"On the whole then," continued our traveller, "it appears to my understanding, that the principles of taste lie widely diffused through our general nature, and reach to every object on which the faculties of our minds can be exerted. Its sentiments are ultimately resolvable into original qualities which all possess, though not in equal proportions; and this difference of qualification, together with the influence of association and accidental varieties, account for those opposite decisions which have given birth to the opinion that taste has no certain criterion. In the same spirit it has been argued, that if an external object excites a sentiment from its congruity with certain qualities in the mind of the individual who contemplates it, in respect to that individual, whatever may be his condition, that sentiment is right, and the decision built upon it correct and just. Surely, however, that sentiment in one man may be founded on weaker qualities than in others, and consequently is weaker in itself. It might as well be maintained, that the stronger eye is not more correct in its reports than the weaker; taste is but a kind of second sight, ο δεύτερον όμμα.

"Those who most strenuously assert the indisput able and uncertain nature of all taste, do yet palpably acknowledge a right and wrong in taste, when they challenge the taste of others; an inconsistency with their maxims which they are sure to commit. It is the consolation of those who have neither relish nor preference in their minds for the objects of taste, to maintain the total impossibility of bringing the opinions of mankind to any rational standard; and these are supported by others who, though sufficiently furnished by Nature with the necessary qualifications, are negligent of principles, and too impatient of investigation, to arrive at the true standard which is

supplied from the general constitution of our minds. So far, indeed, these objectors may be right, that, considered as a matter of mere sensation, as that faculty by which instant and immediate pleasure is received from beauty, taste has no absolute criterion. We cannot apply to it any standard, till we regard it as a matter of discernment, as related to the brightest and purest capacities of the soul, as consisting not of an organical impulse, but in the reflex operations of the mind."

This is all I can recollect of our traveller's discourse on this delicate and difficult subject, to which I know my readers are welcome, if they can discover any thing pleasing or new in the argument. It was natural for this exertion of my memory to put all my thoughts into motion on the subject; and it is my intention to publish the result in a future paper, if I can remember the progeny of my own mind, as well as that of my travelled friend.

I HAVE always been forcibly struck with the amiable colours in which Christianity has dressed the virtue of contentedness; and consider it as one of those peculiar excellences which it possesses above the imperfect system of heathen morality. A kind of gloomy resignation, very wide of true contentment, was inculcated by the philosophy of the ancients, grounded on the fruitlessness and impiety of murmuring against the dispensations of the gods, and on the general necessity of unequal conditions among mankind. The querulous were silenced without being satisfied, and awed without being convinced. But the Christian religion, by the grander prospects which it has opened to us of a future recompense, has made these temporary inequalities of much less account; and, by the awful conditions of an eternity of pain or pleasure, has taught us to see danger in abundance, and consolation in want. Christianity breathes no defiance to nature, by endeavouring to destroy our inborn propensities; but proposes only a change of objects, by which, under proper exercise, these propensities may become the source of solid advantage.

Man, under the severe discipline of philosophy, learns, indeed, to subdue his desires, and to controul his feelings: he learns to look upon life with apathy, and to rear a sullen satisfaction on a basis of scorn. He is led by a string of maxims, and is forging fetters for himself, while he triumphs in the freedom he is gaining: he is frittering away the best part of his nature, while he thinks he is only reasoning down his passions and his prejudices. But Christianity knows the value of all the energies of our minds too well to destroy them; and, instead of petrifying them into torpid stillness, gives them a kinder action and benigner impulse, by directing them towards objects on which they cannot be too much exerted-on objects which irritate and inflame by no disappointments, which inspire complacency while they exercise the feelings, which purify our enjoyment while they dilate our capacities of pleasure, and which cool the ardours without refrigerating the system of life, or damping the charities of the heart.

It is by reasoning on those principles which Christianity has promulged, that our eyes are so strengthened as to pierce the veil of opulence and splendour, to separate truth from appearance, and grandeur from greatness, till we look back upon our own littleness with secret exultation. We learn from the same source, that were our sight still farther strengthened, could we contemplate the circumstances of life with those eyes with which we probably may regard them from our place of observation in another state, in what an inverted order the objects of our contemplation would present themselves! Greatness sunk into the squalidest ranks of infamy, and poverty shining in robes of purple: a new race of shepherd-kings; and princesses again drawing water from a well, as in the days of Homer!

My greatest quarrel with discontentedness is on the account of its base submission to the dictates and decrees of other men. We are in general dissatisfied with our lot, not because we feel it to be uneasy, but because we think it appears so to others. Any particular distress, or specific ground of sorrow, I separate from the character of discontentedness, which implies a habit of repining, built on a general comparison of our own condition with that of other men ; and this is a quality so much the more contemptible, as it is not the genuine offspring of our own minds, not the legitimate result of our natural reason, but the bastard issue of vulgar ignorance, adopted by pride, and fostered by envy. I have ever, in my passage through life, consulted the frame of my mind; and balancing it against my exterior circumstances, have found them equal to the rate of ability I possess, and have been content.

It is with individuals as it is with society; that state is the happiest to man, in his collective character, in which he can best exercise his natural capacity for improvement—a state of society, fitted to draw out the social energies of his mind, adapted to his local wants, and suited to his physical character and complexion. So, in his individual capacity, that state is really the most eligible which is best calculated to foster his good inclinations, and to turn his talents to account; that which is most proportioned to the reach of his mind, and which exacts nothing beyond the promise of his intellect-in a word, which produces that harmony and equilibrium, that mutual action between the external and internal condition of the man, without which we must expect eccentricities and anomalies of conduct, and at the best an unsteady course of morality, and irregular fruits of virtue. With such a rule and measure to direct us,