editions in volumes were published in less than nine years. The elegance, indeed, of the composition; the charms of the narrative part, and its evident tendency to promote piety and virtue, are recommendations which, it is hoped, can never lose their effect.

THE

ADVENTURER.

N° 1. TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 7, 1752.

Hâc arte Pollux, & vagus Hercules
Innixus, arces attigit igneas.

Thus mounted to the tow'rs above,
The vagrant hero, son of Jove.

HOR.

FRANCIS.

As every man in the exercise of his duty to himself and the community, struggles with difficulties which no man has always surmounted, and is exposed to dangers which are never wholly escaped; life has been considered as a warfare, and courage as a virtue more necessary than any other. It was soon found, that without the exercise of courage, without an effort of the mind by which immediate pleasure is rejected, pain despised, and life itself set at hazard, much cannot be contributed to the public good, nor such happiness procured to ourselves as is consistent with that of others.

But as pleasure can be exchanged only for pleasure, every art has been used to connect such gratifications with the exercise of courage, as com

pensate for those which are given up: the pleasures of the imagination are substituted for those of the senses, and the hope of future enjoyments for the possession of present; and to decorate these pleasures and this hope, has wearied eloquence and exhausted learning. Courage has been dignified with the name of heroic virtue; and heroic virtue has deified the hero: his statue, hung round with ensigns of terror, frowned in the gloom of a wood or a temple; altars were raised before it, and the world was commanded to worship.

Thus the ideas of courage, and virtue, and honour, are so associated, that wherever we perceive courage, we infer virtue and ascribe honour; without considering, whether courage was exerted to produce happiness or misery, in the defence of freedom or support of tyranny.

But though courage and heroic virtue are still confounded, yet by courage nothing more is generally understood than a power of opposing danger with serenity and perseverance. To secure the honours which are bestowed upon courage by custom, It is indeed necessary that this danger should be voluntary: for a courageous resistance of dangers to which we are necessarily exposed by our station, is considered merely as the discharge of our duty, and brings only a negative reward, exemption from infamy.

He, who at the approach of evil betrays his trust or deserts his post is branded with cowardice; a name, perhaps, more reproachful than any other, that does not imply much greater turpitude: he who patiently suffers that which he cannot without guilt avoid, escapes infamy but does not obtain praise. It is the man who provokes danger in its recess, who quits a peaceful retreat, where he might have slumbered in ease and safety, for peril and

labour, to drive before a tempest or to watch in a camp; the man who descends from a precipice by a rope at midnight, to fire a city that is besieged; or who ventures forward into regions of perpetual cold and darkness, to discover new paths of navigation, and disclose new secrets of the deep; it is the Adventurer alone, on whom every eye is fixed with admiration, and whose praise is repeated by every voice.

But it must be confessed that this is only the praise of prejudice and of custom: reason as yet sees nothing either to commend or imitate: a more severe scrutiny must be made, before she can admit courage to belong to virtue, or entitle its possessor to the palm of honour.

If new worlds are sought merely to gratify avarice or ambition, for the treasures that ripen in the distant mine, or the homage of nations whom new arts of destruction may subdue; or if the precipice is descended merely for a pecuniary consideration; the Adventurer is, in the estimation of reason, as worthless and contemptible, as the robber who defies a gibbet for the hire of a strumpet, or the fool who lays out his whole property on a lottery ticket. Reason considers the motive, the means, and the end; and honours courage only, when it is employed to effect the purpose of virtue. Whoever exposes life for the good of others, and desires no superadded reward but fame, is pronounced a hero by the voice of reason; and to withhold the praise that he merits, would be an attempt equally injurious and impossible. How much then is it to be regretted, that several ages have elapsed, since all who had the will, had also the power, thus to secure at once the shout of the multitude, and the eulogy of the philosopher! The last who enjoyed this privilege were the heroes that the history of