vapour or delirium has upon his brain makes him fancy himself a prince, a monarch, a statesman, or just what he pleases to be; as a certain duchess is said to have believed herself to be an empress, has her footmen drawn up, with javelins, and dressed in antic habits, that she may see them through a window, and believe them to be her guards; is served upon the knee, called her majesty, imperial majesty, and the like; and with this splendour her distempered mind is deluded, forming ideas of things which are not, and at the same time her eyes are shut to the eternal captivity of her circumstances; in which she is made a property to other persons, her estate managed by guardianship, and she a poor demented creature to the last degree, an object of human compassion, and completely miserable.

The only contentment which entitles mankind to any felicity is that which is founded upon virtue and just principles, for contentment is nothing more or less than what we call peace; and what peace where crime possesses the mind, which is attended, as a natural consequence, with torment and disquiet? What peace where the harmony of the soul is broken by constant regret and self-reproaches? What peace in a mind under constant apprehensions and terrors of something yet attending to render them miserable; and all this is inseparable from a life of crime :

For where there 's guilt, there always will be fear.

Peace of mind makes a halcyon upon the countenance, it gilds the face with a cheerful aspect, such as nothing else can procure; and which indeed, as above, it is impossible effectually to counterfeit.

Bow, mighty reason, to thy Maker's name,
For God and Peace are just the same;
Heaven is the emanation of His face,

And want of peace makes hell in ev'ry place.

Tell us, ye men of notion, tell us why
You seek for bliss and wild prosperity
In storms and tempests, feuds and war
Is happiness to be expected there?
Tell us what sort of happiness

Can men in want of peace possess?

Blest charm of Peace, how sweet are all those hours

We spend in thy society!

Afflictions lose their acid powers,

And turn to joys when join'd to thee.

The darkest article of life with peace

Is but the gate of happiness;

Death in his blackest shapes can never fright,

Thou can'st see day beyond his night;

The smile of Peace can calm the frown of Fate,

And, spite of death, can life anticipate,

Nay, hell itself, could it admit of peace,

Would change its nature, and its name would cease;

The bright transforming blessing would destroy

The life of death, and damn the place to joy;

The metamorphosis would be so strange,

T would fright the devils, and make them bless the change;
Or else the brightness would be so intense
They'd shun the light, and fly from thence.

Let heav'n, that unknown happiness,

Be what it will, 't is best described by peace.
No storms without, or storms within ;

No fear, no danger there, because no sin :
Tis bright essential happiness,

Because He dwells within whose name is Peace.

Who would not sacrifice for thee

All that men call felicity?

Since happiness is but an empty name,

A vapour without heat or flame,

But what from thy original derives —
And dies with thee, by whom it lives.

But I return to the subject of conversation, from which this digression is made only to show that the fund of agreeable conversation is, and can only be, founded in virtue; this alone is the thing that keeps a man always in humour, and always agreeable.

They mistake much who think religion or a strict morality discomposes the temper, sours the mind, and unfits a man for conversation. "Tis irrational to think a man can't be bright unless he is wicked; it may as well be said a man cannot be merry till he is mad, not agreeable till he is offensive, not in humour till he is out of himself. "Tis clear to me no man can be truly merry but he that is truly virtuous; wit is as consistent with religion as religion is with good manners; nor is there anything in the limitations of virtue and religion, I mean the just restraints which religion and virtue lay upon us in conversation, that should abate the pleasure of it; on the contrary, they increase it. For example restraints from vicious and indecent discourses; there's as little manners in those things as there is mirth in them, nor indeed does religion or virtue rob conversation of one grain of true mirth. On the contrary, the religious man is the only man fully qualified for mirth and good humour, with this advantage, that when the vicious and the virtuous man appears gay and merry, but differ, as they must do, in the subject of their mirth, you may always observe the virtuous man's mirth is superior to the other, more suitable to him as a man, as a gentleman, as a wise man, and as a good man; and, generally speaking, the other will acknowledge it, at least afterward, when his thoughts cool, and as his reflections come in.

But what shall we do to correct the vices of conversation? How shall we show men the picture of their own behaviour? There is not a greater undertaking in the world, or an attempt of more consequence to the good of mankind, than this; but 't is as difficult also as it is useful, and at best I shall make but a little progress in it in this work: let others mend it.

OF UNFITTING OURSELVES FOR CONVERSATION

Before I enter upon the thing which I call the immorality of conversation, let me say a little about the many weak and foolish ways by which men strive, as it were, to unfit themselves for conversation. Human infirmities furnish us with several things that help to make us unconversable; we need not study to increase the disadvantages we lie under on that score. Vice and intemperance, not as a crime only, that I should speak of by itself, but even as a distemper, unfit us for conversation; they help to make us cynical, morose, surly, and rude. Vicious people boast of their polite carriage and their nice behaviour, how gay, how good-humoured, how agreeable! For a while it may be so; but trace them as men of vice, follow them till they come to years, and observe, while you live, you never see the humour last, but they grow fiery, morose, positive, and petulant. An ancient drunkard is a thing indeed not often seen, because the vice has one good faculty with it, viz., that it seldom hands them on to old age; but an ancient and good-humoured drunkard I think I never knew.

It seems strange that men should affect unfitting themselves for society, and study to make themselves unconversable, whereas their being truly sociable as men is the thing which would most recommend them, and that to the best of men, and best answers to the highest felicity of life. Let no man value himself upon being morose and cynical, sour and unconversable 'tis the reverse of a good man; a truly religious man follows the rule of the apostle-" Be affable, be courteous, be humble; in meekness esteeming every man better than ourselves;" whereas conversation now is the reverse of the Christian

rule; 't is interrupted with conceitedness and affectation-a pride, esteeming ourselves better than every man; and that which is worse still, this happens generally when indeed the justice of the case is against us, for where is the man who, thus overruling himself, is not evidently inferior in merit to all about him? Nay, and frequently those who put most value upon themselves, have the least merit to support it. Self-conceit is the bane of human society, and, generally speaking, is the peculiar of those who have the least to recommend them: 't is the ruin of conversation, and the destruction of all improvement; for how should any man receive any advantage from the conversation of others, who believes himself qualified to teach them, and not to have occasion to learn anything from them?

Nay, as the fool is generally the man that is conceited most of his own wit, so that very conceit is the ruin of him; it confirms him a fool all the days of his life, for he that thinks himself a wise man is a fool, and knows it not; nay, 't is impossible he should continue to be a fool if he was but once convinced of his folly:

If fools could their own ignorance discern,

They'd be no longer fools, because they 'd learn.

It will be objected here, indeed, that folly and conceit may be hurtful to conversation, may rob men of the advantage of it, unfit one side for conversing, and make it unprofitable, as well as unpleasant to the other; but that this is nothing to the immorality of conversation; that ignorance and conceit may be an infirmity, but is not always a crime; that the mischief of men's being fools is generally their own, but the mischief of their being knaves is to other people; and this is very true. But certainly egregious folly merits one paragraph of re