavow; but as I never could make him conceive any difference between a Deist and an Atheist, my arguments only served to confirm him in the opinion that I was a wicked wretch, who, in his own phrase, believed neither God nor Devil. As he was really a good man, and heartily zealous for the established faith, though more from habit and prejudice than reason, my errors gave him great affliction: I perceived it with the utmost concern; I perceived too, that he looked upon me with a degree of abhorrence mixed with pity, and that I was wholly indebted to his good-nature for that protection which I had flattered myself I should owe to his love. I comforted myself, however, with my own integrity, and even felt a conscious pride in suffering this persecution from ignorance and folly, only because I was superior to vulgar errors and popular superstition; and that Christianity deserved these appellations, I was not more convinced by my father's arguments than my uncle's conduct, who, as his zeal was not according to knowledge, was by no means qualified to adorn the doctrine which he professed to believe.' I had lived a few months under the painful sensibility of receiving continual benefits from a person whose esteem and affection I had lost, when my uncle one day came into my chamber, and after preparing me for some unexpected good fortune, told me, he had just had a proposal of marriage for me from a man to whom I could not possibly have any objection. He then named a merchant, with whom I had often been in company at his table. As the man was neither old nor ugly, had a large fortune and a fair character, my uncle thought himself sufficiently authorized to pronounce as he did, that I could not possibly have any objection to him. An objection, however, I had, which I told niy uncle was to me insuperable; it was, that the person whom he proposed to me as the companion, the guide and director of my whole life, to whom I was to vow not only obedience but love, had nothing in him that could ever engage my affection: his understanding was low, his sentiments mean and indelicate, and his manners unpolite and unpleasing. What stuff is all this,' interrupted my uncle, sentiments indelicate! unpolite! his understanding, forsooth, not equal to your own! Ah, child, if you had less romance, conceit and arrogance, and more true discretion and prudence, it would do you more good than all the fine books you have confounded your poor head with, and what is worse, perhaps, ruined your poor soul. own, it went a little against my conscience to accept my honest friend's kind offer, and give him such a pagan for his wife. But how know I whether the believing husband may not convert the unbelieving wife?As to your flighty objections, they are such nonsense, that I wonder you can suppose me fool enough to be deceived by them. No, child, wise as you are, you cannot impose upon a man who has lived as many years in the world as I have. I see your motive; you have some infidel libertine rake in your eye, with whom you would go headlong to perdition. But I shall take care not to have your soul to answer for as well as your person. Either I shall dispose of you to an honest man that may convert you, or you shall dispose of yourself how you please for me; for I disclaim all farther care or trouble about you: so I leave you I |