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own enjoyments, if you enter on the difcipline which leads to the attainment of a claffical and liberal education with reluctance. Value duly the opportunities you enjoy, and which are denied to thousands of your fellow-creatures.

Without exemplary diligence, you will make but a contemptible proficiency. You may indeed pass through the forms of schools and universities, but you will bring nothing away from them of real value. The proper fort and degree of diligence you cannot poffefs, but by the efforts of your own refolution. Your inftructor may, indeed, confine you within the walls of a school a certain number of hours; he may place books before you, and compel you to fix your eyes upon them; but no authority can chain down your mind. Your thoughts will efcape from every external restraint, and, amidst the most serious lectures, may be ranging in the wild purfuit of trifles or vice. Rules, restraints, commands, and punishments may, indeed, affift in ftrengthening your refolution; but, without your own voluntary choice, your diligence will not often conduce to your pleasure or advantage. Though this truth is obvious, yet it feems to be a fecret to those parents who expect to find their fon's improvement increase in proportion to the number of tutors and external affiftances, which their opulence has enabled them to provide. These affistances, indeed, are fometimes afforded, chiefly that the young heir to a title or eftate may indulge himself in idlenefs and nominal pleafures. The leffon is conftrued to him, and the exercise written for him by the private tutor, while the hapless youth is engaged in fome ruinous pleafure, which at the fame time prevents him from learning any thing defirable, and leads to the formation of deftructive habits which can seldom be removed.

But the principal obftacle to improvement at your fchool, especially if you are too plentifully supplied with money, is a perverfe ambition of being distinguished as a boy of fpirit in mifchievous pranks, in neglecting the tasks and leffons, and for every vice and irregularity

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which the puerile age can admit. You will have fenfe enough, I hope, to discover, beneath the mask of gaiety and good-nature, that malignant fpirit of detraction, which endeavours to render the boy who applies to books, and to all the duties and proper bufinefs of the fchool, ridiculous. You will fee, by the light of your reafon, that the ridicule is mifapplied. You will difcover, that the boys who have recourse to ridicule are, for the most part, ftupid, unfeeling, ignorant, and vicious. Their noify folly, their bold confidence, their contempt of learning, and their defiance of authority, are, for the most part, the genuine effects of hardened infenfibility. Let not their infults and ill-treatment difpirit you. If you yield to them with a tame and abject fubmiffion, they will not fail to triumph over you with additional infolence. Difplay a fortitude in your purfuits, equal in degree to the obftinacy with which they perfift in theirs. Your fortitude will foon overcome theirs, which is feldom any thing more than the audacity of a bully. Indeed you cannot go through a school with ease to yourself, and with fuccefs, without a confiderable fhare of courage. I do not mean that fort of courage which leads to battles and contentions, but which enables you to have a will of your own, and to pursue what is right, amidst all the perfecutions of furrounding enviers, dunces, and detractors. Ridicule is the weapon made use of at schools, as well as in the world, when the fortreffes of virtue are to be affailed. You will effectually repel the attack by a dauntless spirit and unyielding perfeverance. Though numbers are against you, yet, with truth and rectitude on your fide, you may be IPSE AGMEN, though alone, yet equal to an

army.

By laying in a store of useful knowledge, adorning your mind with elegant literature, improving and establishing your conduct by virtuous principles, you cannot fail of being a comfort to thofe friends who have fupported you, of being happy within yourself, and of being well received by mankind. Honour and fuccefs

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in life will probably attend you. Under all circumftances you will have an internal source of confolation, -an entertainment, of which no fublunary viciffitude can deprive you. Time fhews how much wifer is your choice than that of your idle companions, who would gladly have drawn you into their affociation, or rather into their confpiracy, as it has been called, against good manners, and againft all that is honourable and ufeful. While you appear in fociety as a refpectable and valuable member of it, they have facrificed, at the fhrine of vanity, pride, extravagance, and falfe pleasure, their health and their fenfe, their fortunes and their characters.

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On the Advantages derivable from National Adversity.

T is very certain that national profperity, as it is comprehended in the idea of numerous fleets and armies, of extenfive empire, large revenues, advantageous commerce, and a profufion of money in fpecie, is a kind of good by no means neceffarily connected with moral good, or with the fubftantial happiness of individuals. It makes a fplendid figure in imagination's eye; but to reafon it appears in a very questionable shape, and experience is able to evince that it has always diffused profligacy and misery through the walks of private life; and, by introducing luxury, licentioufness, indolence, and corruption, has at once deftroyed all that can render human nature dignified and happy, and precipitated the decline and the downfal of empires, while triumphing in fancied glory.

It has been obferved, that the bodies politic and natural bear to each other a remarkable analogy. A human form, pampered, bloated, and plethoric, will often have the appearance of strength, as well as magnitude; though no ftate of it can be less adapted to facilitate the animal movements, or in greater danger of a hafty diffolution. The body politic alfo lofes in mufcular force, as much as it acquires of unwieldy fize, till, by the gradual decrease of vigour, and augmentation of weight, it totters on its bafelefs fupports, and, at last, lies level with the duft, with Babylon and ancient Rome. Luxury, the inevitable confequence of what is falfely called national profperity, becomes the grave of empires, and of all that could adorn them, or render their long duration a rational object of defire.

There is, undoubtedly, a certain degree of magnitude at which when a ftate is arrived, it must of neceffity undergo the alternative, of being purged of its peccant humours, or falling into a nerveless languor and con

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fequent

fequent decline. Perhaps our own country has already arrived at that degree, and is now, under the operation of Divine Providence, fuffering the amputation of its morbid excrefcences for the falvation of its health and existence. It may lose some of its revenues; but it will fave and meliorate its morals and its liberty.-Minifters may be fhaken from their feats, penfioners and placemen may be reduced to defpair, funds may be annihila ted, and eftates brought down to their natural value but freedom, but virtue, but industry, but the British constitution, but human nature, shall survive the wreck, and emerge, like filver and gold when tried by the fire, with new value and additional luftre. After a state of political adversity, fomething may take place in fociety fimilar to the expected renovation of all things, after the general conflagration of the universe.

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Distress and difficulty are known to operate in private life as the fpurs of diligence. Powers which would for ever have lain dormant in the halcyon days of ease and plenty, have been called forth by adverfity, and have advanced their poffeffor to the most enviable heights of virtue, happiness, and glory. Man is naturally indolent, and when undisturbed will bask and fleep in the funfhine till the fleep of death; but, when roufed by the blast and the thunder, he rises, strains every finew, and marches on to enterprize. Succefs will almost infallibly attend great exertions, uniformly and refolutely continued; fo that what begun in mifery ends in triumph, as the fun which rose in a mist defcends with ferenity, and paints the whole horizon with gold and purple.

Public industry may be excited in the fame manner, and in the fame degree, by public misfortunes. The nation is impoverished, or, in other words, its fuperfluities are retrenched. It is an event devoutly to be wished. Luxury, with ten thousand evils in her train, is obliged to withdraw, and the humble virtues, whom the had driven by her infolence into exile, cheerfully advance from their concealment. Industry and frugality take the lead; but to what a degree of vigour must

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