sician, and merchaut, must at last give his head, and as much of his heart, as he can call in, to religion. Happy he, who in the bustle of this world, and in his struggle for wealth, hath, all along, given religion a mastery over his understanding and heart! It will be too late to close the scene with that which he had always kept at a distance, from his first entrance on the stage of study and action.

But if in this, ye men of the world, I seem to talk nonsense, excuse it, for I am very old. I address you here by a sort of prosopopœia, for I know, you will neither see nor hear on this subject, no more than the walls of the room I write in; Why, you will say, should we attend to this babbler, old, testy, talkative, conceited, swelling with advice and reproof? Ye say well, for just such I am. But then, just such you may be in sight of your sons, your clients, your patients, your correspondents; and then what will become of your fees, and your trade?

That few men live to a great age, and still retain their faculties, is not the effect of chance, but of Providence, whose intention it is, to inculcate into the rising generations some sense of religion and prudence. For this they are qualified by a long experience, and authorized by that respect which is naturally due to the whiteness of their hairs, and the affection they may be still warmed with towards their descendants. If however there is some vanity intermixed, even this is too useful, and too natural, not to have been the designation of Providence, inasmuch as it helps to render them so much more communicative, than otherwise they might be, under the circumstance of indifference to them and their advice, in younger people. They are certainly not intended by their Maker to be thrown aside as useless lumber; and to what other purpose can men be reserved, now no longer able to work or fight? The study of history hath been universally deemed a most useful application of our time and abilities, inasmuch as, by the success or failures of other men, the people of the present age may be best taught to regulate their conduct. But of all historians, old men, still subsisting, may be the most useful, especially, if through the natural abatement of their attachments to opinions and parties, whereof they are just going to take an eternal leave, they devote themselves wholly to truth and utility; and make it evident, that religion is uppermost in all they say. It is by no means of so much moment to the present generation, to know how Themistocles or Cæsar acted in the elevated cha

racters they had to fill, as to know, how men of like station with ourselves, in times immediately before our own, have acted; or how such as still lag behind on the stage of life, are now acting; and what is, or hath been, the consequences of their actions. Here example comes home to us, and we are deeply concerned in every lesson, fairly and pertinently deduced from it. If no instance of prosperity or miscarriage can in this case be indifferent to us, let us hear the old man's story, setting down to the account of his loquacity whatsoever is inapplicable to ourselves, but carefully carrying to that of our own conduct, every thing that may tend to our prudence and circumspection. It is the duty of the old, to advise. For this purpose alone they exist, if they are already prepared for the great change.

But the younger people say, They now preach and reprove for no other reason, than because they are become incapable of those enjoyments they once indulged as freely as younger people now do. It is true, those enjoyments are become tasteless to them; and it is not through envy they now censure an excess in them, but through a just sense of the ruinous vanity and vexation they found in them. They look back with extreme regret on their past follies and vices, and forward with horror on their unhappy consequences. Are then the warnings they give to be wholly ascribed to envy and vanity, and not, at least in some degree, to a tenderness for those they admonish?

We perpetually hear a number of old people crying up the wisdom and goodness of former times, and asserting, that mankind have, from the beginning, been ever degenerating from bad to worse. We hear others, on the contrary, as positively asserting, that men are now just as good as ever they were. Both these opinions are equally crude and ill-founded. There is no such thing as the degeneracy complained of in the former, and only complained of to apologize for the wickedness as if natural and unavoidable in the complainers. And as to the assertors of the latter, it is flagrantly felt in regard to such countries as were an age ago, poor, and therefore virtuous; but are now, through accession of wealth, and an influx of luxuries, become loose, debauched, and wicked; wicked on irreligious principles, eagerly traded for, and greedily embraced, as the prime articles of luxury, by a people who can now afford to be as proud and dissolute as their corrupted hearts can wish.

In this present state of my country, I, especially as a clergy

man, am not permitted to stand on the bank an unconcerned spectator of a flood, so ruinous to that country, and its desperate individuals. No, I must either strive to stem the torrent, or be carried down with it. All I have written, or am now writing, is against the stream. The contempt of the haughty, and the ridicule of blockheads, fall on me as a daring dotard. Be it so. From these accrues almost all my temptation to vanity. Sensible I am, that God and truth are with me, and that both will soon interpose to turn the stream, or to dry it up by an effusion of fiery judgments, what have I to fear? Nothing, certainly from what I am now doing, but a great deal from those sins, wherewith (woe is me) I have augmented the guilt of my country.

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It were easy to make out a very considerable catalogue of old men, in or near my own time, who have adorned the literary world with performances, not only of universal utility, but with such a spirit of brilliancy, as justified the compliment of a gentlewoman to an old author, in saying, he had kept the best wine to the last. Waterland, Young the poet, and Synge, a late archbishop of Tuam, might deservedly be placed at the head of this catalogue. Nevertheless, as I am myself a clergyman, it will be more decent to place two old laymen, no writers, with them, if not before them. Let the first be old David Latouche, who, having passed the 80th year of his life, was translated, for he could not die, from this world, into that where Enoch and Elias found their own places. Him I accompanied with the following hasty acknowledgment of his worth, as well in regard to me, as my country.

