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sure of recommending him to mamma's esteem; and he is not only a mighty good kind of man, but she is sure he would make a mighty good kind of husband.

No man is half so happy in his friendships. Almost every one he names is a friend of his, and every friend is a mighty good kind of man. I had the honour of taking a long walk lately with one of these good creatures; and I believe he pulled off his hat to every third person we met, with a "how do you do, my dear sir?" though I found he hardly knew the names of five of these intimate acquaintances. I was highly entertained with the greeting between my companion and another MIGHTY GOOD KIND OF MAN, that we met in the course of our walk. You would have thought they were brothers, that had not seen each other for many years, by their mutual expressions of joy at meeting. They both talked together; not with a design of opposing each other, but through eagerness to approve what each other said. I caught them frequently crying "yes," together, and "very true,"-" you are very right, my dear sir;" and, at last having exhausted their favourite topics of what news and the weather, they concluded with begging to have the vast pleasure of an agreeable evening with the other very soon; but parted without naming either time or place.

I remember at school we had a mighty good kind of boy, who, though he was generally hated by his school-fellows, was the darling of the dame where he boarded; as by his means she knew who did all the mischief in the house. He always finished his exercise before he went to play: you could never find a false concord in his prose, or a false quantity in his verse: and he made huge amends for the want of sense and spirit in his compositions, by having very few grammatical errors. If you could not call him a scholar, you must allow he took great pains not to appear a dunce. At the university, he never failed attending his tutor's lectures, was constant at prayers night and morning, never missed gates, or the hall at meal time; was regular in his academical exercises, and took pride in appearing, on all occasions, with masters of arts; and he was happy beyond measure in being acquainted with some of the heads of the houses, who were glad through him to know what passed among the under-graduates. Though he was not reckoned at college to be a Newton, a Locke, a Burke, or a Bacon, he was universally esteemed by the senior part to be a mighty good kind of young man;

and this even, placid turn of mind has since recommended him to some small preferments.

We may observe, when these mighty good kind of young men come into the world, their attention to appearance and externals, beyond which the generality of people seldom examine, procures them a much better subsistence, and a more reputable situation in life, than either their abilities or their merits could otherwise intitle them to. Though they are seldom advanced very high, yet if such a one is in orders, he gets a tolerable living, is reckoned quite pious and discrete, is consulted upon all occasions by his neighbours, and is said to be a very sensible as well as a mighty good kind of man.-If he is to be a lawyer, his being such a mighty good kind of man, will make the attorneys supply him with special pleading, or bills and answers to draw, as he is sufficiently qualified by his slow genius to be a dray-horse of the law.

I must own, that a GOOD MAN and a MAN OF SENSE certainly should have every thing that this kind of man has: yet, if he possesses no more, much is wanting to finish and complete his character. Many are deceived by French paste: it has the lustre and brilliance of a real diamond; but the want of hardness, the essential property of this valuable jewel, discovers the counterfeit, and shows it to be of no intrinsic value whatsoever. If the head and the heart are left out in the character of a man, you might as well look for a perfect beauty in a female face without a nose, as expect to find a valuable man without sensibility and understanding. But it often happens that these mighty good kind of men are wolves in sheep's clothing, and that their want of parts is supplied by an abundance of cunning, and the outward behaviour and deportment calculated to entrap the short sighted and unwary.—Where this is not the case, I cannot help thinking that these kind of men are no better than blanks in the creation: if they are not unjust stewards. they are certainly to be reckoned unprofitable servants.

SENEX.

ROUSSEAU.

THE following satire, perhaps less just than severe, upon Monsieur Rousseau, author of the Nouvelle Eloise, was written in the shape of a prophecy, and published at Geneva, in the year 1761, by Voltaire.

In those days there will appear in France a very extraordinary person to come from the banks of a lake. He will say to the people, I am possessed by the demon of enthusiasm; I have received from heaven the gift of inconsistency: and the multitude shall run after him, and many shall believe in him; and he shall say unto them, ye are all villains and rascals; your women are all prostitutes; and I am come to live amongst you: and he will take advantage of the natural levity of this country to abuse the people: and he will add, all the men are virtuous in the country where I was born, and I will not stay in the country where I was born: and he will maintain, that the sciences and the arts must necessarily corrupt our morals; and he will treat of all sorts of sciences and arts; and he will maintain, that the theatre is a source of prostitution and corruption, and he will compose operas and plays. He will publish, that there is no virtue but among the savages, though he never was among them: he will advise mankind to go stark naked; and he will wear laced clothes when given him. He will employ his time in copying French music, and he will tell you there is no French music. He will tell you, that it is impossible to preserve your morals if you read romances; and he will compose a romance, and in this romance shall be seen vice in deeds, and virtue in words, and the actors in it shall be mad with love and with philosophy; and in this romance we shall learn how to seduce a young girl philosophically: and the disciple shall lose all shame and all modesty: and she shall practise folly, and raise maxims with her master; and she shall be the first to give him a kiss on the lips, and she shall invite him to lie with her, and she shall become pregnant with metaphysics; and his love letters shall be philosophical homilies. And he shall get drunk with an English nobleman, who shall insult him, and he shall challenge him to fight: and his mistress, who hath lost the honour of her own sex, shall decide with regard to that of men; and she shall teach her master, who taught her every thing, that he ought not to fight. And he shall go to Paris, where he shall be introduced to some ladie's

