There is, however, another weakness, somewhat akin to this, that I am afraid still prevails among us, which my fondness for children, and the pleasure I find in prattling with them, give me frequent opportunities of observing. I mean a custom of terrifying children, and filling their young minds with gloomy apprehensions of death. This is one

of the most common methods employed by ignorant nursery maids and foolish parents to frighten infants into obedience. But nothing can be more absurd, or attended with more pernicious consequences. Were a person of a timid frame of mind under a necessity of crossing the ocean, would it be the part of a friend to magnify the danger, and to amuse him, all the way to the port where he was to embark, with accounts of storms and tempests, and with a fearful picture of the many and various hazards to which he must be exposed on the voyage?

A wise parent, attentive to the future happiness of his children, ought to follow a very different rule of conduct. From their earliest infancy he ought to make the idea of death familiar to them; he ought to accustom them to look upon it, not only without fear, but with the same indifference as on any other unavoidable occurrence to which they are daily exposed. By this means they will, as they advance in life, be led to consider it as a friend rather than an enemy; they will perceive that, but for death, this world would be a prison more dreadful than any the most cruel tyrant ever invented; they will look forward to it as the only period to the cares of this life, as a happy passage to that better world, where only they can expect a complete reward for a faithful discharge of their duty in this.

However absurd a dread of witches and apparitions may be, the consequences attending it are not so bad as those that flow from the fear of death. The one, it is true, fills the mind with many disagreeable apprehensions, and causes many uneasy moments, but the other unfits a man for discharging his duty in society, and too often expose him to infamy and disgrace. Courage is a quality that depends, in some measure, on the constitution of the body; and it has been observed, that the same individual is not, at all times, and upon all occasions, equally brave. I cannot help being of opinion, however, that if a boy, from his earliest infancy, were taught to view death in a just light, he would, imperceptibly, acquire a strength of mind that would enable him to face danger, and to do his duty, on all occasions, without being obliged to summon up his resolutions, and to call reason to his aid, upon every trying emergence.

I have heard it said, that, if men were accustomed to despise death, they would be apt, through a sort of foolhardiness, to throw away their lives on every slight occasion or idle quarrel. But, for my own part, I entertain a very different opinion; that foolhardiness is seldom to be met with in a man of a calm, firm, determined mind, who knows how to estimate the true value of life. In general. it proceeds from a secret consciousness, that leads a man to put too high a value on the quality of courage, and to indulge his vanity by a display of it; as we often see men most desirous to be thought to possess those virtues and those talents to which, in reality, they have the least pretensions.

I was much pleased with a conversation I had on this subject, on a visit I lately paid to Lady

the wife of my much valued friend, General

who is now abroad, fighting the battles of his country. I found her in her dressing-room, surrounded by a group of the most lovely children. After they retired, she began to complain that, with all the attention a parent could bestow, it was often impossible to prevent children from receiving bad and improper impressions from servants and attendants. "It was but just now," said she, “your favourite, little Charles, told his brother that if he was a bad boy he would be put into a black box, carried to the churchyard, thrown into a hole, and covered over with earth." After some observations on the bad tendency of representing death in frightful colours, she said she had often been disposed to think the poets to blame in this particular, who, by dwelling on all the circumstances attending our dissolution, and presenting them to the imagination in strong and lively colours, often leave an impression which reason is not able entirely to wear off. She instanced the well-known lines of Shakspeare:

"Ay, but to die, and go we know not where;
To lie in cold obstruction, and to rot;
This sensible warm motion to become
A kneaded clod; and the dilated spirit
To bathe in fiery floods, or to reside
In thrilling regions of thick-ribbed ice;
To be imprison'd in the viewless winds,
And blown with restless violence round about
The pendent world; or to be worse than worst
Of those, that lawless and uncertain thoughts
Imagine howling; - 't is too horrible!

The weariest and most loathed worldly life,
That age, ache, penury, and imprisonment
Can lay on nature, is a paradise

To what we fear of death."

"It is impossible," said she, "to read those lines without being affected by them. Yet were I to

judge from my own feelings, I should think the sentiments unjust. If to me," continued she, stealing a glance at the picture of my friend, while an involuntary tear half started in her eye, "if to me there be any thing terrible in death, it proceeds from the thoughts of what I should leave, not from the dread of what I should meet with."

"My father was a farmer, in a tolerably reputable situation. I was his eldest son, and at the age of six years I was sent to the parish school, to be taught reading and writing. My father naturally made inquiries concerning my progress, and the schoolmaster gave him the most flattering accounts. After I had spent the usual time in learning to read and write, my master said it would be a pity to cut short a boy of my genius, and advised my father to allow me to remain a year or two longer at his school, that I might get a little Latin. This flattered my father's vanity, as it put his son in a situation to appear somewhat above that of the children of the neighbouring farmers. I was allowed to sit on the same bench at school with our landlord's son, and I had sometimes the honour to be whipped for his faults. In studying Latin I spent three years. The account which my father received of my pro

gress in that language led him to follow my teacher's suggestion, to give me a little Greek. Having gone thus far, the transition was easy; it would be a pity, said our sanguine advisers, to lose all the knowledge I had got; with my application and my genius, if I prosecuted my studies, I might become a very learned and a very great man. If I studied divinity, which was proposed, I might, in time, preach in the pulpit of the very parish in which my father lived; nay, I might rise to be a Professor in the University, or become Moderator of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland.

"I was accordingly entered a student in the University. My father considered my fortune as now made; and my expectations were not inferior to his. But I soon found my situation at the University a very hard and uneasy one. My father had been able to supply me tolerably with necessaries at the parish school; but to do this at the University, situated in a great and expensive town, was above his power. I was obliged to walk about, therefore, with a shabby coat and with an empty purse. I could not attend all the lectures I wished, for want of money to purchase admission, or to procure the necessary books. I now likewise found, that, far from being more knowing than my college companions, as my country schoolmaster flattered me would be the case, most of them knew more than I did; they had been better taught, and had profited accordingly. Poverty, want of books, of friends, and of the other conveniences of life, were not circumstances very well suited for the study of the beauties of Homer and Virgil, nor for making a progress in the abstract sciences; but with all these difficulties, I gave such close and intense application, that I was able to pick up a good deal of