Must Beauty for ever be trampled upon in the dirt for one, one false step? And shall no one virtue or good quality, out of the thousand the fair penitent may have left,-shall not one of them be suffered to stand by her?-Just God of heaven and earth!

-But thou art merciful, loving, and righteous, and lookest down with pity upon these wrongs thy servants do unto each other. Pardon us, we beseech thee, for them, and all our transgressions! let it not be remembered that we were brethren of the same flesh, the same feelings, and infirmities! My God! write it not down in thy book that thou madest us merciful after thy own image! that thou hast given us a religion so courteous, so good tempered, that every precept of it carries a balm along with it to heal the soreness of our natures and sweeten our spirit, that we might live with such kind intercourse in this world, as will fit us to exist together in a better.

STERNE.

THE malignity of an offence arises, either from the motives that prompted it, or the consequences produced by it.

If we examine the sin of calumny by this rule, we shall find both the motives and consequences of the worst kind: we shall find its causes and effects concurring to distinguish it from common wickedness, and rank it with those crimes that pollute the earth and blacken human nature.

The most usual incitement to defamation is envy, or impatience of the merit or success of

others; a malice raised not by any injury received, but merely by the sight of that happiness which we cannot attain. This is a passion, of all others most hurtful and contemptible; it is pride complicated with laziness; pride which inclines us to wish ourselves upon the level with others, and laziness which hinders us from pursuing our inclinations with vigour and assiduity. Nothing then remains, but that the envious man endeavour to stop those, by some artifice, whom he will not strive to overtake, and reduce his superiors to his own meanness, since he cannot rise to their elevation. To this end he examines their conduct with a resolution to condemn it; and, if he can find no remarkable defects, makes no scruple to aggravate smaller errors, till, by adding one vice to another, and detracting from their virtues by degrees, he has divested them of that reputation which obscured his own, and left them no qualities to be admitted or rewarded.

Calumnies are sometimes the offspring of resentment. When a man is opposed in a design which he cannot justify, and defeated in the prosecution of schemes of tyranny, extortion, or oppression, he seldom fails to revenge his overthrow by blackening that integrity which effected it. No rage is more fierce than that of a villain disappointed of those advantages which he has pursued by a long train of wickedness. He has forfeited the esteem of mankind; he has burdened his conscience, and hazarded his future happiness, to no purpose; and has now nothing to hope but the satisfaction of involving those, who have broken his measures, in misfortunes and disgrace. By

wretches like these it is no wonder if the vilest arts of detraction are practised without scruple, since both their resentment and their interest direct them to depress those whose influence and authority will be employed against them.

But what can be said of those who, without being impelled by any violence of passion, without having received any injury or provocation, and without any motives of interest, vilify the deserving and the worthless without distinction; and, merely to gratify the levity of temper and incontinence of tongue, throw out aspersions equally dangerous with those of virulence and enmity?

These always reckon themselves, and are commonly reckoned by those whose gaiety they promote, among the benevolent, the candid, and the humane; men without gall and malignity, friends to good humour, and lovers of a jest. But, upon a more serious estimation, will they not be, with far greater propriety, classed with the cruel and the selfish wretches that feel no anguish at sacrificing the happiness of mankind to the lowest views, to the poor ambition of excelling in scurrility? To deserve the exalted character of humanity and good nature, a man must mean well; it is not sufficient to mean nothing. He must act and think with generous views, not with a total disregard of all the consequences of his behaviour. Otherwise, with all his wit and all his laughter, what character can he deserve, but that of "the fool, who scatters firebrands, arrows, and death, and says, Am I not in sport?"

The consequences of this crime, whatever be the inducement to commit it, are equally perni

cious. He that attacks the reputation of another invades the most valuable part of his property, and perhaps the only part which he can call his his own. Calumny can take away what is out of the reach of tyranny and usurpation, and what may enable the sufferer to repair the injuries received from the hand of oppression. The persecutions of power may injure the fortune of a good man; but those of calumny must complete his ruin.

Nothing can so much obstruct the progress of virtue as the defamation of those that excel in it: for praise is one motive, even in the best minds, to superior and distinguishing degress of goodness; and, therefore, he that reduces all men to the same state of infamy, at least deprives them of one reward which is due to merit, and takes away one incitement to it. But the effect does not terminate here. Calumny destroys that influence, and power of example, which operates much more forcibly upon the minds of men than the solemnity of laws or the fear of punishment. Our natural and real power is very small; and it is by the ascendant which he has gained, and the esteem in which he is held, that any man is able to govern others, to maintain order in society, or to perform any important service to mankind, to which the united endeavours of numbers are required. This ascendant, which, when conferred upon bad men by superiority of riches or hereditary honour, is frequently made use of to corrupt and deprave the world, to justify debauchery, and shelter villany, might be employed, if it were to be obtained only by desert, to the

noblest purposes. It might discountenance vanity and folly; it might make the fashion cooperate with the laws, and reform those upon whom reason and conviction have no force.

Calumny differs from most other injuries in this dreadful circumstance-he who commits it never can repair it. A false report may spread where a recantation never reaches; and an accusation must certainly fly faster than a defence while the greater part of mankind are base and wicked. The effects of a false report cannot be determined or circumscribed. It may check a hero in his attempts for the promotion of the happiness of his country, or a saint in his endeavours for the propagation of truth.

JOHNSON.

ON A FUTURE STATE.

HERE then, as upon a rock, the Christian takes his stand, in sure and certain hope, that the same Almighty arm, which, in the revolution of light and darkness, in the resuscitation of the vegetable world around him from the wintry grave, restores every thing to man, shall restore also man to himself. He rests assured that when his earthly tabernacle shall be resolved into dust, and return to the ground from whence it came, that by the mighty power of God the same shall rise again, and appear before the judgment seat of Christ to receive its doom; and, being washed and made pure in the blood of the Lamb, shall admit a glorified and an incorruptible form. In the season of temptation, this powerful thought