2. The departure from this world of the elder David Latouche, now notified to the public, deeply concerned therein, as his welcome arrival hath been announced to a better, I, without ever having seen him, but in his singular goodness, where I also felt him, am compelled by personal as well as national gratitude to wait on his hearse. Two or three years ago, when I was labouring to provide for the relief of my poor parishioners, in a time of famine, he sent one of his worthy sons to desire I might draw on his house in Castle-street for such sums as I should think requisite on the melancholy occasion. Instances of this nature have been so often, and so liberally multiplied, through a long life, by him, and his sons, whom his precepts have taught to follow his lovely example, without the narrow-hearted distinction between different ways of worship, or between friends and foes, that all Ireland can, and all the good people of Ireland will, be vouchers for a thou

sand times more than I can enumerate here. His sons have not, just now on his going upward, caught his falling mantle, but have long ago received it from his hands, to be spread over the naked poor, with sums of money to feed them, equal to the united contributions of many charitable lords. Scandal itself, in balance of so much good, cannot assign a single instance of injury done by him or them to any mortal. I challenge the reader of this to search the herald's office for any thing equally noble.

To make a large fortune with the conscience of a true Christian, and to dispense abroad in such a manner, rarely happens in miniature to the same person, perhaps never on so large a scale. If this is not nobility here, it certainly is there, where infinite wisdom and justice are the heralds. Farewell, glorious David! after a long life passed in devotion and charity, of which it is hard to say, whether the one or other was warmest.

I will add here, that he, who by honesty and industry acquires a large fortune, lives frugally, and disburses largely to God's image in distress, is a true hero, and when his body goes to the grave, his soul rises to a seat, from whence it sees the kings and conquerors of this world at a vast distance below it. The martyr only sits higher.

3. The other person, whom I shall mention here, as doing honour to a white head, is Richmond, an old dancing master, a man who, to my knowledge, hath, for above forty years, carried himself as a gentleman, a pious Christian, and ever without exception as one fully equal to that profession, on which he depended for his subsistence, and wherein he never taught a young lady to fling up her limbs in a dance as the present modish French master do. It was not, until after the seventy-fifth year of his age, that he had an occasion to shew himself a perfect hero in philanthropy and courage. One night, having read prayers with his family, as he was going to his bed, he heard a loud cry of murder in a female voice, repeated from a house, not far from his own, in Prince's-street, Dublin. This hurried him down to his parlour with a case of pistols in his hands, and followed by his daughter. The cry still continuing, he opened a window, but it was too dark without, to see any thing. Having a providential apprehension for his daughter, though none for himself, he had but just time to push her from the window behind the adjoining pier, when one of the robbers, of whom there were six, fired upon him, and it was by the light of the villain's discharge, that Rich

mond shot him dead. He and a brave servant boy of his, then sallied into the street, where, perceiving by the woman's cries, that the rest of the gang had got into the house of a neighbour, confined to his bed by sickness, and were by repeated wounds murdering his neighbour's servant maid, it was not long before he, his boy, and some of the watch, then coming to his assistance, cleared the house, fought the gang in the street, knocked one of them down with a clubbed pistol, pursued the rest, and took two of them, whom he lodged in Newgate, before he returned to his terrified family; but prosecuted the prisoners to the gallows. It was but too plain, this was the first time the brave man had been concerned in blood. It was with difficulty that the minister of his parish could prevent his sinking under the grief of having sent a fellowcreature into eternity with a load of guilt on his head.-Some time after, this undaunted man going homeward at night, found a servant boy crying in the street, who had been a moment before robbed of a tankard, which his master had sent him out with for some drink, by three footpads. These Richmond instantly pursued into a close back-yard, being joined by a stranger, of a spirit like his own. They were fired upon by the villains, but took two of them; afterward convicted, and executed them.-It hath been said that my hero acquitted himself with similar honour in a third adventure with robbers, the particulars of which I am not acquainted with. In the first of these encounters he fought for a man, whom he had rather reason to disregard. In all of them without the least view to his own advantage; in all of them indeed for an ungrateful public. One or two of us have endeavoured, but in vain, to bring his disinterested merits into public consideration. Hence it hath occurred to me, that, since he is not, the robbers ought to be rewarded and encouraged. So totally opposite is his behaviour and theirs, that, if there is no merit on his side, there must be some on their part; nay, in good earnest, I begin to think them of high utility to the police of a city like this, as by patrolling the streets at late hours, they help, more than any thing else, to keep idle and wicked people at home, and preserve them, not only from cold air, but from worse sins than robbery, to wit, gaming and wenching.-Sure I am that Waterland, Young, Synge, and Latouche, were they still here, would not think, I had done them any dishonour by bringing this heroic dancing-master into their company. Exalted as the place is, which they occupy at present, it seems most reasonable