mafter by fea, and by that means to obtain the kingdom for his fifter's children. There was, moreover, another and an obvious cause of their hatred to him, in the referve of his manners and the fobriety of his life. They led the young and illeducated king through every species of debauchery, and were the fhameless panders of his wrongdirected paffions. Their enmity to DION, who had no tafte for luxurious enjoyments, was a thing of course; and as he refused to partake with them in their vices, they refolved to strip him of his virtues; to which they gave the name of those vices as are supposed to resemble them. His gravity of manners they called pride; his freedom of fpeech, infolence; his declining to join in their licentiousness, contempt. It is true there was a natural haughtiness in his deportment, and an afperity that was unfociable, and difficult of access; so that it is not to be wondered if he found no ready admiffion to the ears of a young king already spoiled by flattery. Willing to impute the irregularities of DIONYSIUS to ignorance and a bad education, DION endeavoured to engage him in a courfe of liberal ftudies, and to give him a taste for those sciences which have a tendency to moral improvement. But in this wife and virtuous refolution he was oppofed by all the artifices of court intrigue.

Men,

Men, in proportion as their minds are dignified with noble fentiments, and their hearts fufceptible of refined fenfibility, feel a justifiable averfion to the fociety of such characters, and fhrink from the scenes they frequent; but they fhould cautiously guard against the intrufion of that aufterity and moroseness with which such a conduct is but too apt to inspire the most benevolent minds. Disgusted by the vices and follies of the age, the mind becomes infenfibly impreffed with a hatred toward the fpecies, and lofes, by degrees, that mild and humane temper which is fo indifpenfably neceffary to the enjoyment of focial happiness. Even he who merely obferves the weak or vicious frailties of his fellow-creatures with an intention to ftudy philofophically the nature and difpofition of MAN, cannot avoid remembering their defects without feverity, and viewing the character he contemplates with contempt, especially if he happens to be the object of their artifices, and the dupe of their villanies. Contempt is closely allied with hatred; and hatred of mankind will corrupt, in time, the fairest mind: it tinges, by degrees, every object with the bile of mifanthropy; perverts the judgment; and at length looks indiscriminately with an evil eye on the good and bad; engenders fufpicion, fear, jealoufy, revenge, and all the black catalogue of unworthy and malig

nant

nant paffions: and when these dreadful enemies have extirpated every generous fentiment from the breast, the unhappy victim abhors fociety, disclaims his species, fighs, like ST. HYACINTH, for fome diftant and fecluded ifland, and, with favage barbarity, defends the inviolability of its boundaries by the cruel repulfion, and, perhaps, the death, of those unhappy mortals whom misfortune may drive, helpless and unpitied, to its inhofpitable fhores.*

But

The danger of extirpating every kind and benevolent fentiment of the mind, and of corrupting every tender and humane feeling of the heart, by inordinately indulging an antipathy to mankind, is finely described by SHAKESPEARE in the horrid invectives he has put into the mouth of the too generous TIMON, who had fought that fhelter and fupport from the Athenian woods, which had been denied to him by the baseness of those friends whom his former bounty had fed, and in whofe company he had, by an indifcreet liberality, met his ruin.

"Let me look back upon thee, O, thou wall
That girdeft in those wolves! Dive in the earth,"
And fence not Athens! Matrons, turn incontinent';
Obedience, fail in children; slaves and fools,
Pluck the grave wrinkled fenate from the bench,
And minifter in their fteads. To general filth
Convert i'th' inftant green virginity!

Do it in your parents' eyes. Bankrupts, hold fast ;
Rather than render back, out with your knives,

And cut your mafters' throats. Bound fervants, steal;
Large handed robbers your grave masters are,
And pill by law.Son of fixteen,

But if mifanthropy be capable of producing fuch direful effects on well-difpofed minds, how shocking must be the character whose disposition, naturally rancorous, is heightened and inflamed by an habitual hatred and malignancy towards his fellow creatures! In Swifferland I once beheld a monfter of this defcription: I was com→ pelled

Pluck the lin❜d crutch from thy old limping fire;
With it beat out his brains. Fear and piety,
Religion to the gods, peace, juftice, truth,
Domestic awe, night reft, and neighbourhood,
Inftruction, manners, mysteries, and trades,
Decline to your confounding contraries,

And let confufion live! Plagues incident to men,
Your potent and infectious fevers heap
On Athens, ripe for ftroke! Thou cold sciatica,
Cripple our fenators, that their limbs may halt
As lamely as their manners. Luft and licence,
Creep in the minds and manners of our youth,
That 'gainst the stream of virtue they may ftrive,
And drown themselves in riot! Itches and blains
Sore all the Athenian bofoms; and their crops
Be general leprofy. Breath infect breath,
That their fociety, like their friendship, may
Be merely poifon, Nothing will I bear from thee
But nakedness, thou deteftable town!
Take thou that too with multiplying banns.
TIMON will to the woods, where he fhall find
The unkindeft beast much kinder than mankind.
The gods confound, oh, hear me good gods all,
The Athenians both within and out the wall;
And grant, as TIMON grows, his hate may grow
To the whole race of mankind, high and low."

pelled to vifit him by the duties of my profeffion; but I fhudder while I recollect the enormity of his character. His body was almost as deformed as his mind. Enmity was feated on his distorted brow. Scales of livid incrustation, the joint produce of his corrupted body and distempered mind, covered his face. His horrid figure made me fancy that I faw Medusa's ferpents wreathing their baleful folds among the black and matted locks of his difhevelled hair; while his red and fiery eyes glared like malignant meteors through the obscurity of his impending eye-brows. Mifchief was his fole delight, his greatest luxury, and his highest joy. To fow difcord among his neighbours, and to tear open the clofing wounds of mifery, was his only occupation. His refidence was the refort of the disorderly, the receptacle of the vicious, and the afylum of the guilty. Collecting around him the turbulent and discontented of every description, he became the patron of injustice, the perfecutor of virtue, the protector of villainy, the perpetrator of malice, the inventor of fraud, the propagator of calumny, and the zealous champion of cruelty and revenge; directing, with malignant aim, the barbed fhafts of his adherents equally against the comforts of private peace and the bleffings of public tranquillity. The bent and inclination of his nature had been fo aggravated and confirmed

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