perform that last melancholy office, which when the debt of nature is payed, we are called upon to pay each other. If this fad occafion which leads him there, has not done it already, take notice, to what a ferious and devout frame of mind every man is reduced, the mo ment he enters this gate of affliction, The bufy and fluttering spirits, which in the house of mirth were wont to tranfport him from one diverting object to another - see how they are fallen! how peaceably they are laid! in this gloomy manfion full of shades and uncomfortable damps to feize the foul - fee, the light and easy heart, which never knew what it was to think before, how pensive it is now, how foft, how fufceptible, how full of religious impressions, how deeply it is : is smitten with sense and with a love of virtue. Could we, in this crifis, whilft this empire of reason and religion lasts, and the heart is thus exercised with wifdom and busied with heavenly contem plations - could we fee it naked as it is - stripped of all its passions, unspotted by the world, and regardless of its pleafures - we might then safely rest our cause, upon this single evidence, and appeal to the most sensual, whether Solomon has not made a just determination here, in favour of the house of mourning? - not for its own fake, but as it is fruitful in virtue, and becomes the occasion of fo much good. Without this end, forrow I own has no use, but to shorten a man's days - nor can gravity, 'with all its studied folemnity of look and carriage, serve any end but to |