back with pleasure upon a well spent life,-free from the pangs and fears which torment the abandoned, in that most eventful hour. W. NEAL. LESSON XXXIX. ON DUELLING. Extract from Mr. Horne's Speech. 1. How is the name of honour abused! Can honour be the savage resolution, the brutal fierceness of a revengeful spirit? True honour is manifested in a steady, uniform train of actions, attended by justice and directed by prudence. Is this the conduct of the duellist? will justice support him in robbing the community of an able and useful member, and in depriving the poor of a benefactor? will it support him in preparing affliction for the widow's heart? in filling the orphan's eyes with tears? 2. Will justice acquit him for enlarging the punishment beyond the offence? will it permit him, for, perhaps, a rash word that may admit of an apology, an unadvised action that may be retrieved, or an injury that may be compensated, to cut off a man before his days be half numbered, and for a temporary fault inflict an endless punishment? On the other hand, will prudence bear him out in risking an infamous death if he succeeds in the duel? but if he falls, will it plead his pardon at a more awful tribunal, for rushing into the presence of an offended God? 3. Senseless as this notion of honour is, it unhappily has its advocates among us: but for the prevalence of such a notion, how could the amiable person, whose death has made the solemn business of this day, be lost to his country, his family, and his friends? Would to God that I was a master of words, and it could be indulged to the tenderness of a friend to pay a tribute to his memory! 4. I might then endeavour to set him full before you in the variety of his excellence; but as this would be venturing too far, I can only lament that such virtue had not a longer date: that this good man was cut off in the strength of his age, ere half his glass was run: when his heart was projecting and executing schemes to relieve distress, and by the most surprising acts of beneficence, vindicating the bounty of Providence for heaping wealth upon him. 5. Duelling seems to be an unnatural graft upon genuine courage, and the growth of a barbarous age. The polite nations of Greece and Rome knew nothing of it: they reserved their bravery for the enemies of their country, and then were prodigal of their blood. These brave people set honour up as a guardian genius of the public, to humanize their passions, to preserve their truth unblemished, and to teach them to value life only as useful to their country. The modern heroes dress it up like one of the demons of superstition, covered with blood, and delighting in human sacrifice. LESSON XL. Comforts of the Belief in a Providence. Should the whole frame of nature round him break, He, unconcern'd, would hear the mighty crack, 1. Man, considered in himself, is a very helpless and a very wretched being. He is subject every moment to the greatest calamities and misfortunes. He is beset with dangers on all sides, and may become unhappy by numberless casualties, which he could not foresee, nor have prevented, had he foreseen them. 2. It is our comfort, while we are obnoxious to so many accidents, that we are under the care of one who directs contingencies, and has in his hands the management of every thing that is capable of annoying or offending us; who knows the assistance we stand in need of, and is always ready to bestow it on those who ask it of him. 3. The natural homage, which such a creature bears to so infinitely wise and good a being, is a firm reliance on him for the blessings and conveniences of life, and an habitual trust in him for deliverance out of all such dangers and difficulties as may befall us. 4. The man who always lives in this disposition of mind, has not the same dark and melancholy views of human natare, as he who considers himself abstractly from this relation to the Supreme Being. At the same time that he reflects upon his own weakness and imperfection, he comforts himself with the contemplation of those divine attributes, which are employed for his safety and his welfare. 5. He finds his want of foresight made up by the omniscience of him who is his support. He is not sensible of his own want of strength, when he knows that his helper is Almighty. In short, the person who has a firm trust on the Supreme Being, is powerful in his power, wise by his wisdom, happy by his happiness. He reaps the benefit of every divine attribute, and loses his own insufficiency in the fulness of infinite perfection. 6. To make our lives more easy to us, we are commanded to put our trust in him, who is thus able to relieve and succour us; the divine goodness having made such a reliance a duty, notwithstanding we should have been miserable had it been forbidden us. 7. Among several motives which might be made use of to recommend this duty to us, I shall only take notice of those that follow. The first and strongest is, that we are promised, he will not fail those who put their trust in him. 8. But without considering the supernatural blessing which accompanies this duty, we may observe that it has a natural tendency to its own reward, or in other words, that this firm trust and confidence in the great disposer of all things, contributes very much to the getting clear of any affliction, or to the bearing it manfully. 9. A person who believes he has his succour at hand, and that he acts in the sight of his friend, often exerts himself beyond his abilities, and does wonders that are not to be matched by one who is not animated with such a confidence of success. 10. I could produce instances from history; of generals, who out of a belief that they were under the protection of some invisible assistant, did not only encourage their soldiers to do their utmost, but have acted themselves beyond what they would have done, had they not been inspired by such a belief. 11. I might in the same manner show how such a trust in the assistance of an Almighty Being, naturally produces patience, hope, cheerfulness, and all other dispositions of mind that alleviate those calamities which we are not able to remove. 12. The practice of this virtue administers great comfort to the mind of man in times of poverty and affliction, but most of all in the hour of death. When the soul is hovering in the last moments of its separation, when it is just entering on another state of existence; to converse with scenes, and objects, and companions that are altogether new, what can support her under such tremblings of thought; such fear, such anxiety, such apprehensions, but the casting of all her cares upon him who first gave her being, who has conducted her through one stage of it, and will be always with her to guide and comfort her in her progress through eternity? 13. David has very beautifully represented this steady reliance on God Almighty in his twenty-third psalm, which is a kind of pastoral hymn, and filled with those allusions which are usual in that kind of writing. As the poetry is very exquisite, I shall present my readers with the following translation of it: 1. The Lord my pasture shall prepare, And feed me with a shepherd's care: 2. When in the sultry glebe I faint, 3. Though in the paths of death I tread, 4. Though in a bare and rugged way, ADDISON. LESSON XLI. Vernal Delights. Unusual sweetness purer joy inspires. 1. In the opening of the spring, when all nature begins to recover herself, the same animal pleasure which makes the birds sing, and the whole brute creation rejoice, rises very sensibly in the heart of man. I know none of the poets who have observed so well as Milton those secret overflowings of gladness which diffuse themselves through the mind of the beholder, upon surveying the gay scenes of nature: he has touched upon it twice or thrice in his Paradise Lost, and describes it very beautifully under the name of vernal delight, in that passage where he represents the devil himself as almost sensible of it. 2. Blossoms and fruits at once of golden hue When God hath shower'd the earth; so lovely seem'd Meets his approach, and to the heart inspires All sadness but despair, &c. 3. Many authors have written on the vanity of the creature, and represented the barrenness of every thing in this world, and its incapacity of producing any solid or substantial happiness. 4. As discourses of this nature are very useful to the sensual and voluptuous; those speculations which show the bright side of things, and lay forth those innocent entertainments which are to be met with among the several objects that encompass us, are no less beneficial to men of dark and melancholy tempers. 5. It was for this reason that I will endeavour to recommend a cheerfulness of mind, and to inculcate it, not only from the consideration of ourselves, and of that Being on whom we depend, nor from the general survey of that universe in which we are placed at present, but from reflections on the particular season in which this paper is |