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Would that this vexatious frailty of character were rare as it is common! And, in order to a radical reform in this important particular, much attention must be paid to it in the early season of education. It is a great deal easier to form the young mind to correct habits, than to cure it of bad ones once contracted. For which reason, children should be carefully taught to mind their promises, and more especially to restore whatever they borrow, in good condition and by the set time. Nor is it enough, merely to give them precepts upon this subject; it must be wrought into their practice, even from their earliest years.

In conclusion; there is one description of borrowers, who may fitly be termed spongers. These are persons, who, out of pure stinginess, are in the habit of borrowing of their neighbors the necessary implements of their daily business. They think it cheaper to borrow than to buy. But, generally, in the long run, they are losers by it themselves; and, the mean while, in this way, they are giving a deal of trouble to those about them, whose smothered resentments are neither few nor small.

CHAP. LVII.

Of the principle of Shame.

No point is more clear, than that moral worth is superior to every thing else which bears the name of worth; that virtue in rags is more respectable than vice in brocade.

"In the drama of life it is not to be considered who among actors is prince or who is beggar, but who acts prince or beggar best." So taught Epictetus, a celebrated philosopher of ancient Greece; and Pope has versified him in the following couplet:

"Honor and shame from no condition rise:
Act well your part; 'tis there true honor lies."

All this is well said. That the point of honor lies not so much in having a grand or a conspicuous part to

act, but rather in acting well the part that Providence allots to us, is a position which admits of no dispute. But although it contradicts the theory of almost nobody, it is contrary to the practice of almost every body.

He that acts upon the stage of life a high part, will be courted, and he that acts a low part will be slighted; though the latter should very far excel the former in all that relates to the qualities of the heart. The man that comes in with the gold ring and in goodly apparel, is respectfully invited to sit here, in a good place; while the child of poverty, whose raiment is vile, is ordered to sit there, at the footstool; and that, without any regard to real merit or demerit. This is the fashion of the world; a fashion, which all do more or less follow.

It would in no wise be difficult to carry this train of thoughts to any reasonable length; since the subject is no less prolific, than evincive of the distempered condition of the world we live in. But all that I farther intend is, to remark, in few words, on Shame-understood not in the sense here given it by the poet, that is to say, as synonymous with dishonor or disgrace; but as denoting a certain kind of bosom sensation, utterly undescribable, and yet most clearly distinguishable from every other feeling of the heart.

Shame then, meaning the Sense of Shame, is one of the powerful principles of our fallen nature, and, like our other natural principles, it does good or mischief according to the direction it takes. It operates most powerfully in the seasons of childhood and youth, and operates, on the whole, much more good than ill; for it is a preventive of indecency and an incentive to laudable emulation. A diffident youth, if properly encouraged, will exert himself to arrive at such attainments as shall give him confidence: but an over confident one, being full of himself, thinks he has attained enough already, and of course becomes remiss. lieve it would be found upon a close inspection of mankind, in past ages as well as the present, that, of truly great and excellent characters, a very large proportion had felt the pains of diffidence, and displayed

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upon their cheeks the blush of shame, in their juvenile days.

The most virtuous do nothing to be ashamed of before men, and the most vicious are without shame. But between the utmost limits of human virtuousness on the one side, and viciousness on the other, there is a vast interval, which is filled up with mixed characters of both sorts; and upon them, well directed shame has a great and a powerful influence.-"Many who have not resolution enough to avoid a bad action, have yet feeling enough to be ashamed of it." And that feeling of shame may prevent their repeating the misdeed: whereas, of an offender that is utterly shameless there is no hope.

Shame has a prodigious influence in enforcing the social laws of decency. Multitudes of People would not act so well as they do, if they were not ashamed to act worse. And it is better, at least for society, that they have the grace of shame, than no grace at all.