of pleasure; and he shall get drunk like a fool, and lie with these women of the town; and he shall write an account of this adventure to his mistress, and she shall thank him for it. The man who shall marry his mistress shall know that she is loved to distraction by another; and this good man, notwithstanding, shall be an atheist; and immediately after the marriage, his wife shall find herself happy, and shall write to her lover that, if she were again at liberty, she would wed her husband rather than him. And the philosopher shall have a mind to kill himself, and shall compose a long dissertation to prove that a lover ought always to kill himself when he has lost his mistress: and her husband shall prove to him that it is not worth his while, and he shall not kill himself. Then he shall set out to make the tour of the world, in order to allow time for the children of his mistress to grow up, and that he may get to Switzerland time enough to be their preceptor, and to teach them virtue as he had done their mother. And he shall see nothing in the tour of the world, and he shall return to Europe: and when he shall be arrived there, they shall still love one another with transport, and they shall squeeze each other's hands and weep.-And this fine lover, being in a boat alone with his mistress, shall have a mind to throw her into the water, and himself along with her; and all this they shall call philosophy and virtue; and they shall talk so much of philosophy and virtue, that nobody shall know what philosophy and virtue is. And the mistress of the philosopher shall have a few trees and a rivulet in her garden, and she shall call that her elysium; and nobody shall be able to comprehend what that elysium is; and every day she shall feed sparrows in her garden; and she shall watch her both males and females, to prevent their playing the same foolish prank that she herself had played; and she shall sup in the midst of her harvest people; and she shall cut hemp with them, having her lover at her side; and the philosopher shall be desirous of cutting hemp the day after, and the day after that, and all the days of his life: and she shall be a pedant in every word she says, and all the rest of her sex shall be contemptible in her eyes; and she shall die-and before she dies, she shall preach according to custom; and she shall talk incessantly, till her strength fails her; and she shall dress herself out like a coquet, and die like a saint.

The author of this book, like those empirics who make wounds on purpose, in order to show the virtue of their balsams, poisons

our souls for the glory of curing them; and this poison will act violently on the understanding, and on the heart; and the antidote will operate only on the understanding, and the poison will triumph; and he will boast of having opened a gulf, and he will think that he saves himself from all blame, by crying wo be to the young girls who shall fall into it; I have warned them against it in my preface; and young girls never read a preface: and he will say, by way of excuse for his having written a book which inspires vice, that he lives in an age wherein it is impossible to be good; and, to justify himself, he will slander the whole world, and threaten with his contempt all those who do not like his book. And every body shall wonder how, with a soul so pure and virtuous, he could compose a book which is so much the reverse; and many who believed in him shall believe in him no more.

PUBLIC CREDULITY.

A gentleman having ruined himself by extravagance, turned quack to retrieve it. He first attempted to practise at Paris, but being disappointed there, directed his views to the provinces. He arrived at Lyons, and announced himself as the celebrated Doctor Montaccini, who can restore the dead to life, and declared that in fifteen days he would go to the public church-yard, and excite a general resurrection!

This declaration excited general murmurs against the doctor, who, not in the least disconcerted, applied to the magistrates, and desired that he might be put under a guard to prevent his escape, -until he should perform the undertaking. This proposition inspired perfect confidence, and the whole city came to consult the Doctor, and purchase his beaume de vie.

As the period for the performance of this miracle approached, the anxiety among the inhabitants of Lyons increased. At length he received the following letter from a rich citizen:

"The great operation, doctor, which you are going to perform, has broke my rest. I have a wife buried for some time, who was a fury, and I am unhappy enough already without her resurrection. In the name of heaven do not make the experiment. I will give you fifty louis to keep your secret to yourself."

In an instant after, two dashing beaux arrived, and with the utmost earnestness entreated the doctor not to revive their old

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