you, your own, provided you can distinguish between the real and pretended friend, between the useful and agreeable advice. The art of doing this is highly necessary now, and will be more so every day; because people of your Lordship's rank seldom get a sight of real persons or things, and are doomed to be treated with mere appearances, during their whole lives.

As to persons, suspect those who comply with you in every thing, and seem to live only to give you pleasure; be assured they please you only for their own sakes, and self is the grand object that terminates their views in all the complaisance they shew you. Rather depend on him, who, on some occasions, where truth, and the duty of a friend, require it, disobliges, in order to set you right. Such a person, it is to be presumed, hath no eye to himself, no by-ends of his own. Be neither carried away by the seeming wisdom, with which one sort of advice may be inculcated; nor deceived by the artifice, with which another may be insinuated; but strip the substance of what is recommended to you of all its circumstances; maturely consider it in itself, and compare it with your duty, your honour, and your real interest on the occasion.

As to things, my Lord, you are sure to be greatly, perhaps fatally, deceived by them, if you do not examine them with candour, I should rather say, inspect into them with severity. They are seldom what they appear to be. All is not good, that pleases; nor all evil, that disgusts. Pleasure, and that of the lowest and grossest kind, is the quagmire, in which the wealthy heirs of this inactive and abandoned country generally plunge themselves, their fortunes, and their honours; it is the foul sink, in which they are carried down to contempt and destruction; it is a sandbank, which, though covered itself by the water, is, nevertheless, rendered both infamous and formidable enough by the wrecks of a thousand great estates and families. Here floats an empty title; there flounders a sickly heir; in another place, fluctuate the shattered remains of a great fortune, that are already mortgaged to the bottom; in a fourth place, reputation is the sport of the winds; and the soul is sinking, at a vast distance, from all the aids of religion. May Heaven give you an early discernment in this matter,

and not leave you to the late tuition of time and experience !

I am the more emboldened to suggest such sentiments as these to you, and hope for success, the rather, because I have found in you a sound and clear judgment, a readiness to resign your inclinations to that, and the advice of your friends, and a firmness in the midst of artful solicitations, and severe trials, which few men are masters of. On these excellent gifts, and dispositions, I cannot help erecting the highest hopes, especially when I see a true love, and a deep sense of religion affording them the most solid foundation, and the most unerring direction. You have the honour and happiness, my Lord, to be descended from ancestors, eminently distinguished for true piety, and its inseparable effect, virtue. And it is a very sensible pleasure to your friends, that this glorious character of the family, infinitely outshining all its honours, is not likely to die in you. Let others, in this libertine and abandoned age, absurdly bend their principles to their vices; do you, my Lord, subdue the wild and degenerate part of your nature to the dictates of Divine wisdom. Consider what restrictions the reformation. of your affections may require, rather than what indulgencies the gratification of them may plead for. Consider what principles are necessary to the preservation and well-being of society, and to the refinement of human nature, in order to its being exalted to a condition more commensurate to its wishes, and the dignity of its original frame and end. In the next place, candidly consider the Christian religion, as a history of facts, and you will find it true, and as a system of moral precepts, and you will find it excellent.

I have found, by experience, that the naked truth is displeasing to most people, and even shocking to many. I have, therefore, in the following allusions, given religious truth such a dress and mask, as may, perhaps, procure it admittance to a conference with some of its opposers and contemners: I have also led it out of the direct path, where the disingenuous never look for it; because they are afraid of finding it, that it may have an opportunity of meeting them in their own ways. It is also as necessary, that truth should thus go in search of many, who sincerely admire it, but are carried to a great distance from it, by the pursuit

of a counterfeit truth. Light seems, at least, to fall with greater brightness and power on our eyes, when reflected from a mirror, than in a direct beam. Reason, in like manner, strikes with more force at a rebound; and, what we can scarcely conceive, when applied directly to ourselves, we often suffer our minds to be convinced of, when set at a distance in somewhat else, in which our prejudices are not concerned. The passage to most men's minds is narrow and winding; and therefore those truths, that cannot be thrown in directly, must sometimes be insinuated by approaches, that do not seem to point too fully on them. Our blessed Saviour, who made the heart, knew the intricacy of its inlets, and entered it with wonderful address by his parables: his example alone is sufficient authority for the use of such performances; but whether the following allusions are in any sort or degree so executed, as to answer the end proposed by them, is humbly submitted to time, and the reader. I shall only here observe to your Lordship, that they cannot be understood, without a competent knowledge of church history, and a near acquaintance with the present reigning controversies in religion; and that as they are calculated for the perusal of the learned and judicious alone, so it is not hoped they will please many. Give me leave, however, to please myself with the imagination, that they will be received by your Lordship, as a testimony of the most sincere affection and esteem, from,

MY LORD,

Your Lordship's most humble,

And most obedient Servant,

PHILIP SKELTON.

Nov. 14, 1743.

VOL. V.

E

JUVENILIA.

ALLUSION I.

A CATERPILLAR happening to spy a more convenient and inviting leaf, than that on which it crawled, advanced towards it, and being just upon the point to pass from the one to the other, was accosted by a fellow-worm, a citizen of the same leaf, in the following speech: Brother, beware of venturing from your present situation in quest of a better; I own that leaf you attempt seems to promise more tender food, sparkles with brighter drops of dew, and makes a loftier figure than this we live on. But then, the way thither is dangerous. Should you, in passing from hence to it, drop from the edge of either leaf, consider the height you are to fall from, consider the certain ruin and death you are to suffer, but above all, consider the loss you will sustain in never becoming a butterfly.' 'A butterfly (said the other), what is that?' 'It is the most beautiful kind of bird (said he), into which every caterpillar is by nature converted at a certain age.' 'What assurance can I have (said the travelling worm) that such a change shall happen to me, should I live to that age in which you say it always happens? for could I be well assured of it, I should be less willing to hazard my life for pleasure or promotion; the difference between one leaf and another being nothing in comparison with the happiness of becoming a bird.' 'You may be fully satisfied (replied the other) provided you can credit what I tell you, without a possibility of having any other interest in so doing, than the pleasure of preserving my friend and fellow-insect.

..' I lived in a miserable ignorance of the happy change incident to caterpillars, till the rising of yesterday's sun, which no sooner began to shine upon us over the edge of that leaf to which you aspire, and which you know for some time throws its shadow upon ours, but I was surprised with the sight of a creature the most beautiful I had ever beheld, situated so near me, that I could view it to full