for his supper.

Some of these institutions, when their funds were low, added cold punch; which acted as a stimulant to flagging subscribers, and distanced rival establishments.

Bankruptcies were very frequent; but they were generally traced to an unbounded exercise of benevolence, to an instinct of kindness in the bankrupt, which had prompted him to undertake the support of the families of various deceased friends when incapable of maintaining his own. The good-natured practice, so easy to every man who has been taught to write, of putting his name to bills for the accommodation of his neighbour, was also generally followed; sometimes, as it appeared to me, under circumstances of doubtful correctness, the acceptor being honoured when the bill was not. But the act, when most severely judged, was necessarily brought within the large class of virtuous operations known as amiable weaknesses, and perfection is not to be expected everywhere.

It follows, from this, that good intentions, however likely to end in ill results, went a very great way in the City of the Virtues. Kindness of motive was pretty sure, in all social and domestic arrangements, to prove an excuse for mischief effected. When a citizen was totally unable to do what was required of him, a promise that he would not fail to do it on a certain day, given touchingly and impressively, so as to kindle an innocent delusion in the petitioner's mind, was held to cover all deficiencies, and to be an infallible sign of sympathy and good-will.

Although the promise was never fulfilled, the heart had done its work nobly; the hand only had failed, and for the emptiness, the powerlessness of that, the exalted impulses of its owner were of course not accountable.

The same species of virtue was everywhere shown in the desire of each man to praise, or, as in vicious cities it would be called, to puff his fellow man. If you hazarded an inquiry concerning somebody's character, truth had more tongues to exalt, than rumour, in a vicious city, could have had to depreciate him. He was "wisest, virtuousest, discreetest, best ;" and if he turned out to be fool or rogue, it was attributable to his innate love of liberty, that told him he was free to change his mind as often as he liked. If a housemaid was discharged for intolerable uncleanliness, her mistress, when people came to inquire respecting her qualities, found out that the girl had just one fault, and only one, an extravagant passion for soap.

Thus everybody gave everybody a good character, and all looked as if they deserved it. The evil was-and the whitest virtue may have a dark-complexioned progenythat these good-natured representations led to as goodnatured a reliance on them, and this, in its turn, to consequences not at all promotive of good-nature. But if it were an amiable weakness to assert, it was as amiable a weakness to believe, and so everybody acted up to a fiction which was as fair for one as for another.

This fiction was stark naked lying, no doubt; an extraordinary practice to find generally adopted in a city of virtue; but the good citizens called it by another name, and declared that Virtue was in herself so insufferably bright, that it was impossible she could help winking now and then. Although flattery, therefore, was in continual request, it would have been scouted under that name; it was called philanthropy, or the antidote to envy and slander. It must be frankly admitted here, that I had not been long among the virtuous before the idea occurred to me, that even depreciation might be a safer guide; for it is difficult to

deduct accurately from the account of flattery, but easy to strike off from the opposite account nine-tenths on the score of spite; if nine are not enough, say tentenths.

But it is time to advert to the principal peculiarity in the government of the City of the Virtues, the chief feature of its policy, its grand legislative distinction. This was, the law which remained continually in full force for giving Rewards to Virtue. There, as in other states, vice was punished; there, as is not the case in other states, virtue was rewarded. This is a novelty in morals that deserves particular attention.

I found that any great deal of virtue which could be clearly established in favour of a citizen was cognizable by the law, and rewardable accordingly. The statutes set forth the various degrees of amiability and heroism which were liable to specific degrees of encouragement. Thus, a citizen who had plunged into a caldron of boiling lead to rescue human life imperilled by an accidental fall into the same, was adjudged to have merited the honour of being supported for the rest of his life at the charge of the state. So, too, the virtuous man who should have become infected with the plague in his attempt to cure another, was entitled to the attendance of the state physician, and to have a palace allotted to him for his future residence.

For smaller achievements in virtue, appropriate encouragements were decreed. I stepped into the public court, and was witness to one or two judgments. A gaunt, hungry lad, who had given his scrap of dinner to a hale, ruddy veteran, whose dog had had nothing to eat that day, was, on the case being clearly proved, sentenced to three months residence in the mansionhouse, the last week of the period to be attended with access to the wine-cellar. And an elderly lady, who

was proved to have always had her oysters scolloped, to avoid the barbarity of swallowing the innocents alive, was sentenced to eat a barrel of natives daily, and the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals presented her with a silver opener.

Virtue, of whatever order, was not its "own reward" in that city. On the contrary, it was extremely well paid, and always a valuable commodity. This was a condition of things not to be contemplated by a moralist without a passionate enthusiasm.

"Oh, virtuous community!" I cried, "how unselfish, how disinterested a view of humanity have you at length afforded to my eyes! Oh, laws! framed for the express reward of virtue, how unlike the laws under which I have been living! Oh, competition in benevolence and magnanimity! how unspeakably unlike the competition prevalent in the society I have left! Good, happy, glorious citizens, realisers of the perfectibility which has hitherto existed but in dreams, how ennobling and rapturous a sight to witness the profitableness of virtue, the high market-value of exalted sentiments, the benefits you disinterestedly heap upon yourselves by making sacrifices for others! Virtue at last makes a good thing of it, lolling in velvet, and crammed with venison !"

THE CITY OF THE VIRTUES.
VIEW THE SECOND.

THERE was something in the spectacle of Virtue rewarded by law that proved quite intoxicating, but in so exemplary a community, sobriety was not long absent; and then I began to be sensible of a few concomitant circumstances which considerably qualified my

raptures. I admired beyond measure the anxiety which every one evinced to do some good deed, but when it proved to be such a good morning's work, the admiration lessened, and the wonder grew more intelligible and familiar. When a good citizen, to shelter a large family burnt out over the way, admitted them all into his house, and went, with his wife, into lodgings, I was lost in delight to see people loving their neighbours better than themselves; but the sentence of the court, decreeing a handsome reward for this virtue, naturally diminished my enthusiasm. The kind soul (but perhaps he had never thought of this) had let his house for the season at a high rent.

A poor object, so reduced as to be in danger of perishing for want of seven and threepence, was accosted by a stranger, who, with tears in his eyes, instantly paid the money, and then gloriously added half a crown, making the mourner quite happy. It was a pleasant deed to do, and not expensive; for a lucky piece of charity of that kind entitled the performer to a guinea from government.

When there was some great act of virtue to be accomplished, something unusually handsome to be done, it made the soul swell with joyful pride to behold hundreds eager to do the deed at an enormous sacrifice; and what exultation was in the heart of the successful competitor, when he had all but ruined himself by his goodness! Yet the splendid recompense and the high public honour awarded when the case came to be heard in court, made the disinterestedness less dazzling, and threw a disagreeable light upon the emulation.

The people were generally very virtuous, but then— my own virtue is candour-there was little temptation to be otherwise. The vicious people, decidedly the minority, were the uneducated, the unenlightened!