shoulders of four thousand years' experience, the least thought so much as that there was any land that way!

As they were ignorant of places, so of things also. So vast are the improvements of science, that all our knowledge of mathematics, of nature, of the brightest part of the human wisdom, had their admission among us within these last two centuries.

What was the world then before? and to what were the heads and hands of mankind applied? The rich had no commerce, the poor no employ. ment; war and the sword was the great field of honour, the stage of preferment; and you have scarce a man eminent in the world for any thing before that time, but for a furious outrageous falling upon his fellow-creatures, like Nimrod, and his successors of modern memory.

The world is now daily increasing in experimental knowledge; and let no man flatter the age, with pretending that we are arrived at a perfection of discoveries.

What's now discover'd only serves to show
That nothing's known to what is yet to know.

THE WASTE OF LIFE.

From the Pennsylvania Gazette, No. 404, Nov. 18, 1736.

ANERGUS was a gentleman of good estate; he was bred to no business, and could not contrive how to waste his hours agreeably: he had no relish for any of the proper works of life, nor any taste at all

for the improvements of the mind; he spent generally ten hours of the four-and-twenty in his bed ; he dozed away two or three more on his couch, and as many were dissolved in good liquor every evening, if he met with company of his own humour. Five or six of the rest he sauntered away with much indolence: the chief business of them was to contrive his meals, and to feed his fancy beforehand with the promise of a dinner or a sup-` per. Not that he was so absolute a glutton, or so entirely devoted to appetite; but chiefly because he knew not how to employ his thoughts better, he' let them rove about the sustenance of his body. Thus he had made a shift to wear off ten years since the paternal estate fell into his hands; and yet, according to the abuse of words in our day, he was called a man of virtue, because he was scarce ever known to be quite drunk, nor was his nature much inclined to lewdness.

One evening, as he was musing alone, his thoughts happened to take a most unusual turn; for they cast a glance backward, and began to reflect upon his manner of life. He bethought himself what a number of living beings had been made a sacrifice to support his carcase, and how much corn and wine had been mingled with those offerings. He had not quite lost all the arithmetic he had learned when he was a boy, and he set himself to compute what he had devoured since he came to the age of

mau.

"Fifty sheep have been sacrificed in a year, with half a hecatomb of black cattle, that I might have the choicest part offered weekly upon my table. Thus a thousand beasts out of the flock and the

-herd have been slain in ten years' time to feed me, besides what the forest has supplied me with. Many hundreds of fishes have, in all their varieties, been robbed of life for my repast, and of the smaller fry as many thousands.

"A measure of corn would hardly afford me fine: flour enough for a month's provision, and this arises to above six score bushels; and many hogsheads of ale and wine, and other liquors, have passed through this body of mine, this wretched strainer of meat and drink.

"And what have I done all this time for God or man? What a vast profusion of good things upon an useless life and a worthless liver! There is not the meanest creature among all these which I have devoured, but hath answered the end of its creation better than I. It was made to support human nature, and it hath done so. Every crab and oyster I have eat, and every grain of corn I have devoured, hath filled up its place in the rank of beings with more propriety and honour than I have done. O shameful waste of life and time!"

In short, he carried on his moral reflections with so just and severe a force of reason, as constrained him to change his whole course of life, to break off his follies at once, and to apply himself to gain some useful knowledge, when he was more than thirty years of age: he lived many following years with the character of a very worthy man, and an excellent Christian: he performed the kind offices of a good neighbour at home, and made a shining figure as a patriot in the senate-house: he died with a peaceful conscience, and the tears of his country were dropped upon his tomb.

The world, that knew the whole series of his life, stood amazed at the mighty change. They beheld him as a wonder of reformation, while he himself confessed and adored the Divine power and mercy, which had transformed him from a brute to a

man.

But this was a single instance, and we may almost venture to write MIRACLE upon it. Are there numbers of both sexes among our young gentry, in this degenerate age, whose lives thus run to utter waste, without the least tendency to usefulness?

When I meet with persons of such a worthless character as this, it brings to my mind some scraps of Horace :

"Nos numerus sumus, et fruges consumere nati.
Alcinoique juventus,

........

Cui pulchrum fuit in medios dormire dies," &c.

Paraphrase.

There are a number of us creep

Into this world to eat and sleep;

And know no reason why they're born,
But merely to consume the corn,

Devour the cattle, fowl, and fish,
And leave behind an empty dish;
Though crows and ravens do the same,
Unlucky birds of hateful name;
Ravens or crows might fill their places,
And swallow corn, and eat carcases.
Then if their tombstone, when they die,
Ben't taught to flatter and to lie,
There's nothing better will be said,
Than that they've eat up all their bread,
Drank all their drink, and gone to bed.

There are other fragments of that heathen poet, which occur on such occasions; one in the first of his Satires, the other in the last of his Epistles, which seem to represent life only as a season of luxury:

".... exacto contentus tempore vitæ,

Cedat ubi conviva satur

Lusisti satis, edisti satis atque bibisti;
Tempus abire tibi."

Which may be thus put into English:

Life's but a feast; and when we die,
Horace would say, if he were by-
"Friend, thou hast eat and drunk enough;
'Tis time now to be marching off:
Then, like a well-fed guest, depart
With cheerful looks, and ease at heart;
Bid all your friends good night, and say
You've done the business of the day."

THE WAY TO WEALTH,

As clearly shown in the Preface of an old Pennsylvania Almanack, entitled, Poor Richard Improved.*

COURTEOUS Reader,

I HAVE heard, that nothing gives an author so great

• Dr. Franklin for many years published the Pennsylvania Almanack, called Poor Richard, (Saunders) and furnished it with various sentences and proverbs, which had principal relation to the topics of "industry, attention to one's own business, and frugality." The whole or chief of these sentences and proverbs he at last collected and digested in the above general preface, which his countrymen read with much avidity and profit.