merit, nor confers dignity, one would think should not be desired so much as to be counterfeited; yet even this vanity, trifling as it is, produces innumerable narratives, all equally false, but more or less credible, in proportion to the skill or confidence of the relater.

40. How many may a man of a diffusive conversation count among his acquaintances, whose lives have been signalized by numberless escapes; who never cross the river but in a storm, or take a journey into the country without more adventures than befel the knight-errants of ancient times, in pathless forests or enchanted castles! How many must he know, to whom portents and prodigies are of daily occurrence; and for whom nature is hourly working wonders invisible to every other eye, only to supply them with subjects of conversation!

41. Others there are who amuse themselves with the dissemination of falsehood, at greater hazard of detection and disgrace: men marked out by some lucky planet for universal confidence and friendship, who have been consulted in every difficulty, entrusted with every secret, and summoned to every transaction: it is the supreme felicity of these men, to stun all companies with noisy information; to still doubt, and overbear opposition, with certain knowledge or authentic intelligence.

42. A lyar of this kind, with a strong memory or brisk imagination, is often the oracle of an obscure club, and, till time discovers his impostures, dictates to his hearers with uncontroled authority for if a public question be started, he was present at the debate; if a new fashion be mentioned, he was at court the first day of its appearance; if a new performance of literature draws the attention of the public, he has patronized the author, and seen his work in manuscript; if a criminal of eminence be condemned to die, he often predicted his fate, and endeavoured his reformation; and who that lives at a distance from the scene of action, will dare to contradict a man, who reports from his own eyes and eas and to whom all persons and affairs are thus intimately known?

43. This kind of falsehood is generally successful for a time, because it is practised at first with timidity and caution; but the prosperity of the lyar is of short duration; the reception of one story is always an incitement to the

forgery of another less- probable; and he goes on to triumph over tacit credulity, till pride or reason rises up against him, and his companions will no longer endure to see him wiser than themselves.

44. It is apparent, that the inventors of all these fictions intend some exaltation of themselves, and are led off by the pursuit of honour from their attendance upon truth: their narratives always imply some consequence in favour of their courage, their sagacity, or their activity, their familiarity with the learned, or their reception among the great they are always bribed by the present pleasure of seeing themselves superior to those that surround them, and reo-iving the homage of silent attention and envious admiration.

45. But vanity is sometimes excited to fiction by less visible gratifications: the present age abounds with a race of lyars who are content with the consciousness of falsehood, and whose pride is to deceive others without any gain or glory to themselves. Of this tribe it is the supreme pleasure to remark a lady in the play-house or the park, and to publish, under the character of a man suddenly enamoured, an advertisement in the news of the next day, containing a minute description of her person and her dress.

46. From this artifice, however, no other effect can be expected, than perturbations which the writer can never see, and conjectures of which he can never be informed: some mischief, however, he hopes he has done; and to have done mischief is of some importance. He sets his invention to work again, and produces a narrative of a robbery, or a murder, with all the circumstances of the time and place accurately adjusted. This is a jest of greater effect and longer duration. If he fixes his scene at a proper distance, he may for several days keep a wife in terror for her husband, or a mother for her son; and please himself with reflecting, that by his abilities and address some addition is mad to the miseries of life.

47. There is, I think, an ancient law in Scotland, by which Leasing-making was capitally punished. I am, indeed, far from desiring to increase in this kingdom the number of executions; yet I cannot but think, that they who destroy the confidence of society, weaken the credit

of intelligence, and interrupt the security of life; harrass the delicate with shame, and perplex the timorous with alarms; might very properly be awakened to a sense of their crimes, by denunciations of a whipping-post or a pillory since many are so insensible of right and wrong, that they have no standard of action but the law; nor feel guilt, but as they dread punishment.

The Importance of Punctuality.

1. IT is observed in the writings of Boyle, that the excellency of manufactures and the facility of labour would be much promoted, if the various expedients and contrivances which lie concealed in private hands, were, by reciprocal communications, made generally known; for there are few operations that are not performed by one or ather with some peculiar advantages, which, though singly of little importance, would, by conjunction and concurrence, open new inlets to knowledge, and give new powers to diligence.

