to determine where self-defence ends, and positive offence begins, that I am firmly persuaded it is better and safer to suffer wrong for a time, than to be over-anxious in our own justification.

Nor will the principles of justice permit us to enter the lists with an adversary of very inferior strength. Imbecility, rashness, and folly, though they neither palliate the atrocity of vice, nor excuse the malignity of deceit and falsehood, ought to excite so much pity for the offender as to restrain resentment. To employ our talents in exposing those who will so certainly expose themselves, would be equally superfluous and unjust.

If this argument be well-founded, it will lead to an unqualified disapprobation of all personal satire. Satire may with justice and propriety be employed

employed against sophistry and error, but never can it be employed against any individual with safety: never, indeed, is it so employed, that its darts are not dipped in malice. The influence of talents ought to be exerted for other purposes, than to obtain to ourselves the glory of a paltry triumph and paltry and insignificant is every triumph, but those which we may contemplate with delight at the hour of death and in the day of judgment.

From what I have now said, you will perceive how often the practice of self-denial is enforced by the principles of justice. You will therefore learn betimes to submit to this necessary discipline of the will, so as to obtain a complete control, not only over the violent, but over the insidious passions. In order fully to accomplish this, you shall be furnished

with still more powerful motives than any that have been yet advanced. But as I am extremely anxious that the first principles of religion and the first principles of morality should be deeply rooted in your heart, I shall, before we proceed to deeper themes, devote some letters to the illustration of what I have already stated.

The persuasion I cherish, that truth, in whatever form it comes, will have a ready access to your mind, is the only thing which could at present animate me to the prosecution of such a task. In the fulness of hope and of affection, I now subscribe myself my dearest Lady Elizabeth's sincerest friend.

LETTER VIII.

My dear Lady Elizabeth,

F we would have the barriers which

IF

we erect to guard us from the encroachments of vice, so powerful as effectually to repel the adversary, we must take care to erect them on a solid foundation. We must likewise take care to fix them precisely in the proper place. But how, you may ask, are we to discover this? How are we exactly to ascertain the bounda ries of vice and virtue ? Are they not often fixed by opinion; and al

tered

tered by fashion; and modelled by situation? Is it not sufficient that we be always amiable, and that we never mean any ill; and that we make it a rule to do as others do, and just to take the world as we find it?

This indeed, my love, is not likely to be said by you, but it is the language of thousands. I shall now no farther observe upon it than to say, that they who thus profess only to please the world, must only look to the world for their reward. Beyond this world they need not look; for they have no right to entertain any farther hope. Every servant works for his own master; and from the master for whom he works he must receive his wages.

The precise boundaries between right and wrong, vice and virtue, require, it must be confessed, some accuracy of observation, some diligence

VOL. I.

G

of