ports his thoughtful brow, on a pile of demonstrations, to the poor pensive Indian, that seeks the missionary in the American wilderness, the humiliated self-examinant feels that there is Evil in our nature as well as Good, an EVIL and a GOOD for a just analogy to which he questions all other natures in vain. It is still the great definition of humanity, that we have a conscience, which no mechanic compost, no chemical combination, of mere appetence, memory, and understanding, can solve; which is indeed an Element of our Being!-a conscience, unrelenting, yet not absolute; which we may stupify but cannot delude; which we may suspend, but cannot annihilate; although we may perhaps find a treacherous counterfeit in the very quiet which we derive from its slumber, or its

entrancement.

Of so mysterious a phænomenon we might expect a cause as mysterious. Accordingly, we find this (cause be it, or condition, or necessary accompaniment) involved and implied in the fact, which it alone can explain. For if our permanent Consciousness did not reveal to us our Free-agency, we should yet be obliged to deduce it, as a necessary Inference, from the fact of our Conscience: or rejecting both the one and the other, as mere illusions of internal Feeling, forfeit all power of thinking consistently with our Actions, or acting consistently with our Thought, for any single hour during our whole Lives, But I am proceeding farther than I had wished or intended. It will be long, ere I shall dare flatter myself, that I have won the confidence of my Reader sufficiently to require of him that effort of attention which the regular Establishment of this Truth would demand.

After the brief season of youthful hardihood, and the succeeding years of uneasy fluctuation, after long. continued and patient study of the most celebrated works, in the languages of ancient and modern Europe, in defence or denial of this prime Article of human Faith, which (save to the Trifler or the Worldling,) no frequency of discussion can superannuate, I at length satisfied my own mind by arguments, which placed me on firm land. This one conviction, determined, as in a mould, the form and feature of my whole system in Religion, in Morals, and even in Literature. These arguments were not suggested to me by Books, but forced on me by reflection on my own Being, and by Observation of the Ways of those

about me, especially of Children. And as they had the power of fixing the same persuasion in some valuable minds, much interested, and not unversed in the controversy, and from the manner probably rather than the sub$tance, appeared to them in some sort original-(for oldest Reasons will put on an impressive semblance of novelty, if they have indeed been drawn from the fountain-head of genuine self-research) and since the arguments are neither abstruse, nor dependent on a long chain of Deductions, nor such as suppose previous Habits of metaphysical disquisition; I shall deem it my Duty to state them with what skill I can, at a fitting opportunity, though rather as the Biographer of my own sentiments than a Legislator of the opinions of other men.

At present, however, I give it merely as an article of my own faith, closely connected with all my hopes of amelioration in man, and leading to the methods, by which alone I hold any fundamental or permanent amelioration practicable: that there is Evil distinct from Error and from Pain, an Evil in human nature which is not wholly grounded in the limitation of our understandings. And this too I believe to operate equally in subjects of Taste, as in the higher concerns of Morality. Were it my conviction, that our Follies, Vice, and Misery, have their entire origin in miscalculation from Ignorance, I should act irrationally in attempting other task than that of adding new lights to the science of moral Arithmetic, or new facility to its acquirements. In other words, it would have been my worthy business to have set forth, if it were in my power, an improved system of Bookkeeping for the Ledgers of calculating Self-love. If, on the contrary, I believed our nature fettered to all its' wretchedness of Head and Heart by an absolute and innate necessity, at least by a necessity which no human power, no efforts of reason or eloquence could remove or lessen; (no, nor even prepare the way for such removal or 'diminution) I should then yield myself at once to the admonitions of one of my Correspondents (unless indeed it should better suit my humour to do nothing than nothings, nihil quam nihili) and deem it even presumptuous to aim at other or higher object than that of amusing, during some ten minutes in every week, a small portion of the reading Public. Relaxed by these principles from all moral obligation, and ambitious of procuring Pastime

and Self-oblivion for a Race, which could have nothing noble to remember, nothing desirable to anticipate, might aspire even to the praise of the Critics and Dilet tanti of the higher circles of Society; of some trusty Guide of blind Fashion; some pleasant Analyst of TASTE, as it exists both in the Palate and the Soul; some living Guage and Mete-wand of past and present Genius. But alas! my former studies would still have left a wrong Bias! If instead of perplexing my common sense with the Flights of Plato, and of stiffening over the meditations of the Imperial Stoic, I had been labouring to imbibe the gay spirit of a CASTI, or had employed my erudition, for the benefit of the favoured Few, in elucidating the interesting Deformities of ancient Greece and India, what might I not have hoped from the Suffrage of those, who turn in weariness from the Paradise Lost, because compared with the prurient Heroes and grotesque Monsters of Italian Romance, or even with the narrative dialogues of the melodious Metastasio, that" Adventurous Song,

"Which justifies the ways of God to Man,"

has been found a poor Substitute for a Grimaldi, a most inapt medicine for an occasional propensity to yawn? For, as hath been decided, to fill up pleasantly the brief intervals of fashionable pleasures, and above all to charm away the dusky Gnome of Ennui, is the chief and appropriate Business of the Poet and the Novellist! This duty unfulfilled, Apollo will have lavished his best gifts in vain ; and Urania henceforth must be content to inspire Astronomers alone, and leave the Sons of Verse to more amusive Patronesses.

