been rewarded by them with calumny and persecution. Full of emotion, he presses my hand. Oh! what pungent sorrow may be soothed to rest by a single word, and by the feeblest mark of benevolence! p. 15.

My different establishments, scattered over the capital and the vicinity, variegate my life most innocently and most agreeably. In winter, I take up my residence in that which is exposed completely to the noonday sun; in summer, I remove to that which has a northern aspect, and hangs over the cooling stream. At another time, I pitch my tent in the neighbourhood of the Rue d' Artois, among piles of hewn stone, where I see palaces rising around me. I take care never to inquire to whom they belong. But, I shall be asked, is there nothing to be feared in such a style of living? May I meet the final period of my days, while engaged in the practice of virtue! I have heard many a history of persons who perished in hunting matches, in parties of pleasure, while travelling by land and by water; but

never in performing acts of beneficence. Gold is a powerful commander of respect with the commonalty. I display wealth sufficient to secure their attention, but not enough to tempt any one to plunder me. I am very circumspect in the choice of my hosts; and if I perceive that I have been mistaken in my selection, the rent of my lodgings is paid before hand, and I return no more. p. 16.

On this plan of life, I have not the least occasion for the incumbrances of furniture and servants. With what tender solicitude am I expected in each of my habitations! What satisfaction does my arrival inspire! What attention and zeal do my entertainers express to outrun my wishes! I enjoy among them the choicest blessings of society, without feeling any of the inconveniences. No one sits down at my table to backbite his neighbour, and no one leaves it with a disposition to speak unkindly of me. I have no children; but those of my laudlady are more eager to please me than their

own parents. I have no wife: the most sublime charm of love is to devise and accomplish the felicity of another. I assist in the formation of happy marriages, or in promoting the happiness of those that are already formed. I thus dissipate my personal languor, I put my passions upon the right scent, by proposing to them the noblest attainments at which they can aim upon the earth, I have drawn nigh to the miserable with an intention to comfort them, and from them, perhaps, I shall derive consolation in my turn. In this manner it is in your power to live, O ye great ones of the earth! and thus might you multiply your fleeting days in the land through which you are merely travellers..... You are every day looking out for some new spectacle; there is no one which possesses so much the charm of novelty as the happiness of mankind. p. 17.

There are many confessors who have neither the talents nor the experience requisite to the comforter of the afflicted.

The point is not to pronounce absolution to the man who confesses his sins, but to assist him in bearing up under those of another, which lie much heavier upon him.

As to preachers, their sermons are usually too vague, and too injudiciously applied to the various necessities of their hearers. They will declaim against avarice to a prodigal, or against profusion to a miser. They will inculcate the duty of giving alms on the persons who receive them: and the virtue of humility on a poor water porter. There are some who preach repentance to the unfortunate, who promise the joys of paradise to voluptuous courts, and who denounce eternal punishments* against starving villages. I have known, in the country, a poor female peasant driven to madness, by a sermon of this cast.-It is no easy matter to find out, in a soul wounded and oppressed with timidity, the precise point of its grief, and to apply the balm and the hand of the good Samaritan to the sore. This is an art known only to minds endowed

* Original translation is, the flames of hell.

with sensibility, who have themselves suffered severely, and which is not always the attainment of those who are virtuous only.

The people feel the want of this consolation; and finding no man to whom they can nake application for it, they address themselves to stones. I have sometimes read, with an aching heart, in our churches, billets affixed by the wretched, to the corner of a pillar, in some obscure chapel. They represented the cases of unhappy women abused by their husbands; of young people labouring under embarrassment: they solicited not the money of the compassionate, but their prayers. They were upon the point of sinking into despair. Their miseries were inconceivable. Ah! if men who have themselves been acquainted with grief, of all conditions, would unite in presenting to the sons and daughters of affliction, their experience and their sensibility, more than one illustrious sufferer would come and draw.from them those consolations which all the preachers, and books, and philosophy in the world, are incapable to administer. All that the poor man needs,