innocence and probity. But the want of independence now under consideration, is a readiness to act in compliance with custom, contrary to the convictions of one's own mind. The want of probity, implied in such compliance, is perceived even by them to whose habits and wishes the sacrifice is made.They may praise you; but be assured they will never esteem you for such complaisance. Whereas the person who has decision of character, and boldly refuses what his conscience condemns, is sure of the secret veneration of those who are too unprincipled to imitate his virtue.

As another reason why this subserviency to the habits of others is impolitic, I mention its tendency to present uneasiness. Few things are more inconsistent with self-enjoyment than suspense and irresolution. From this state of mind every person whether old or young, who acts upon principle, is set free, as soon as he discovers what integrity and virtue demand. But persons of a different description, have within themselves, no criterion of action. They are, by consequence, in suspense, until they can learn the wishes and practice of others. This is, in many cases, no easy matter. And should the majority settle down on a side opposite their own; or in other words, should they themselves form a determination too soon, the ground at first taken, must be relinquished, and that too under the semblance of conviction. For, whatever be the fact, few persons have hardiness to acknowledge that they have no principle, but that exemplifying what perhaps is only fabled of the camelion, they assume the color of the last object with which they come in contact.

I would by no means be understood to encourage a deportment morose or repulsive. When compliance with the desires. or habits of others certainly involves neither immorality nor indecorum, civility requires it. And though your refusal to do that which conscience condemns, should be intelligible and decisive, it need not be angry or opprobrious. The suaviter in modo, is by no means inconsistent with the fortiter in re. Let each person consider himself as individually accountable to his

Maker, and, with unvarying resolution, tempered with mildness, follow that course which such a relation demands.

The use of profane language is an evil spreading so widely, as to justify the apprehension that our literary institutions are not exempt from it. There are two points of view in which this practice may be considered ;-first, that of indecorum; secondly, that of impiety. As to indecorum, though this vice is occasionally discovered in the unprincipled of every rank in society, to ascertain where it most prevails is no difficult matter. Associate with the lowest forms of human nature-with those who have either none, or a precarious occupation-with those who, on account of indolence, instability, or vice, can appropriate no place as their home or country-and, with the language. of vulgarity and wretchedness, you are sure to witness a strong mixture of profaneness. If you then resort to the work-shop of the industrious artificer, the dwelling of the reputable yeoman, the counting-house of the well informed merchant, or to the abodes of professional eminence, with a different kind of people, you anticipate a different dialect. It occasions surprise, if among such people, your ears are assailed with the language of the dock, the camp, or the ale-house.

But the indecorum of profaneness is but a feeble reason against it, if compared with that which arises from its impiety. If religion is not a baseless fabric-if there is any solidity in its first principles if there is a supreme intelligent Being, and a future state, the practice of which I am speaking, must in a very high degree be impious and daring. Those who indulge themselves in it, (if indulgence it may be called,) render common and ineffectual the most solemn and august ideas, that ever have entered, or ever can enter the human mind. Such are ideas of God and of future reward and punishment. It is strictly and philosophically true, you well know, that God fills not only heaven and earth, but is excluded from no portion of unlimited space that every orb and every system is regulated by his power that universal annihilation would result from the momentary withdrawment of his sustaining energy-and that he

has a perfect, intuitive knowledge of all the parts contained in every world. The purity, benevolence, and justice of this Being are not less perfect, than his physical attributes. Does your reason hesitate a single moment to decide that such a name cannot, without a crime, be used with levity?

