structive war, has snatched the scythe from the hand of time, and hurried on the steps of destiny. Those broken columns and battered walls, those prostrate towers and battlements, dashed to the ground, carry evident marks of an immature downfall: they were built for ages, and for ages might have stood, a defence and accommodation to generations yet unborn, if haply they had es. caped the dire assaults of hostile rage. But what vigilance of man can prevent the miner's dark approach? or what solidity of bulwark can withstand the bellowing engine's impetuous shock?

Those, perhaps, were the rooms in which licentious mirth crowned with roses the sparkling bowl, and tuned to the silver-sounding lute the syren's enchanting song. Those, the scenes of voluptuous indulgence, where luxury poured her delicacies, where beauty, insidious beauty, practised her wiles, and spread with bewitching art her wanton snares. Now, instead of the riotous banquet and intrigues of lawless love, the owl utters her hated screams by night, and the raven flaps her ominous wing by day. Where are the violet couches and the woodbine bowers, which fanned, with their breathing sweets, the polluted flame? The soil seems to suffer for the abuses of the owner: blasted and dishonoured, it produces nothing but ragged briars and noisome nettles, under whose odious covert the hissing snake glides, or the croaking toad crawls. Fearful intimation of that ignominious and doleful catastrophe which awaits the sons of riot! when their momentary gratifications will drop like the faded leaf, and leave nothing behind but pangs of remorse, keener far than the pointed thorn, and more envenomed than the viper's tooth.

Perhaps they were the beauteous and honoured abodes where grandeur and politeness walked their daily round, attended with a train of guiltless delights; where amiable and refined friendship was wont to sit and smile, looking love, and talking the very soul; where hospitality, with economy always at her side, stood beckoning to the distressed but industrious poor,

I say distressed, but industrious poor; because I would not be understood as encouraging, in any degree, the relief of our common beggars. Towards the former I would cultivate a tender and ever-yearning compassion; I would anticipate their com plants, and, as a sacred writer directs, would even seek to do

and showered blessings from her liberal hand. But war, detested war, has stretched over the social and inviting seat, the line of confusion and the stones of emptiness. Now, alas! nothing but desolation and horror haunt the savage retreat. The ample arches of the bridge, which so often transmitted the wondering passenger along their pensile way, lie buried in the them good. But as to the latter, I frankly own that I look upon it as my duty to discourage such cumberers of the ground: they are, generally speaking, fusty drones, and their habitual begging is no better than a specious robbing of the public hive. For such sturdy supplicants, who are able to undergo the fatigue of travelling, able to endure the inclemencies of the weather, and consequently much more able, were they equally willing, to exercise themselves in some species of laudable industry; for these, the house of correction would be a far more salutary provision than any supply from our table, and confinement to labour a much more beneficial charity than the liberality of the purse.

We should remember, and they should be taught, that the law ordained by the court of heaven is, Ifa man will not work, neither shall he eat.' If then we contribute to support them in idleness, do we not counteract and frustrate this wise regulation, established by the great Sovereign of the universe! Is it not also a wrong to the deserving poor, if we suffer these wens on the body politic to draw off the nourishment which ought to circulate amongst the valuable and useful members? Money or victuals bestowed on these worthless wretches, is not real beneficence, but the earnest-penny of sloth: it hires them to be good for nothing, and pays them for being public nuisances.

Let us then unanimously join to shake off these dead weights from our wheels, and dislodge these swarms of vermin from our state. Let us be deaf to their most importunate clamours, and assure ourselves, that by this determined inflexibility, we do God, we do our community, we do them the most substantial service. Should they implore by the injured name of Jesus, for the honour of the Lord Jesus, let us resolutely withhold our alms. Their meaning is, 'I cannot go on in my present shameful and iniquitous course; I can no longer continue to act the "wicked and slothful servant," unless you will administer some kindly-pernicious assistance. For Christ's sake, therefore, assist me to dishonour my Christian name, and to live more infamously than the vilest beasts. For Christ's sake help me to be a reproach and burden to my native country, and to persist in the way which leads to eternal destruction." This is the true import of their petitions; and whether the sanction of that most venerable name, added to such a request, should move our commiseration, or excite our abhorrence, let every thinking person judge.

I trust the reader will be so candid as to excuse this long digressive note; and do me the justice to believe, that I am not pleading against, but for the real poor; not to harden any one's heart, but rather to direct every one's hand. Give out of gratitude to Christ, out of compassion to the needy, and be for ever blessed; but give not to incorrigible vagrants, to maintain impiety, and pamper indolence, lest it be demanded one day, Who hath required this at your hand?' Lest, by supporting dissolute creatures in that abandoned sloth, which is the nurse of all vice, we become partakers of their guilt, and accessary to their ruin.

Isa. xxxiv. 11,

dreary moat. Those relics of the massy portals, naked and abandoned, seem to bemoan their melancholy condition. No splendid chariots, with their gay retinue, frequent the solitary avenues. No needy steps, with cheerful expectations, besiege the once bountiful gate; but all is a miserable, forlorn, hideous pile of rubbish.

Since riches so often take to themselves wings and fly away; since houses, great and fair, reel upon their foundations, and so soon tumble into dust, how wise, how salutary, is our divine Master's advice! Make to yourselves friends with the mammon of unrighteousness, that when' the world fails around you,' when the springs of nature 'fail' within you, 'they' as witnesses of your charity, and vouchers for the sincerity of your faith, may receive you into everlasting habitations." This is to lay up treasure for ourselves:'t whereas, whatever else me amass, is for our heirs, for our suc cessors, for we know not who. This wealth is truly and emphatically called our own:'t it is an advowson, we have the perpetuity: whereas, whatever else we pos. sess, is ours only for a turn, or in trust.

