ercife is of much use, or that they leave any image more deeply impreffed by their buftle

and vehemence of communication.

UPON the English Stage there is no want of Action; but the difficulty of making it at once various and proper, and its perpetual tendency to become ridiculous, notwithstanding all the advantages which art and show, and custom and prejudice can give it, may prove how little it can be admitted into any other place, where it can have no recommendation but from Truth and Nature.

THE ufe of English Oratory is only at the Bar, in the Parliament, and in the Church. Neither the Judges of our Laws nor the Representatives of our People would be much affected by laboured gefticulation, or believe any man the more because he rolled his eyes, or puffed his cheeks, or spread abroad his arms, or ftamped the ground, or thumped his breaft, or turned his eyes fometimes to the cieling and fometimes to the floor. Upon men intent only upon truth, the arm of an Orator has little power; a credible teftimony, or a cogent argument, will overcome all the

art

art of modulation, and all the violence of contortion.

It is well known that in the City which may be called the Parent of Oratory, all the arts of mechanical perfuafion were banifhed from the court of fupreme Judicature. The Judges of the Areopagus confidered action and vociferation as a foolish appeal to the external senses, and unworthy to be practised before those who had no defire of idle amusement, and whose only pleasure was to discover right.

WHETHER Action may not be yet of use in churches, where the Preacher addreffes a mingled audience, may deferve enquiry. It is certain that the fenfes are more powerful as the reason is weaker; and that he whose ears convey little to his mind, may fometimes liften with his eyes till truth may gradually take poffeffion of his heart. If there be any ufe of gefticulation, it must be applied to the ignorant and rude, who will be more affected by vehemence than delighted by propriety. In the pulpit little action can be proper, for action can illuftrate nothing but that to

which it may be referred by nature or by cuftom. He that imitates by his hand a motion which he defcribes, explains it by natural fimilitude; he that lays his hand on his breaft, when he expreffes pity, enforces his words by a customary illufion. But Theology has few topicks to which action can be appropriated; that action which is vague and indeterminate will at last settle into habit, and habitual peculiarities are quickly ridiculous.

It is perhaps the character of the English to despise trifles; and that art may surely be accounted a trifle which is at once useless and oftentatious, which can feldom be practised with propriety, and which as the mind is more cultivated, is lefs powerful. Yet as all innocent means are to be used for the propagation of truth, I would not deter those who are employed in preaching to common congregations from any practice which they may find perfuafive; for, compared with the converfion of finners, propriety and elegance are less than nothing.

I

N° 91. Saturday, January 12.

T is common to overlook what is near by

keeping the eye fixed upon fomething remote. In the fame manner prefent opportunities are neglected, and attainable good is flighted, by minds bufied in extensive ranges, and intent upon future advantages. Life, however fhort, is made ftill fhorter by waste of time, and its progress towards happiness, tho' naturally flow, is yet retarded by unnecessary labour.

THE difficulty of obtaining knowledge is univerfally confeffed. To fix deeply in the mind the principles of fcience, to fettle their limitations, and deduce the long fucceffion of their confequences; to comprehend the whole compass of complicated fyftems, with all the arguments, objections, and folutions, and to repofite in the intellectual treasury the numberlefs facts, experiments, apophthegms, and

VOL. II.

L

pofitions,

pofitions, which muft ftand fingle in the memory, and of which none has any perceptible connection with the rest, is a task which, tho' undertaken with ardour and pursued with diligence, muft at laft be left unfinished by the frailty of our nature.

To make the way to learning either lefs fhort or less smooth is certainly abfurd; yet this is the apparent effect of the prejudice which seems to prevail among us in favour of foreign authors, and of the contempt of our native literature, which this excurfive curiosity muft neceffarily produce. Every man is more speedily inftructed by his own language, than by any other; before we fearch the reft of the world for teachers, let us try whether we may not spare our trouble by finding them at

home.

THE riches of the English language are much greater than they are commonly suppofed. Many useful and valuable books lie buried in fhops and libraries, unknown and unexamined, unless fome lucky compiler opens them by chance, and finds an easy spoil of wit and learning. I am far from intending

to