dom know little or nothing of the religion they profess, but only to profess it as the religion of the country wherein they live. They may, perhaps, be very zealous for it (as all people are for the religion in which they are born and bred), but take no care to frame their lives according to it, because they were never rightly informed about it.—Beveridge.

CIII.

UNISHMENT FOR THEFT.-One day, when I was

dining with the Reverend Prelate, John Morton, Archbishop of Canterbury, Cardinal and Chancellor of England, there happened to be at table one of the English lawyers, who took occasion to run out into a high commendation of the severe execution of justice upon thieves, who (as he said) were then hanged so fast, that there were sometimes twenty on one jibbet: and upon that he said, he could not wonder enough how it came to pass, that since so few escaped, there were yet so many thieves left, who were still robbing in all places. Upon this, I, who took the boldness to speak freely before the cardinal, said, there was no reason to wonder at the matter, since this way of punishing thieves was neither just in itself, nor good for the public; for, as the severity was too great, so the remedy was not effectual-simple theft not being so great a crime, that it ought to cost a man his life; and no punishment, how severe soever, being able to restrain those from robbing, who can find out no other way of livelihood; and in this, said I, not only you in England, but a great part of the world, imitate some ill masters, that are readier to chastise their scholars than to teach them. There are dreadful punishments enacted against thieves; but it were

they call barbarians in point of manners. He is speaking of the Scythians; and, after describing their way of life, observes, that" justice was cultivated and preserved among them, not by laws, but by the spirit and temper of the people; that they held no crime more atrocious than theft; that they had not the same passion for gold and silver with other nations; and that a moderation, contentedness, and sobriety of manners, laid them under no temptation of invading what was not their own. And I wish," says the historian, "that the rest of the world possessed the same spirit of moderation, the same justice in abstaining from what belongs to others; arms would not then commit the ravishes they do, nor mankind perish more by the sword than from the natural lot of mortality. And it may seem altogether wonderful, that nature grants to savages, what the Greeks fannot attain with all their refinement and parade of philosophy; and that civilised and polished manners are exceeded by those of uncultivated barbarism. So much more advantageous to the one is an ignorance of what is wrong, than to the other a knowledge of what is right."

met

So a sensible writer of our own tells us, that he had " with people as polite, ingenious, and humane, whom we have been taught to look upon as cannibals, as any he ever conversed with in Europe; and I am convinced," says he, "from my own experience, that human nature is everywhere the same, allowances being made for unavoidable prejudices, instilled in infancy by ignorance and superstition. And nothing has contributed more to render the world barbarous, than men having been taught from their cradles, that every nation almost but their own are barbarians: they first imagine the

into remembrance; it unfolds and displays the hidden treasure of knowledge, with which reading, observation, and study, had before furnished the mind. By mutual discourse the soul is awakened and allured to bring forth its hoards of knowledge, and it learns how to render them most useful to mankind. A man of vast reading, without conversation, is like a miser, who lives only to himself.-Watts.

CVIII.

ow TO REFORM MANKIND.-There is no way but one to reform men, and that is, to render them happier. It is good and easy to enfeeble vice by bringing men nearer to each other, and by rendering them thus more happy. All the sciences, indeed, are still in a state of infancy; but that of rendering men happy has not so much as seen the light yet, even in Christendom.-St. Pierre.

CIX.

NSOCIABLE TEMPERS.-Unsociable tempers are contracted in solitude, which will in the end not fail of

corrupting the understanding as well as the manners, and of utterly disqualifying a man for the satisfactions and duties of life. Men must be taken as they are, and we neither make them nor ourselves better, by flying from or quarrelling with them.-Burke.