wakeful hours of night were spent in tracing the causes of miscarriage; in contriving means by which to preclude a recurrence of the same or similar impediments, and in planning schemes to ensure felicity on the morrow. Inauspicious was the morning in which the breast of Lavinia was not transported with the recollection of some new engagement to give delight, of something novel to be seen; with the hope of sparkling in the dance, of shining at the opera or the playhouse, of making new conquests, and of receiving fresh tokens of inviolable attachment and re verence. The return of night however but renewed disgust. Every amusement was insipid: the charms of novelty were forgotten: emptiness and vanity were stamped on every enjoyment: for whether at the toilet, the ball, the theatre, or the masquerade, Conscience would be heard- Lovers of pleasure more than lovers of God,' was reiterated in every place, and in accents so distinct, that the meaning could not be mistaken. Fruitless were all attempts to shun the admonitory intelligence, or to blunt the pain it frequently occasioned. Reflection produced remorse; the pleasures of the world satiety and aversion; the retrospect of life the keenest anguish, and the prospects of futurity the horrors of despair. The thoughtless and the gay may perhaps think that the views of Lavinia were enthusiastic or chimerical. But there is no ground for the conclusion. For what is the life of a vast majority of the great, but a scene of voluptuousness and dissipation, of vanity and extravagance? The affairs of another world, and the moral state of the human heart, are considerations that seldom obstruct their pursuits or interrupt their quiet. I ask, and appeal to the experience and the consciences of those whom Providence has elevated to opulence and splendour, whether, from the moment of introduction into public life, the time allotted by Heaven for acts of beneficence and piety, is not generally spent in conformity to the fashions of the day; in attendance at routs, and balls, and card tables; in frequenting the opera and the play-house, or in ceremonious visits paid and received frequently without pleasure and without friendship? But are these pursuits worthy of an immortal mind? Is this a life on which a rational being can seriously reflect without the terrors of dis may?-yet this is the life of thousands-a life in which are to be found no traces of that purity and perfection once connatural to man; no evidence of compunction for the violation of divine precepts, nor yet of thankfulness for the means by which guilt is expiated, and the trembling delinquent rescued from perdition. Nay, there are not only those who, like Gallio, care for none of these things, but some that openly. discard them; who, though their sins be as scarlet, 'cavil at the mean by which they might be made white as snow; and though their iniquities have been multiplied without number, revile the hand which alone can blot them from the register of heaven.' These are they that awake but to eat and to drink; to gratify the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life. God is not in all their thoughts: his ways are always grievous; and through the pride of their countenance they will not seek after him. Surely it is unworthy of a reasonable being to spend any of the little time allotted us, without some tendency, either direct or oblique, to the end of our existence. And though every moment cannot be laid out on the formal and regular improvement of our knowledge, or in the stated practice of a moral or religious duty, yet none should be so spent as to exclude wisdom or virtue, or pass without possibility of qualifying us more or less for the better employment of those which are to come. It is scarcely possible to pass an hour in honest conversation, without being able when we rise from it, to please ourselves with having given or received some advantage; but a man may shuffle cards, or rattle dice, from noon to midnight, without tracing any new idea in his mind, or being able to recollect the day by any other token than his gain or his loss, and a confused remembrance of agitated passions, and clamorotis altercations.' The beneficent Author of our existence has, for the best of purposes, graciously interwoven in our nature an insatiable thirst after happiness. In pursuit of this happiness all descriptions of men are anxiously engaged; and were we to act consistently with our high origin, we should see both the wisdom and the goodness of God, not only in the implantation of this ever-active principle, but in the frustration of every hope that centres in terrestrial enjoyment. For not in vain, but for the noblest end, Led by our foible forward till we know, The But ever since the introduction of moral evil into the world, men have changed the object of happiness. They have forsaken the Lord, the fountain of living waters, and have loved and served the creature instead of the Creator. cry of all is indeed, Who will show us any good? but it is a good which, if not suited merely to the animal nature, is always confined to the present life, and which, when enjoyed, is ever found inadequate to both our desires and our expectations. The truth is, we form a wrong estimate of this good, and expect from fruition that which it was never designed to communicate: so that by raising our hopes too high, wẹ lose the pleasure which might be lawfully indulged, and then complain of disappointment and vexation, without considering that the fault lay not in the object itself, but in our unwarrantable expectations from it. But, though perpetually foiled on every hand, |