honest business, that impulse which is necessary to preserve them from lapsing into a state of unmanly indolence or peevish discontent.

These instances may suggest to parents and teachers how important it is, in the education of youth, to form them early to a taste for solitude, and to store their minds with such knowledge as may enable them to fill up an interval of retreat with advantage to themselves, and in a noble independence of the world. Thus disposed and qualified, they will be prepared to find a refuge from the bustle of business, and the turbulence of pleasure, in still life, where their agitated passions may gradually subside, and their better principles, wearied by a too long and violent exertion, may have time to breathe, and to recover their lost vigour.

Hence also may appear the importance of an education in the country. He whose youth has been habituated to rural scenes,

and those calm and innocent pleasures which nature there, fresh and untainted, affords to her children, will probably retain the impression all his days; and under this happy bias, is more likely to find in retirement that repose which his imperfect virtue may often need, than if he had been trained up amidst the shews and dissipations of a great city.

1

SECTION II.

Containing some Observations on those Means which tend, by a more direct and positive Influence, to the Promotion of Virtue.

THE observations I have here to offer to the reader, I shall reduce under the following heads: first, of Education; secondly, of Religion; and, lastly, of Philosophy and History; only premising that the word virtue (as signified in the Preface) will be taken comprehensively, after some good authors, who have used it to express a spirit and conduct answerable to the several moral relations we bear towards God and our fellow-creatures.

Under this head some modern philosophers, (who, in default of new discoveries, endeavour to amuse the world with a new language,) rank every impression, whether physical or intellectual, whether imme

diately relative to the corporeal or spiritual part of our composition. According to this dialect it may be said, that we are tutored by the elements as well as by our parents and schoolmasters, and that we are as much indebted for our education to the pupilage of nature as to human discipline. All this, however, as it is contrary to the established meaning of words, so it proceeds upon a principle which ought to be rejected as equally false and dangerous ; namely, That whatever we are, whether learned or ignorant, virtuous or vicious, it is no more than a necessary result of the whole of our situation; or of that series of moral and physical causes, to whose separate or combined influence we are constantly and involuntarily exposed. Yet, though we must reject this doctrine as utterly inconsistent with our present state of trial, we would not reject the truth involved in it; and are ready to allow, not only in this philosophical, but also in the ordinary sense of the word, that man, though not absolutely, is, to a very considerable

degree, the product of his education; and that his whole life usually takes its colour from the training and instruction he receives in the season of youth.

The truth of this position is so manifest from experience, and is so generally acknowledged, that it is unnecessary to add any thing here in its support; and I would rather notice the obligation which hence arises, on the part of teachers, strongly to inculcate on the minds of their pupils, those general principles which may serve to regulate their views and conduct in future life; for it is not, I apprehend, the first object of a liberal education to form a young man to any particular art or profession, or to carry him through the detail of any system whatever; but to supply him with such axioms, and fundamental knowledge, as may enable him effectually to prosecute any art or profession he may think proper to adopt, and to judge soundly of any system which may fairly offer itself to his consideration; and, above all, to