fhaded walks or artificial awnings; their bowers and temples for the unfheltered beach, open to all the rage of the dog-star; the dry, smooth-fhaven green, for finking fands rivalling the foil of Arabia, or burning gravel, which might emulate Queen Emma's. ploughfhares, would he not exclaim in rapture, furely thefe heroic ladies fubmit to fuch privations, encounter fuch hardships, make fuch renunciations, from motives of the most fublime felf-denial! Doubtless they crowd to these joyless abodes, because they could find at home no diftreffes to be relieved, no innocence to be protected, no wrongs to be redreffed, no ignorance to be instructed. Now, would he exultingly add, I have some practical experience of the facrifices of which difinterested piety is capable. The good they must be doing here is indeed a noble recompence for the pleasures they are giving up.

Unimportant as this gradual revolution in our habits may be thought, there are few things which have more contributed to

lower

lower the tone both of fociety and folitude, than these multiplied and ever multiplying fcenes of intermediate and fubordinate diffipation. When the opulent divided the year between the town and country refidence — the larger portion always affigned to the latterbeing stationary in each, as they occupied a post of more obvious responsibility, they were more likely to fulfil their duties, than in thefe parentheses between both. For thefe places, to perfons who only feek them as fcenes of diverfion and not as recruits to health, are confidered as furnishing a fort of fufpenfion from duty as well as an exoneration from care; the chief value of the pleasures they afford confifting in their not being home-made.

We have little natural relifh for ferious things. It is one great aim of religion to cure this natural malady. It is the great end of diffipated pleasures to inflame it. Thefe pleasures forcibly address themselves to the fenfes, and thus, not only lower the taste, but nearly efface the very idea of spiritual things. They gradually perfuade

perfuade their votaries, that nothing but what they receive through their medium is real. Where the illufions of fense are allowed to make their full impreffion, the pleasures of religion appear merely vifionary ; faint fhadows at first, and afterwards un existing things.

If religion makes out certain pleasures to be dangerous, these pleasures revenge them. felves in their turn by reprefenting religion to be dull. They are adopted under the fpecious notion of being a relief from more fevere employments; whereas others lefs poignant would answer the end better, and exhaust the spirits lefs. If the effect of certain diverfions only ferves to render our return to fober duties more reluctant, and the duties themselves infipid, if not irksome if we return to them as to that which, though we do not love, we dare not omit, it is a question even in the article of enjoyment, whether we do not lofe more than we gain by any recreation which has the effect of

VOL. II.

с

ren

rendering that disgusting which might otherwife have been delightful.

But it is never too late for a change of fyftem, provided that change is not only intended, but adopted. We would respectfully invite those who have been flaves to custom, courageously to break their chain. Let them earnestly folicit the aid which is from above on their own honest exertions. Let them tear themfelves from the fafcinating objects which have hitherto detained them from making acquaintance with their own hearts. It is but to submit heroically to a little dullness at first, which habit will convert into pleasure, to encounter temptation with a refiftance which will foon be rewarded with victory. They will be sensible of one furprising revolution; from the period when they begin to inure themselves to their own company, they will infenfibly diflike it lefs, not fo much for the goodness they will find in themselves, as from difcovering what a fund of interesting employ

ment,

ment, of which they had been fo long in fearch, their own hearts can furnish.

As the scrutiny becomes deeper, the improvement will become greater, till they will grow not fo much to endure retirement as to rejoice in it; not fo much to fubfift without diffipation as to foar above it. If they are not fo much diverted, they will be lefs difcompofed. If there are fewer vanities to amufe, there will be fewer disorders to repair; there will be no longer that struggle between indulgence and regret, between enjoyment and repentance, between idlenefs and confcience, which distracts many amiable, but unfixed minds, who feel the right which they have not courage to purfue. There will be fewer of those inequalities which cost more pain in filling up than they afforded pleasure in creating. In their habits there will be regularity, without monotony. There will be a uniform beauty in the even tiffue of life; the web, though not fo much fpangled, will be more of a piece if it be lefs glittering in patches,