and who are the innocent martyrs of other men's iniquities. Whatever may become of the abstract question of the justifiableness of war, it seems impossible that a soldier should not be a depraved and unnatural being.

To these more serious and momentous considerations, it may be proper to add a recollection of the ridiculousness of the military character. Its first constituent is obedience. A soldier is of all descriptions of men the most completely a machine. Yet his profession inevitably teaches him something of dogmatism, swaggering, and selfconsequence. He is like the puppet of a showman, who, at the very time he is made to strut, and swell, and display the most farcical airs, we perfectly know cannot assume the most insignificant gesture, advance either to the right or the left, but as he is moved by the exhibitor. This singular situation gives to the military a correspondent singularity of manner. The lofty port of a generous spirit, flowing from a consciousness of merit and independence, has always something in it of grand and impressive. But the swagger of a soldier, which it costs him an incessant effort to support, is better calculated, in a discerning spectator, to produce laughter, than to excite awe.

The sailor, if he is to come into the list or professions, so far as his character is warlike, falls under the same objections as the soldier, with this

aggravation of the nature of his pursuits, that they usurp an element which, by itself, man is scarcely able to subdue, and compound a scene still more infernal, than that of a battle to be decided by land.

Where the sailor is not a military character, he is frequently a mercantile one, and the merits of mercantile pursuits have already been estimated.

But he labours under one disadvantage peculiar to himself. He passes his existence in a state of banishment from his species. The man who is sentenced to reside in New Holland or Siberia, may improve his faculties, and unfold his affections. Not so the man who passes his life in a coop, like a fowl set apart to be fatted. Men accustomed to speculate upon the varieties of human nature, can have no conception, previous to the experiment, of the ignorance of a sailor. Of the concerns of men, their pursuits, their passions, all that agitates their mind and engrosses their attention, he is almost as uninformed, as an inhabitant of the remotest planet. Those expansive affections, that open the human soul, and cause one man to identify himself with the pleasure and pains of his fellows, are to him like the dialects of Nineveh or Carthage. And what renders the abortiveness of his character the more glaring, is that he has visited all countries, and has seen none. He goes on shore for half an

hour at a time, and advances half a mile up the province upon which he anchors. If he return in the close of life to his native village, he finds himself unspeakably outstripped in sagacity and knowledge, by the poor peasant, whose remotest researches have never led him further, than to a country-wake or a neighbouring fair.

It is to be remembered that, through this whole disquisition, we have been examining different professions and employments, under the notion of their being objects for the contemplation of a man, who would choose a destination for himself or his child. Our business therefore lay entirely with their general tendency. If there be any extraordinary characters, that have escaped the prevailing contagion it has been our purpose to detect, they have no right to be offended. Let not truth however be sacrificed to a wish to conciliate. If a man have escaped, he must be of a character truly extraordinary and memorable. And even such a man will not have passed entirely uncontaminated. He will bear upon him the stamp of his occupation, some remnants of the reigning obliquity, though he shall be fortunate enough to have redeemed them by virtues illustrious and sublime.

Thus then we have successively reviewed the manners of the trader, the lawyer, the physician, and the divine, together with the military and naval professions. We proposed to ascertain which

of these avocations a wise man would adopt for a regular employment for himself or his child; and, though the result may be found perhaps to contribute little to the enlightening his choice, but rather to have cast the gloom of strong disapprobation upon all, we may however console ourselves at least with this reflection, that, while engaged in the enquiry, we have surveyed a considerable portion of the occupations and characters of men in society, and put together materials which may assist our judgment respecting the economy of human life.

ESSAY VI.

OF SELF-DENIAL.

THE greatest of all human benefits, that at least without which no other benefit can be truly enjoyed, is independence.

He who lives upon the kindness of another, must always have a greater or less portion of a servile spirit. He has not yet come to feel what man is. He has not yet essayed the muscles of his mind, and observed the sublimity of his nature. True energy, the self-conseious dignity of the man, who thinks not of himself otherwise than he ought to think, but enjoys in sober perception the certainty

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of his faculties, are sentiments to which he is a stranger. He knows not what shall happen tomorrow, for his resources are out of himself. But the man that is not provided for to-morrow, cannot enjoy to-day. He must either have a trembling apprehension of sublunary vicissitude, or he must be indebted for his repose to the lethargy of his soul.

The question relative to the establishment and maintenance of independence, is intimately connected with the question relative to our taste for, and indulgence in, the luxuries of human life.

Various are the opinions that have been held upon the latter of these topics.

One of these opinions has been carried to its furthest extreme by certain sects of religionists.

Their doctrine is commonly known by the appellation of self-denial. The postulate upon which it principally proceeds, is that of the superiority of the mind to the body. There is an obvious distinction between intellectual pleasures and sensible ones. Either of them taken in any great degree, tends to exclude the other. The man who is engrossed in contemplation, will, without expressly intending it, somewhat macerate his body. The man who studies without restraint the gratifications of appetite, will be in danger of losing the activity of his mind, the delicacy of his intellec tual tact, and the generosity of his spirit.