honour foorns to do an ill action. The former confiders vice as fomething that is beneath him, the other as something that is offenfive to the Divine Being. The one as what is unbecoming, the other as what is forbidden. Thus Seneca speaks in that natural and genuine language of a man of honour, when he declares that were there no God to fee or punish vice, he would not commit it, because it is of so mean, so base, and so vile a nature. I shall conclude this head with the description of honour in the part of young Juba. Honour's a facred tye, the law of kings, It ought not to be sported with CATO. In the second place we are to confider those who have mistaken notions of honour, and these are such as establish any thing to themselves for a point of honour, which is contrary either to the laws of God, or their country; who think it more honourable to revenge, than to forgive an injury; who make no scruple of telling a lye, but would put any man to death who accuses them of it; who are more careful to guard their reputation by their courage than by their virtue. True fortitude is indeed so becoming in human nature, that he who wants it, scarce deserves the name of a man; but we find several who so much abuse this notion, that they place the whole idea of honour in a kind of brutal courage; by which means we have had many among us who have called themselves men of honour, who would have been a difgrace to a gibbet. In a word, the man who facrifices any duty of a reasonable creature to a prevailing mode or fashion, who looks upon any thing as honourable that is difpleasing to his Maker, or destructive to society, who thinks himself obliged by this principle to the practice of some virtues and not of others, is by no means to be reckoned among true men of honour. VOL. II. P Timogenes was a lively instance of one actuated by false honour. Timogenes would smile at a man's jest who ridiculed his Maker, and at the same time, run a man through the body who spoke ill of his friend. Timogenes would have scorned to have betrayed a fecret, that was intrusted with him, though the fate of his country depended upon the discovery of it. Timogenes took away the life of a young fellow in a duel, for having spoken ill of Belinda, a lady whom he himfelf had feduced in youth, and betrayed into want and ignominy. To close his character, Timogenes after having ruined several poor tradesmen's families, who had trusted him, fold his eftate to fatisfy his creditors;. but like a man of honour, disposed of all the money he could make of it, in the paying off his play-debts, or to speak in his own language, his debts of hon Lour. In the third place, we are to confider those persons, who treat this principle as chimerical, and turn it into ridicule. Men who are professedly of no honour, are of a more profligate and abandoned nature than even those who are actuated by false notions of it, as there is more hopes of a heretic than of an atheift. These fons of infamy consider honour with old Syphax, in the play before mentioned, as a fine imaginary notion, that leads astray young unexperienced men, and draws them into real mischiefs, while they are engaged in the pursuits of a shadow. These are generally persons who, in Shakespeare's phrase, are worn and hackneyed in the ways of men; whose imaginations are grown callous, and have loft those delicate sentiments which are natural to minds that are innocent and undepraved. Such old battered mifcreants ridicule every thing as romantic that comes in competition with their present interest, and treat these persons as visionaries who dare stand up in a corrupt age, for what has not its immediate reward joined to it. The talents, interest, or experience of fuch men, make them wery often useful in all parties, and at all times. But whatever wealth and dignities they may arrive at, they ought to confider, that every one stands as a blot in the annals of his country, who arrives at the temple of honour by any other way than through that of virtue. GUARDIAN, Vol. II. No. 161. HOPE. THE HE time present seldom affords sufficient employment to the mind of man. Objects of pain or pleasure, love or admiration, do not lie thick enough together in life to keep the foul in constant action, and fupply an immediate exercise to its faculties. In order, therefore, to remedy this defect, that the mind may not want business, but always have materials for thinking, she is endowed with certain powers, that can recal what is passed, and anticipate what is to come. That wonderful faculty which we call the Memory, is perpetually looking back, when we have nothing present to entertain us. It is like those repofitories in feveral animals that are filled with stores of their former food, on which they may ruminate when their present pasture fails. As the memory relieves the mind in her vacant moments, and prevents any chasms of thought by ideas of what is past, we have other faculties that agitate and employ her upon what is to come. These are the paffions of Hope and Fear. By these two paffions we reach forward into futurity, and bring up to our present thoughts objects that lie hid in the remoteft depths of time. We fuffer misery, and enjoy happineīs, before they are in being; we can fet the fun and stars forward, or lofe fight of them by wandering into those retired parts of eternity when heaven and earth shall be no more. By the way, who can imagine that the existence of a creature is to be circumscribed by time, whose thoughts are not? But I shall, in this paper, confine myself to that particular paflion which goes by the name of hope. Our actual enjoyments are so few and tranfient that man would be a very miferable being, were he not endowed with this paffion, which gives him a taste of those good things which may poffibly come into his poffeflion. We should hope for every thing that is good, fays the old poet Linus, because there is nothing * which ma, not be hoped for, and nothing but what the gods are able to give us. Hope quickens all the still parts of life, and keeps the mind awake in her most remiss and indolent hours. It gives habitual ferenity and good humour. It is a kind of vital heat in the foul, that cheers and gladdens her, when she does not attend to it. It makes pain easy, and labour pleasant, Befides these several advantages which rise from hope, there is another which is none of the least, and that is, its great efficacy in preferving us from fetting too high a value present enjoyments. The faying of Cajar is very well known. When he had given away all his eftate in gratuities among his friends, one of them afked what he had left for himself: to which that great man replied, bope. His natural magnanimity hindered him from prising what he was certainly poffefsed of, and turned all his thoughts, upon fomething more valuable than he had in view. I question not but every reader will draw a moral from this story, and apply it to himself without any direction. on The old story of Pandora's box (which many of the learned believe was formed among the heathens upon the tradition of the fall of man) shews us how deplorable a state they thought the present life, without hope: To fet forth the utmost condition of mifery, they tell us, that our forefather, according to the Pagan theology, had a great veffel presented him by Pandora: Upon his lifting up the lid of it, says the fable, there flew out all the calamities and distempers incident to men, from which, till that time, they had been altogether exempt. Hope, who had been inclosed in the cup with so much bad company, inftead of flying off with the rest, stuck so close to the lid of it, that it was shut down upon her. I shall make but two reflections upon what I have hitherto faid. First, that no kind of life is fo happy as, TATLERS, AND GUAR NS. beart is 174 BEAZ 175 thich we difapthe that which is full of hope, especially My next observation is this, that a religious life is that which most abounds in a well grounded hope, and fuch an one as is fixed on objects that are capable of making us entirely happy. This hope in a religious man, is much more fure and certain than the hope of any temporal blessing, as it is strengthened not only by reafon, but by faith. It has at the same time its eye perpetually fixed on that state, which implies in the very notion of it the most full and the most complete happiness. pt I have before shewn how the influence of hope in general sweetens life, and makes our present condition supportable, if not pleasing; but a religious hope has ftill greater advantages. It does not only bear up the mind under her fufferings, but makes her rejoice in them, as they may be the inftruments of procuring her the great and ultimate end of all her hope. Religious hope has likewise this advantage above any other kind of hope, that it is able to revive the dying man, and to fill his mind not only with fecret comfort and refreshment, but fometimes with rapture and transport. He triumphs in his agonies, whilft the foul fprings forward with delight to the great object which she has always had in view, and leaves the body with an expectation of being reunited to her in a glorious and joyful refurrection. I shall conclude this essay with those emphatical expreffions of a lively hope, which the Pfalmist made ufe of in the midst of those dangers and adversities which furrounded him; for the following paffage has its present and perfonal, as well as its future and prophetic fenfe. I have fet the Lord always before me: Because he is at my right hand I shall not be moved: Therefore my VOL. II... P |