take it down again, half an hour after, for the sage perusal of others.

These things are by no means said to condemn the use of newspapers, but merely the abuse. The writer is perfectly sensible, that especially in a trading country, such papers are, in some sort, necessary. He considers the public posts as the very legs of trade, and the newspapers, as its wings; but laments the propagation of bad principles, false politics, the infamy of the innocent, &c. in the same channel. He laments too the loss of time to our manufactures, which trade and industry ought to engross.

The writer of this book, now addressed to you, would convert your taste to somewhat more worthy of rational readers, more noble, more lastingly delightful, more productive of real pleasure, and of that true happiness, you would eagerly pursue, would you but give him leave to instil into your minds its lovely idea. Then, instead of encouragers of infidelity and vice, you would become the blessed patrons and patronesses of every thing that is good and laudable. He would lead you to the Bible. Oh! yes, start not; he would lead you from novels, and the most despicable garbage of reading, to the book of God, wherein you would be taught to look upward at the dignity of your souls, at the love of God for you, at the eternal happiness and glory he invites you to; and, in consequence, would soon see the contempt that is justly due to the fugitive trifles, which hitherto have engaged your mistaken affections. You would there see death hastening to shut up these from you for ever, and to leave you nothing, but good, or guilty consciences, to subsist you in endless joy or misery. In all cases it would be foolish, but in this, fatal, to be looking abroad, when all things are going wrong with you at home. Would you not think it extremely silly to concern yourself about a change in the French ministry, when you know not how to get your dinner? And how much more so to dissipate your time and attention on the trifling affairs of others, when your soul and eternity are at stake, and probably but ill provided for? Should you be so desperately lost, as to be afraid of this,

throw the book from you, and take again your newspaper, your magazine, your review, your novel.

I here take my leave of the press and you, with a request, that, if any thing should be printed in my name after my decease, you will pronounce it spurious, for I will not leave a single line for a posthumous publication, I shall as soon think of walking after my death, as talking.

That God may give you right understanding in all things, is the devout prayer of

YOUR FAITHFUL WATCHMAN.

SENILIA.

1. VERY ERY nice distinctions are more apt to be absurd, than such as are founded on obvious and common observation; witness the complaint of a servant girl, beaten by her mistress; Hard indeed! that I, whose father's brooms sold for two a penny, should be drubbed by you; whereas your father was forced to part with three of his for the same money. I am therefore come of a better family than you are. This piece of heraldry, more exquisite than any made in England, or even France, will be laughed at by people in high life.

And yet these very people universally run into a distinction by far more nice and absurd. They all, at every stage of life, wish to prolong it, and yet not one of them is content to grow old, although all mankind know, that they must either grow old, or die young. I am now so far advanced in years as to find out their reason for wishing, not to grow old. The many infirmities of body and mind, which lie in wait for us, as soon as we turn the corner of seventy; and the distaste or contempt, not always undeserved, wherewith the younger part of mankind, often our own children, or such as we have served and provided for, are disposed to treat us, bear hard upon the testiness of our own tempers, and now and then excite a wish in us, that we had died before this melancholy period of life. It would be, one should think, enough to perceive our persons and advice, which, it is true, we are now too ready to obtrude, received with ridicule; to hear, for instance, our persons vilified under the very witty appellation of, squaretoes, in comedies and novels; and our admonitions, sage as we think them, slighted because our distempered toes can no longer bear the sharp angle of a fashionable shoe. Whoever the genius was, from whose invention this admirable piece of wit was first struck out, it hath been so often echoed by subsequent wits, that a man with broad or squaretoes to his shoes, must be ridiculous, and his advice contemptible.

This is not enough, we old ones must not only be shunned

and shuffled out of the way; and if we but seem to claim a small share of the respect, due to age, and quote Scripture in favour of the hoary head, we shall bring ourselves and the word of God into equal contempt; nay, we shall be choused and fleeced, even by those who subsist on our bounty, while they affect to consider us as dotards, hardly capable of knowing when we are ill-used, and only destined to be the passive prey of ingratitude and cunning. Patience, and lying quietly under this usage, invites a repetition; and flouncing only aggravates it.

Humanly speaking, there is for these evils no remedy, excepting in the possession of wealth. The ties of nature or gratitude are here not to be depended on; and even that of expecting selfishness in those, the aged have to do with, is easily broken. The best apology however an old man can make to himself for having been a miser, is to be drawn from the pride and selfishness of younger people, who, that they may carry off somewhat for the gratification of their youthful passions, may be willing to tolerate those of age in him. But so little of this toleration is he to build on, that I think, the old people, who were killed and eaten by their children, were happier than we, who may still live merely for the emolument and sport of ours. When I said just now, that wealth is the only resource of an old man against the evils here complained of, I added (humanly speaking) for there is another and higher, if he may have recourse to it, and that is, God. He ought however to ask himself, whether or no it will not be presumption in him to look upward for relief. Hath he suffered yet sufficiently for the sins of his past life? No. Does he now wish for death? No. Is he already dead to the appetites and vanities of this world? No. Is he mild, gentle, and unsuspicious of those about him? Is he prepared to enter into eternity, and resigned to the will of God? No, no, no. How then dare he fret, complain, or pray for deliverance? Does he not find, that if left to his own wishes, and to such comforts as life might even yet afford him, he would not be a whit better man, two or three years hence, nor fitter to die, than he is just now? Does he not consider, that, by all his temporary and moderate sufferings, his gracious God is weaning him from a life he hath been too long habituated to, and scourging him into an asylum, into which he would never permit himself to beled by the long-suffering patience and goodness of that God? As he hath long, in too great a degree, forgotten God, would he have God to forget him

at the last? What? no weaning aloes for a child so old! No rod for such a back! Is heaven so low in his esteem, as to be had for nothing? Or how can he hope to enter there with nothing but a hell within him?

These observations have been dictated by the state I am at present in, and set down here as applicable to other men in circumstances, the same with, or similar to, mine. How far they may be useful to some few among them, they, not I, must judge.

But why I am still scribbling, as it were, to others, though perhaps to as little purpose as heretofore? may be reasonably asked it will be sufficient to answer this to myself, till I shall be favoured with a reader. It is a long time since I learned, that one is rendered more agreeable to his acquaintances by listening, than by talking, let him talk ever so well. But then I cannot listen, for I am deaf, and so like many old men, and like women, in every stage of life, I talk incessantly, and thereby drive from me every mortal, who wishes to hear himself talk. 'Tis no excuse to say, I know many things, which some of these do not know, nor that I really mean to do some little good, particularly by holding forth on the subject of religion, the sole purpose, for which I yet live, and am supported by Providence, to an atheistical world. Thus almost sequestered, as I am, from mankind by my own deafness, and their aversion, I must either speak through my pen, or pass the short remainder of my days in the condition of an oyster.

Thus therefore I proceed, without knowing whether I shall live to set my pen on the next page, to throw on paper, unconnected, such reflections as the word of God, as age and experience, and as observations on the ways of men, shall suggest. No otherwise can I be amused; no otherwise can I be of any use. The little knowledge I have is almost wholly of the religious kind. To this my heart hath been long wedded, and whatsoever else I know, is known only in subserviency to religion. All other sorts of knowledge are, in my opinion, of very little consequence, but as handmaids, in some degree, to this, which hath God, heaven, and eternity, for its immediate objects. The men of this world however may judge of this, as they will; yet one thing cannot be disputed, that every man, if he speaks or writes, should speak or write of such matters as he understands best; the barrister of law; the physician of distempers and medicines; the merchant of commerce; and the divine of religion; but the barrister, phy