April 24. brance of having done what is decent and right affordeth a real and a natural complacency, that will cast a gleam of refreshing comfort upon the cloudy days of our sickness and distress.

But although it be true that the considering and recording inwardly that a man is clear and free from wilful fault and just imputation, and standeth fair in the esteem of his fellows, doth attemper outward calamities; yet it will require especial diligence and painful rumination for every man to form within himself a true judgement and a well refined and proportionate taste in life and manners, that he may not foolishly commend himself, nor expect the commendation of others for that which is not truly excellent and worthy.

If the sense of honour and reputation be directed by right reason, so as to have regard only unto the judgement of the wise and good, obtained by real good practices, it will furnish a most powerful spur unto vertue; and contrariwise, if it is a vehement lust of the good opinion of those we converse with indiscriminately, it will lead into dangerous excentricities, and shameful enormities. For in many persons the sense of what is proper is very much depraved; and they have learned to measure right and wrong, not by the true standard of morality, but from false and partial rules, devised for other purposes than such ás doe promote the happiness of mankind. Now men are hereby insensibly accustomed to admire and esteem many things which are not morally good, and to condemn others that are no way evil.

Thus when corruption and mal practices prevail in a state, and the constitution of the body politic

273 hath lost its proper ballance, a man will be hated who shall desire to see these corruptions rooted out; and he who commendeth and fostereth the noxious enormities will be approved by all who either buy or sell in this market of abomination.

No wise or good man, therefore, will ever set any great value upon so low a thing as the ignorant commendation of such as know so little of what is truly laudable. He will steadily pursue, (under the regulation of the taciturn prudence we have heretofore sett forth,) what he taketh to be right; and as he will not be greatly lifted up with the praise of such as are under the guidance of prejudice, soe neither will he be much cast down when he is hated and evil spoken of by them, but will rather account it to be an honour.

It was a witty and apposite saying of that great Athenian, who in a speech having received the applauses of the giddy multitude, turned to one in whose judgement he confided, and asked him if he had said a foolish thing.

Whoever is so fond of general commendation as to make the opinion of the vulgar the rule of his conduct, cannot fail of being oftentimes carried into monstrous and ridiculous errors; and although he may by artfull and immoral compliances gain the applause of his confederates, and of such as be gulled by them against the general good, he will be in the end despised and detested by all men, as having quenched the light of reason and vertue, and lied against the Holy Spirit of truth. It is therefore a master stroke in the art of life to moderate duely

April 24. the love of reputation soe far as never to aim at it by sinistrous devices, or strive to obtain it by such discourses or actions as accord not with real conscientious conviction; and which, if pursued, will finally terminate in infamy and disgrace.

Another main spring of a goodly reputation, is in the prudent and happy ordering of common discourse, and in the choice of intimate companions.

In the ordering of discourse to give frequent occasion to the fhewing forth of the wit and knowledge of those with whom we converse, rather than our own; and not to push or jade any argument to the discontentment of the prolocutors, and still lefs to dart out sharp speeches, that are picquant and go to the quick; but try to furnish a pure and pleasing sort without bittern, and use satyre rather as a fhield than javelin in the struggle of argument.

;

In the choice of companions to prefer such as have been of the acquaintance of your youth, that have no pursuits of ambition or profit of like nature with your own that have been known to vindicate your conduct when your back was turned, and have animadverted freely on your conduct to your face. Such companions may ripen into friends, and thus bring a phoenix into your haunts, out of whose ashes may spring in their children the solacement of your old age. Thus much concerning the art of obtaining and preserving a good name may suffice*.

*The Editor hopes his ingenious correspondent will pardon the freedom he has used in modernising the orthography a little, especially in regard to the common words, be, we, he, &c. One reason for this was the difficulty of getting it done without casual mistakes, which occasioned a disagreeable want of uniformity in the work; but the principal cause was that he has received several hints from correspondents requesting it.

THE

HE understanding of man is very limited, but his vanity is unbounded; hence it is that though he cannot be said to know any one object in nature thoroughly, yet there is scarcely a subject that can come under investigation, on which he does not pronounce in a decisive tone. We frequently afsign laws to nature, and pretend to discover causes, to prove that certain things can never happen that we have not already had occasion to take notice of. If, for example, Shakespeare had never appeared in Britain, certain philosophers would have had no difficulty in afsigning reasons to prove that the climate, or the soil, or some other peculiarity of this island, were such as to preclude the pofsibility of our ever having a dramatic writer of any excellence in it. Any person who fhall take the trouble of looking into the writings of the French philosophers for half a century backwards, will there meet with whole volumes written to prove that the air of this country is so thick, the climate so variable, and in fhort so deplorably ill constituted, as to render it impofsible for any man who was born in it to have a genius for the fine arts, or ever to be able to attain even a moderate degree of excellence in music or poetry; but above all in painting of any sort, which they afsert has been, and for very obvious reasons, which they detail with the most triumphant pride and self consequence, must for ever remain beyond the reach of the natives of this isle.

April 24. But unfortunately for these very learned philosophers it has happened by a very strange fatality, that at the present time, in spite of these unanswerable arguments, dame Nature, in one of those freaks which the often takes, as one might say on purpose to confound the wisdom of the wise, has so contrived matters as to raise painters of this isle to the first eminence in almost every department of the art of painting. Gavin Hamilton is allowed, even by foreigners, to be at this time above all his competitors in the historic line; unless some of the English school dispute the palm with him. Jacob More, a native of Edinburgh, who was bred a house painter, if I mistake not with old Norrie, is without doubt the first landscape painter in the world; and at this moment, even while he continues to produce new paintings daily, his pictures bring a higher price. than those of Claude de Loraine, who has held the first rank in that line for a century past. Sir Jothua Reynolds has raised portrait painting to a degree of dignity among the fine arts formerly unknown. By the elegance of his attitudes, the easy flow of his outline, and the unaffected though graceful simplicity which he has thrown into all his pictures, he has chastened even the taste of the connoifseur, while he charms the most ignorant beholder. Stubbs never had an equal for painting horses and other domestic animals; Elmer for dead game pofsefses merit of a superlative degree; and Wedgewood has introduced an elegance of form, and a delicacy in the mode of ornamenting even the most common pieces of furniture, that can be rivalled on