very firft exercise of it's awakening faculties is to draw it into mischief; for we are as naturally prone to evil, as the sparks are to fly upward. It is not an obfervation of yefterday, when paffion takes the lead, that bad effects muft- follow. Encouraged by perfonal strength the vigorous boy looks with disdain on his competitors: 'till reafon brings him back to school, to civilize his nature, and to improve his capacity. How jejune an employment to the sprightly youth is the tedious attainment of languages, arts, and sciences, 'till he has gained a taste for mental acquifition, which perhaps he never may; or if he does, the gradual light of perception, we know, dawns very flowly on the human mind. Is this period of life, devoted to close application and severe inftruction, a state to be boafted of ? AND when he has thrown off the fhackles of difcipline, and gained the afcent of youth, what has the stripling to boast of more than the boy, except that he is not under the tuition of masters, and his paffions are more arbitrary and unconfined? Or, if the selfgoverning principle will fometimes contend for the fway, what conflicts does it not occafion H 3 cafion with the impetuous youth, who brooks not the controul of the vicegerent within him? No; he has inlifted himself under the banner of pleasure, and will acknowledge no other fovereign. But when fair Reason breaks through the thick cloud, like the morning fun, fhe will revenge the affront, and re-affume her empire; which had been totally eclipsed by the fumes of luxurious viands and intoxicating bowls. She awakes him out of his lethargic dream, in which his fenfes had been lulled asleep by thofe phantoms of the night; and then he finds his faculties enervated, his fubftance diminished, and his reputation blafted. But this he is too wife to learn, 'till, as Solomon tells us, a dart strikes through his liver, and he hafteth as a bird hafteth to a fnare, and knoweth not that it is for his life. He may not, perhaps, be able wholly to forget the admonitions of his parents or friends; the pleas of conscience will fometimes be heard; and good refolutions may fometimes be formed: but the allurements of the world, the enjoyments of sense, the torrent of fashion, and the prevalence of ill example put in the world's fcale, will too often make his goodness to be as the morning cloud, and as the early dew that paffeth away. This revolting nature is moft pathetically defcribed defcribed by the Prophet HoSEA. When Ifrael was a child, then I loved him and called my fon out of Egypt. How, under the humble fimilitude of a nurfing-mother, does the great GoD of Ifrael fay! I taught. Ephraim alfo, to go, taking them by their arms, but they knew not that I healed them. I drew them with cords of a man, with bands of love, and I was to them, as they that take off the yoke on their jaws, and I laid meat unto them. And how strong, and pathetically afterwards does he lament the back-liding Ifraelites! How fhall I give thee up, Ephraim? how shall I deliver thee, Ifrael? haw fhall I make thee as Admah? how shall I fet thee as Zeboim? mine heart is turned within me, my repentings are kindled together. But though the Most High thus pleads in his favour and declares, he will not execute the fierceness of his wrath towards him; what have our modern youth to do with the expoftulations of Scripture? That will give no fanction to nocturnal revels, the unhappy parent of riot, rage, and madnefs.: Courted under the delufive name of pleasure, but too often proves to the wretched votaries thofe fatal pleasures that bite like a ferpent, and fting like an adder; and like Ezekiel's roll may be sweet in the mouth, but gall on the ftomach, And like that roll too may be written within and without, with matter of lamentation, mourning, and woe. But freedom is their boaft; and what has freedom to do with reftraint? Though St. PETER tells them, while they promise themselves liberty, they themselves are the fervants of corruption; for of whom a man is overcome, of the fame is he brought into bondage. But these notions of St. PETER are far too antiquated to be attended to; the eye of the mind is darkened: and is this ftate of intellectual blindness a state to be proud of? AND what fucceeds? The bold intrepid man, who carries wifdom in his head, intelligence in his look, and ftrength in his arm: made to face danger, and encounter with the business of a bustling world; or what is more, made to understand all myfteries and knowledge. Though he is endowed with the eloquence of a Demofthenes, the oratory of a Cicero, the patience of a Socrates, or the wisdom of a Solon; though he is now in the full career of human glory, yet within a few years he will be weary of this whirl of bufinefs; this high tide of honour may break down, its banks to show us, that man being in honour is compared to the beafts that perish. Can there be a more degrading comparison, a more a more humbling circumftance, than that the whose penetration and fagacity fathom the depths of human policy; whofe Babel-towers of ambition reached almoft to the heavens, muft yet, by the royal pfalmift, be likened to the brutal part of the creation? How mortifying this to human pride! Can we like this picture? If not, let us extend our views to the last stage of human nature, and fee how we shall like that. WHEN the man reverts again into fecond childhood, and has outlived all his enjoyments; when he cannot hear the voice of finging men or finging women; then the melody of mufick, the charms of rhetoric, wit, and vivacity, are to him like a tale that is twice told. The ears grow dull of hearing; the eyes, that pierced with a look more penetrating than that of the quick-fighted eagle, which could with a glance molest the tranquillity of their beholders, by inspiring them with irrefiftible love, are now become fo lifeless and funk in their orbs, that they will not afford light enough to guide the poffeffor about his chamber: and yet his genius and excellencies might have been fuch, that he was regarded as a bright luminary in every |