See the dreadful, dreadful ravages of civil discord! wherever that infernal fury stalks, she marks her steps in blood, and leaves opulent cities a ruinous heap.j

Luke xvi. 9. + Matt. vi. 20. t Luke xvi. 12.

The effects of what Virgil calls Bella, horrida bella,' were never displayed in colours that glow, and with figures that alarm, like those which are used by the prophet Jeremiah, chap. iv, 19, &c. As this is perhaps the greatest master-piece of the kind, the reader will permit me to enrich the notes with a transcript of the passage:

First we see, or rather we feel, the effects of war on the human mind; the keenest anguish, and the deepest dismay. My bowels! my bowels! I am pained at my very heart. My heart maketh a noise in me; I cannot hold my peace; because thou hast heard, O my soul, the sound of the trumpet, the alarm of Destruction upon destruction is cried, for the land is spoiled. Suddenly are my tents spoiled, and my curtains in a moment. How long shall I see the standard, and hear the sound of the trumpet?'

Then we see the dismal devastations of war: and who does not shudder at the sight! The whole country laid in ruins! deprived of all its ornaments, and all its inhabitants! reduced to a solitude and a chaos. I beheld the earth, and lo! it was without form and void; and the heavens, and they had no light. I beheld the mountains, and lo! they trembled, and all the hills moved lightly. I beheld, and lo! there was no man, and all the birds of the heavens were fled. I beheld, and lo! the fruitful place was a wilderness, and all the cities thereof were broken down at the presence of the Lord, and by his fierce anger."

If after all this profusion of imagery, bold and animated even

What thanks then, what ardent and ceaseless thanks are, due to that all-superintending, ever-gracious Lord, who has dashed the torch from her hand, has broke her murderous weapons, and driven the baleful pest from our island! May the same almighty goodness shortly banish the accursed monster from all lands! Banish the monster, with her hated associate rapine, and her insatiable purveyor ambition, to the deepest, deepest hell. Branded with everlasting infamy, and bound in ada mantine chains, there let them gnash their teeth, and bite the inevitable curb! While peace, descending from her native heaven, bids her olives spring amidst the joyful nations: and plenty, in league with commerce, scatters blessings from her copious horn; while 'glad. ness smiles in every eye; and love, extensive universal love, levelling the partition-wall of bigotry, cements every heart in brotherly affection.

Near those heaps of havoc, lies the spot, ever-memorable and still revered, on which an obstinate and fatal battle was fought. The husbandman, as he breaks his fallow land, or rends the grassy turf, often discovers the horrid implements, and the more horrid effects of that bloody conflict. He starts to hear his coulter strike upon the bosses of a rusty buckler, or glide over the edge of a blunted sword. He turns pale to see human bones thrown up before his plough, and stands aghast to think that, in cutting his furrow, he opens a grave. The gray-headed sire often relates to his grandsons, hanging with eager attention on the tale, and trembling for the event, relates the dismal, the glorious deeds of that important day. How the fields. now covered with waving crops, were then loaded with mangled, and ghastly corpses; how the pastures, now green with herbage, were then drenched and incrim, soned with human gore.

On that extended common, 'he says,' where the busy shepherd is erecting his hurdled citadel, the tents were spread, and the banners displayed; the spears bristled in air, and the burnished helmits glittered to the sun. On yonder rising ground, where the frisking lambs play to astonishment, we can have any relish for the cold correctness of a heathen genius, we may find something of the same nature in Horace, lib. ii. Od. 1.

their harmless frolics, stood the martial files, clad in mail, and ranged in battle-array; stood war, with all its collected horrors, like some portentous cloud, ready to burst into an immediate storm. On the nearer plain, where the quiet steed grazes in safety, and those sober oxen chew the juicy herb, the fierce encounter mixed. There the javelins, launched from nervous arms, and aimed by vengeful eyes, flew and reflew, whizzing with death. The arrows lightened from the strings, and drenched their keen points, and dipped their feathery wings in blood. Soon as this shower of missive steel ceased, instantly outsprung thousands of flaming swords. They clash on the brazen shields, they cut their way through the riven armour, and sheath their blades in many a gallant dauntless heart. Here, on this distinguished level, the proud presumptuous enemy, confi. dent of victory, and boasting of their numbers, poured in like a flood: there, a bold determined battalion, of which myself was a part, planted themselves like a rock, and broke the fierce attack.

'Then, adds the brave old warior, then the coward herd fled before the vengeance of our conquering arms. Then these hands strewed the plains with a harvest, different far from their present productions. Then the fathers, smitten with inexpressible dread, "looked not back on their children," though shuddering at the

Habak. iii. 11. literally translated, presents us with what that beautifully bold figure, The lightening of thy spear.' Which, with innumerable other graces of speech, that give dignity and spirit to our modern compositions, are bor rowed from the language of Zion, are transplanted from the school of the prophets. If we start into a pleasing amazement at Homer's δορυ μαίνεται, have we not equal reason to be

Every ? יתהוללו הרכב charmed_and_surprised at Nahums

chariot raged with violence and impetuosity: was eager, was even mad to destroy. Nah. ii. 5.

+ For this very striking and most terrific image, we are obliged to the prophet Jeremiah; who, in a few words, but with all the pomp of horror, describes the din of approaching war, and the consternation of a vanguished people. At the noise of the stamping of the hoofs of his strong horses, at the rushing of his chariots, and at the rumbling of his wheels, the fathers shall not look back unto their children, for feebleness of hands.' Jerem. xlvii. 3.

Not to mention the thunder-like sound of the diction, and that in a language much less sonorous than the original, I appeal to every reader, whether the last circumstance does not awaken the idea of so tremendous a scene, and so horrible a dread, as no