I must rely on my Readers' Indulgence for the pardon of this long and, I more than fear, prolix introductory explanation. I knew not by what means to avoid it without the hazard of becoming unintelligible in my succeeding Papers, dull where animation might justly be demanded, and worse than all, dull to no purpose. The Musician may tune his instrument in private, ere his audience have yet assembled: the Architect conceals the Foundation of his Building beneath the Superstructure. But an Author's Harp must be tuned in the hearing of those, who are to understand it's after harmonies; the foundation stones of his Edifice must lie open to common view, or his friends will hesitate to trust themselves beneath the roof. I for

see too, that some of my correspondents will quote my own opinions against me in confirmation of their former advice, and remind me that I have only in sterner language re-asserted the old adage,

Ille sinistrorsum, hic dextrorsum, unus utrique
Error, sed variis illudit partibus omnes ;

that the Will or Free Agency, by which I have endeavoured to secure a retreat, must needs be deemed inefficient if error be universal! that to amuse, though only to amuse, our Visitors, is both Wisdom and Goodness, where it is presumption to attempt their amendment. And finally they will ask, by what right I affect to stand aloof from the crowd, even were it prudent; and with what prudence, did I even possess the right?" One of the later Schools of the Grecians (says Lord Bacon) is at a stand to think what should be in it that men should love Lies, where neither they make for pleasure, as with poets; nor for Advantage, as with the merchant; but for the Lie's sake. I cannot tell why, this same Truth is a naked and open day-light, that doth not shew the Masques and Mummeries and Triumphs of the present World half so stately and daintily, as Candle-lights. Truth may perhaps come to the Price of a Pearl, that sheweth best by day; but it will not rise to the price of a Diamond or Carbuncle, which sheweth best in varied lights. A mixture of Lies doth ever add pleasure. Doth any man doubt, that if there were taken from mens' minds vain opinions, flattering hopes, false valuations, imaginations as one would, and the like vinum Dæmonum (as a Father calleth poetry) but it would leave the minds of a number of men poor shrunken things, full of melancholy and Indisposition, and unpleasing to themselves?

This formidable Objection, (which however grounds itself on the false assumption, that I wage war with all amusement unconditionally, with all delight from the blandishments of style, all interest from the excitement of Sympathy or Curiosity, when in truth I protest only against the habit of seeking in books for an idle and barren amusement,) this objection of my friends brings to my recollection a fable or allegory, which I read during my Freshman's Term in Cambridge, in a modern Latin Poet: and if I mistake not, in one of the philosophical Poems of B. Stay, which are honoured with the prose commentary of the

illustrious Boscovich. After the lapse of so many years, indeed of nearly half my present Life, I retain no more of it than the bare outlines.

It was toward the close of that golden age (the tradition of which the self-dissatisfied Race of Men have every where preserved and cherished) when Conscience, or the effective Reason, acted in Man with the ease and unifor mity of Instinct; when Labor was a sweet name for the activity of sane Minds in healthful Bodies, and all enjoyed in common the bounteous harvest produced, and gathered in, by common effort; when there existed in the Sexes, and in the Individuals of each Sex, just variety enough to permit and call forth the gentle restlesness and final union of chaste love and individual attachment, each seeking and finding the beloved one by the natural affinity of their Beings; when the dread Sovereign of the Universe was known only as the universal Parent, no Altar but the pure Heart, and Thanksgiving and grateful Love the sole Sacrifice-in this blest age of dignified Innocence one of their honored Elders, whose absence they were beginning to notice, entered with hurrying steps the place of their common assemblage at noon, and instantly attracted the general attention and wonder by the perturbation of his gestures, and by a strange Trouble both in his Eyes and over his whole Countenance. After a short but deep Silence, when the first Buz of varied Inquiry was becoming audible, the old man moved toward a small eminence, and having ascended it, he thus addressed the hushed and listening Company.

"In the warmth of the approaching Mid-day as I was reposing in the vast cavern, out of which, from its' northern Portal, issues the River that winds through our vale, a Voice powerful, yet not from its' loudness, suddenly hailed me. Guided by my Ear I looked toward the supposed place of the sound for some Form, from which it had proceeded. I beheld nothing but the glimmering walls of the cavern. Again, as I was turning round, the same voice hailed me; and whithersoever I turned my face, thence did the voice seem to proceed. I stood still therefore, and in reverence awaited its' continuance. Sojourner of Earth! (these were its words) hasten to the meeting of thy Brethren, and the words which thou now hearest, the same do thou repeat unto them. On the thirtieth morn from the morrow's sunrising, and during