Vice loves the company of its like. And why? It is, that it may keep itself in countenance, or escape the confusion of shame. Vice is conscious deformity, and vicious persons are enabled to hold up their heads in society, chiefly from the knowledge or supposition that numbers about them are deformed like themselves. Whereas if one stood quite alone in the practice of vice, and at the same time had the eyes of the good upon him, he would, unless desperately hardened, be ashamed of himself. Hence, a notoriously vicious person, living in a place where all the rest were virtuous, would be impelled as it were of very shame, either to mend his ways, or to remove off to a more congenial society. In short, the benefits of shame are alike great, in number and in magnitude: so far forth, that it is questionable, whether, in the society of civilized man there be not more persons who act decently from the sense or fear of shame, than from the impulse of a sound moral principle.

This matter was well understood by the sophists of the last age, who, in the war they waged against Prejudice, or rather in their nefarious efforts to banish from society, not only pure morals, but even the com

mon decencies of life, artfully directed their efforts particularly at the total extinction of the feeling of shame. And, for some time, this success was correspondent to their zeal. It is a recorded fact, that during the short-lived popularity of the writings of Mary Wolstoncraft, a blush incurred a penalty at several of the boarding schools for young ladies in England.

Here two things are to be observed very carefully in training up children:

1. Their natural sense of shame should not be put to trial too frequently, nor too severely. "Shame," says Mr. Locke, "is in children a delicate principle, which a bad management of them presently extinguishes. If you shame them for every trespass, and especially if you do it before company, you will make them shameless. Moreover, if Moreover, if you expose them to excessive shame for their greater faults, they will be very likely to lose all shame, and if once lost it is gone irrecoverably. By tampering with this feeling too often or with a rough hand, children the most susceptible of shame, may be made quite callous to its influence."

2. Children should be guarded betimes against false shame, which, in all its multifarious ramifications, and, oftentimes, in the name, and under the disguise of honor, has done frightful mischiefs to our misjudging and deluded race.

It may not be superfluous to add, that false shame, or the being ashamed of moral principle and the christian virtues, usually springs from the baneful influence of some of those who move in the higher regions of the community. Superior talents and fascinating manners, when ranged on the side of profligate vice, have a most powerful tendency to unmoralize society, and especially the youthful part of it. A single individual thus gifted, and thus profaning his gifts, may be the means of communicating moral pestilence to thousands; for every one that is corrupted by him becomes a corrupter of others, and the venom, transmitted from parent to child, goes down to distant posterity, and is still ulcerating the hearts of many, long after the original dispenser of it has been consumed and forgotten in his grave. Several ages elapsed ere the contagion from

the profligate examples of Charles II. and his polished courtiers, ceased to operate in England, if it has ceased to operate there even now.

CHAP. LVIII.

Of virtuous poverty.

"Man needs but little here below,

Nor needs that little long."

AND yet to possess but little, though it be quite enough for the real wants of nature, is deemed wretchedness. Poverty is, to many a delicate ear, one of the most frightful words in the whole vocabulary of our language; but it should be remembered that the word has several degrees of signification, and is really frightful in the extreme degree only.

It is true, the rags and filth, and the corresponding ignorance and depravity, so common in the abodes of squalid poverty, are objects of disgust and horror; as they exhibit human nature in its utmost deformity, without aught to shade the picture. The lazy poor, the vicious and profligate poor, compose a mass of wretchedness that is frightful indeed, and not only frightful, but loathsome; and no full measure of pity can be felt for the suffering which they bring upon themselves by their idle and vicious habits.

This is not, however, simple poverty, but poverty and the grossness of vice in alliance: and it is the latter that gives the former its hideous colouring. Virtuous poverty, on the other hand, however disrespected by a scornful world, is in sober truth, respectable. It has a moral gracefulness that is peculiarly its own.

It is not in the splendor of wealth, or on the lap of ease, that Man, considered as a moral being, usually exhibits the finest features of character. For the highest order of virtues can be developed only in a condition of considerable hardship or suffering;-namely, the virtues of fortitude, self-denial, patience, humility and quiet resignation. A family, that once had seen better

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