2. There are in like manner several moral excellencies distributed among the various classes of mankind, which he that converses in the world should endeavour to assemble in himself. It was said by the learned Cajucius, that he never read more than one book, by which he was not instructed; and he that shall inquire after virtue with ardour and attention, will seldom find a man by whose example or sentiments he may not be improved.

3. Every profession has some essential and appropriate virtue, without which there can be no hope of honour or success, and which, as it is more less cultivated, confers within its sphere of activity different degrees of merit and reputation. As the astrologers range the subdivisions of mankind under the planets which they suppose to influence their lives, the moralist may distribute them according to the virtues which they necessarily practise, and consider them as distinguished by prudence or for itude, diligence or patience.

4. So much are the modes of excellence settled by time and place, that men may be heard boasting in one street of that which they would anxiously conceal in another. The grounds of scorn and esteem, the topics of praise

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and satire, are varied according to the several virtues or vices which the course of our lives has disposed us to admire or abhor; but he who is solicitous for his own improvement, must not suffer his affairs to be limited by local reputation, but select from every tribe of mortals their characteristical virtues, and constellate in himself the scattered graces which shine single in other men.

5. The chief praise to which a trader gererally aspires, is that of punctuality, or an exact and rigorous observance of commercial promises and engagements; nor is there any vice of which he so much dreads the imputation, as of negligence and instability. This is a quality which the interest of mankind requires to be diffused through all the ranks of life, but which, however useful and valuable, many seem content to want: it is considered as a vulgar and ignoble virtue, below the ambition of greatness, or attention of wit, scarcely requisite among men of gaiety and spirit, and sold at its highest rate when it is sacrificed to a frolic or a jest.

6. Every man has daily occasion to remark what vexations and inconveniences arise from this privilege of deceiving one another. The active and vivacious have so long disdained the restraints of truth, that promises and appointments have lost their cogency, and both parties neglect their stipulations, because each concludes that they will be broken by the other.

7. Negligence is first admitted in trivial affairs, and strengthened by petty indulgences. He that is not ye hardened by custom, ventures not on the violation of important engagements, but thinks himself bound by his word in cases of property or danger, though he allows himself to forget at what time he is to meet ladies in the paik, or at what tavern his friends are expecting him.

8. This laxity of honour would be more tolerable, if it could be restrained to the play-house, the ball-room, or the card table; yet even there it is sufficiently troublesome, and darkens those moments with expectation, suspence, uncertainty and resentment, which are set aside for the softer pleasures of life, and from which we naturally hope for unmingled enjoyment, and total relaxation. But he that suffers the slightest breach in his morality, can seldom tell what shall enter it, or how wide it shall be

made; when a passage is opened, the influx of corruption is every moment wearing down opposition, and by slow degrees deluges the heart.

9. Aliger entered into the world a youth of lively imagination, extensive views, and untainted principles. His curiosity incited him to range from place to place, and try all the varieties of conversation; his elegance of address and fertility of ideas gained him friends wherever he appeared; or at least he found the general kindness of reception always shewn to a young man whose birth and fortune gave him a claim to notice, and who has neither by vice or folly destroyed his privileges.

10. Aliger was pleased with this general smile of mankind, and being naturally gentle and flexible, was industrious to preserve it by compliance and officiousness, but did not suffer his desire of pleasing to vitiate his integrity. It was his established maxim, that a promise is never to be broken; nor was it without long reluctance that he once suffered himself to be drawn away from a festal engagement by the importunity of another company.

11. He spent the evening, as is usual in the rudiments of vice, with perturbation and imperfect enjoyment, and met his disappointed friends in the morning with confusion and excuses. His companions, not accustomed to such scrupulous anxiety, laughed at his uneasiness, compounded the offence for a bottle, gave him courage to break his word again, and again levied the penalty.

12. He ventured the same experiment upon another society; and foundthem equally ready to consider it as a venial fault, always incident to a man of quickness and gaiety; till by degrees he began to think himself at liberty to follow the last invitation, and was no longer shocked at the turpitude of falsehood. He made no difficulty to promise his presence at distant places, and if listlessness happened to creep upon him, would sit at home with great tranquillity, and has often, while he sunk to sleep in a chair, held ten tables in continual expectation of his entrance.

13. He found it so pleasant to live in perpetual vacancy, that he soon dismissed his attention as an useless incumbrance, and resigned himself to carelessness and dissipation, without any regard to the future or the past, or any