fource of friendship, if, when yet children, we are to be prematurely bedaubed with the varnish of the world. And yet, I fear, this is the neceffary effect of modern education.

In place of cherishing the amiable fimplicity and frankness of children, every emanation of the heart is checked by the conftant restraints, diffimulation, and frivolous forms of fafhionable addrefs, with which we harafs them. Hence they are nearly the fame at fourteen as at five and twenty, when, after a youth spent in joylefs diffipation, they enter life, flaves to selfish appetites and reigning prejudices, and devoid of that virtuous energy of foul which ftrong attachments, and the habits of deferved confidence, inspire. Even those who, like Cleone, poffefs minds fuperior to the common mould, though they cultivate their talents with fuccefs, and, in fome measure, educate themfelves anew, find it impoffible to get rid entirely of that artificial manner, and those habits of restraint, with which they had been fo early imbued.

Thus, like French tailors and dancing-mafters, pretending to add grace and ornament to nature, we constrain, distort, and incumber her; whereas the education of a polished

age

age fhould, like the drapery of a fine ftatue or portrait, confer decency, propriety, and elegance, and gracefully veil, but by no means conceal, the beautiful forms of nature.

LELIUS.

I

N° 23.

TUESDAY, April 13, 1779, .

Et ifti

Errori nomen virtus pofuiffet honeftum.

HOR.

WAS lately applied to by a friend, in be

half of a gentleman, who, he said, had been unfortunate in life, to whom he was defirous of doing a particular piece of fervice,. in which he thought my affiftance might be ufeful: "Poor fellow !" faid he, "I wish to "ferve him, because I always knew him, dif"fipated and thoughtless as he was, to be a "good-hearted man, guilty of many impru"dent things, indeed, but without meaning "any harm! In fhort, no one's enemy but his "own."

I afterwards learned more particularly the circumstances of this gentleman's life and converfation, which I will take the liberty of laying before my readers, in order to fhow them what they are to understand by the terms used by my friend, terms which, I believe, he was no wife fingular in ufing.

The

The perfon whofe interefts he efpoufed, was heir to a very confiderable estate. He loft his father when an infant; and being, "unfortunately, an only fon, was too much the darling of his mother ever to be contradicted. During his childhood he was not fuffered to play with his equals, because he was to be the king of all sports, and to be allowed a fovereign and arbitrary dominion over the perfons and properties of his play-fellows.

At

school he was attended by a fervant, who helped him to thrash boys who were too strong to be thrashed by himself, and had a tutor at home, who tranflated the Latin which was too hard for him to tranflate. At college he began to affume the man, by treating at taverns, making parties to the country, filling his tu tor drunk, and hiring blackguards to break the windows of the Profeffor with whom he was boarded. He took in fucceffion the degrees of a wag, a pickle, and a lad of mettle. For a while, having made an elopement with his mother's maid, and fathered three children of other people, he got the appellation of a diffipated dog; but, at last, betaking himself entirely to the bottle, and growing redfaced and fat, he obtained the denomination

of an honeft fellow; which title he continued to enjoy as long as he had money to pay, or indeed, much longer, while he had credit to fcore, for his reckoning.

During this laft part of his progress, he married a poor girl, whom her father, from a mistaken idea of his fortune, forced to facrifice herfelf to his wifhes. After a very fhort fpace, he grew too indifferent about her to ufe her ill, and broke her heart with the bestnatured neglect in the world. Of two children whom he had by her, one died at nurfe foon after the death of its mother; the eldest, a boy of spirit like his father, after twice running away from fchool, was at laft fent aboard a Guinea man, and was knocked on the head by a failor, in a quarrel about à Negro wench, on the coaft of Africa.

Generofity, however, was a part of his character, which he never forfeited. Befide lending money genteelly to many worthlefs companions, and becoming furety for every man who asked him, he did fome truly charitable actions to very deferving objects. Thefe were told to his honour; and people who had met with refusals from more confiderate men, Spoke of fuch actions as the genuine teft of feeling