It is impossible that any doctrine should be so interesting to man, or so interesting in its result, as that of eternal judgment. There is the greatest impropriety, not to say absurdity, in mingling together trivial and important subjects in common discourse. Suppose a person should habitually contrive to present to your mind, in company with ludicrous or trifling ideas, others either of a solemn or painful nature, such as that of a dying man, a weeping family, a besieged town reduced by famine to the last extremity, or of a ship's crew in expectation of being absorbed in the next series of billows-three things you would immediately perceive; first, a great degree of pain in your own minds, from the concurrence of objects so dissimilar and opposite; secondly, that the person choosing to unite such objects in his own mind, must possess a kind of horrible insensibility; and thirdly, frequently to hear such conversation, and to look on a picture in which such discordant objects were portrayed, would gradually destroy humane feelings, and deaden the charities of life. But the profane person does more than this. He unites the idea of God, with ideas which are common, trifling, and ridiculous. He throws into the same picture the ludicrous occurrences of a day, and the sufferings of eternity. All restraints from vice, arising from belief in God and a retribution, are enfeebled just in proportion to his success in bringing others to resemble himself. He is answerable, therefore, not only for his own impiety, but for that general immorality which results from his influence on others. Whether he belongs to a small or a great community-whether his mind is imbecile or powerful, the tendency of his profaneness is to destroy those principles on which rest the security and happiness of man in a social state, to annihilate the moral sense, and to render him depraved and wretched in all the stages of his future being.

A further danger, to which youth, associated for literary purposes are exposed, is that of dissipation. By dissipation I mean waste of time, occasional indolence, suffering the mind to wander from those objects which ought to confine it, and a criminal indulgence of the appetites. That this is wrong in a moral or religious view, is too obvious to admit serious doubt. God who gives and continues human life, requires that we use it to good purpose that we cultivate our mental powers, and apply them to those objects for which they are adapted-for which they were bestowed. He requires that we govern our appetites and maintain uniform sobriety and temperance.

Nor is it more certain that every species of dissipation militates with moral duty, than that its effects are unfavorable to the acquirement of knowledge. In proportion as your intellectual powers are at your own command, in proportion to your ability of directing them to what object you please; the less they are disturbed or obscured by passion or licentiousness; clearness will be acquired to your perception, soundness to your judgment, and strength to your memory. But all indolence and disorder, all indulgence, either of the angry or licentious passions, tend to dissipate the thoughts, and to enfeeble the powers of perceiving and discriminating.

Having mentioned in general, the dangers to which you are exposed, I would indicate in a few words, by what means you may be rendered most secure in the midst of them. This security arises from a habit of acting from principle. You well know, that nothing more severe can be said of a man, than that he acts without principle. Unprincipled and worthless are epithets which we unite merely for the purpose of expressing the same thing more strongly. We never suppose that the latter contains anything more than the former. Now if an unprincipled man be worthless, so is an unprincipled youth. Nay, there are many men of this description, who in youth were not Of course, if persons are rendered immoral in early life, there is reason to apprehend, that in subsequent years their profliVOL. II.

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gacy will become pre-eminent. If acting from principle is so important, let us see what is implied in it.

When we speak of a man as acting from principle, we do not mean that human estimation is the rule of his conduct. That the approbation of discerning and good men is desirable cannot be questioned. But even their approbation, imperfect as they are, is not your standard. Much less are you so to regard the fluctuating opinion of the majority. If such were your criterion, what is right to-day might be wrong to-morrow. No man, I apprehend, who is conscious of much integrity, or even supposes himself in much repute, would be willing to have it thought, that no higher motive than the love of popularity governed his life.

Neither is he to be considered as acting from principle, whose deportment is governed by present interest. The only occasion on which such a man can be trusted, is when your own interest and that of the public are not only consentaneous with his, but believed by himself to be thus consentaneous. What then are we to say of the man of mere sensibility and good nature? Is he to be considered as a man of principle? Doubtless these qualities do not entitle him to that honor. His sensibility to one object may lead him to practise injustice towards another. The good nature of a judge may acquit a culprit, to the disturbance and terror of the public. The man who has no other guide but his feelings, can never be entitled to general confidence, because we can never know in what direction these will carry him.

In a principle of honor, you imagine, perhaps, that there is permanence and uniformity. If by honor you mean moral rectitude, it is undoubtedly both uniform and permanent. But if you mean a regard to reputation, it is subject to all the changes of public opinion. And the man, who is thus honorable, stands ready for any crime, as soon as the public sentiment is sufficiently corrupt to approve it.

Independently of our choice,-independently of the choice of angels, or of any being in the universe, there are such things as truth and error, moral rectitude and moral obliquity. The Dature of these can neither be altered nor confounded. Should