short while before she expired, she asked to see me; and taking from her bosom a silver locket, which she told me had been her mother's, and which all her distresses could not make her part with, begged I would keep it for her dear brother, and give it him, if ever he should return home, as a token of her remembrance.

I felt this poor girl's fate strongly; but I tell not her story merely to indulge my feelings; I would make the reflections it may excite in my readers useful to others who may suffer from similar causes. There are many, I fear, from whom their country has called brothers, sons, or fathers, to bleed in her service forlorn, like poor Nancy Collins, with no relation in the world to own them.' Their sufferings are often unknown, when they are such as most demand compassion. The mind that cannot obtrude its distresses on the ear of pity is formed to feel their poignancy the deepest.

In our idea of military operations, we are too apt to forget the misfortunes of the people. In defeat, we think of the fall, and in victory of the glory, of commanders; we seldom allow ourselves to consider how many, in a lower rank, both events make wretched: how many, amidst the acclamations of national triumph, are left to the helpless misery of the widowed and the orphan, and, while victory celebrates her festival, feel, in their distant hovels, the extremities of want and wretchedness!

It was with pleasure I saw, among the resolutions of a late patriotic assembly in this city, an agreement to assist the poor families of our absent soldiers and seamen. With no less satisfaction I read in some late newspapers a benevolent advertisement for a meeting of gentlemen, to consider of a subscription for the same purpose. At this season of general and laudable exertion, I am persuaded such a scheme

cannot fail of patronage and success. The benevo-> lence of this country requires not argument to awaken it; yet the pleasures of its exertion must be increased by the thought, that pity to such objects is patriotism; that, here, private compassion becomes public virtue. Bounties for the encouragement of recruits to our fleets and armies are highly meritorious donations. These, however, may sometimes bribe the covetous, and allure the needy; but that charity, which gives support and protection to the families they leave behind, addresses more generous feelings; feelings which have always been held congenial to bravery and heroism. It endears to them that home which their swords are to defend, and strengthens those ties which should ever bind the soldier of a free state to his country.

Nor will such a provision be of less advantage to posterity than to the present times. It will save to the state many useful subjects which those families thus supported may produce, whose lives have formerly been often nurtured by penury to vice, and rendered not only useless, but baneful to the community; that community which, under a more kindly influence, they might, like their fathers, have enriched by their industry, and protected by their valour.

Z.

No. 50. SATURDAY, JULY 17, 1779.

THOUGH the following letter has been pretty much anticipated by a former paper, yet it possesses too much merit to be refused insertion.

SIR,

TO THE AUTHOR OF THE MIRROR.

Activity is one of those virtues indispensably requisite for the happiness and welfare of mankind, which nature seems to have distributed to them with a parsimonious hand. All men seem naturally averse, not only to those exertions that sharpen and improve the mental powers, but even to such as are necessary for maintaining the health, or strengthening the organs of the body. Whatever industry and enterprise the species have at any time displayed, originated in the bosom of pain, of want, or of necessity; or, in the absence of these causes, from the experience of that listlessness and languor which attend a state of total inaction. But with how great a number does this experience lead to no higher an object than the care of external appearances, or to the prostitution of their time in trivial pursuits, or in licentious pleasures? The surest, the most permanent remedy, and, in the end too, the most delightful, which is to be found in unremitted study, or in the labours of a profession, is, unhappily, the last we recur to. Of all who have risen to eminence in the paths of literature or ambition, how few there are who at first

enjoyed the means of pleasure, or the liberty of being idle! and how many could every one enumerate within the circle of his acquaintance, possessed of excellent abilities, and even anxious for reputation, whom the fatal inheritance of a bare competency has doomed to obscurity through life, and quiet oblivion

when dead!

Let no man confide entirely in his resolutions of activity, in his love of fame, or in his taste for literature. All these principles, even where they are strongest, unless supported by habits of industry, and roused by the immediate presence of some great object to which their exertion leads, gradually lose, and at last resign, their influence. The smallest particle of natural indolence, like the principle of gravitation in matter, unless counterbalanced by continual impulse from some active cause, will insensibly lower, and at last overcome, the flight of the sublimest genius. In computing it, we ought to recollect, that it is a cause for ever present with us, in all moods, in every disposition; and that, from the weakness of our nature, we are willing, at any rate, to relinquish distant prospects of happiness and advantage for a much smaller portion of present indulgence.

I have been led into these reflections by a visit which I lately paid to my friend Mordaunt, in whom they are, unhappily, too well exemplified. I have known him from his infancy, and always admired the extent of his genius, as much as I respected the integrity of his principles, or loved him for the warmth and benevolence of his heart. But, since the time when he began to contemplate his own character, he ⚫ has often confessed to me, and feelingly complained, that nature had infused into it a large portion of indolence, an inclination to despondency, and a delicacy of feeling, which disqualified him for the drudgery of business, or the bustle of public life. Frequently, in

those tedious hours, when his melancholy claimed the attendance and support of a friend, have I seen a conscious blush of shame and self-reproach mingle with the secret sigh, extorted from him by the sense of this defect. His situation, however, as second son of a family, which, though old and honourable, possessed but a small fortune, and no interest, absolutely required that he should adopt a profession. The law was his choice; and, such is the power of habit and necessity, that after four years spent in the study of that science, though at first it had impaired his health, and even soured his temper, he was more sanguine in his expectation of success, and enjoyed a more constant flow of spirits, than I had ever known him to do at any former period. The law, unfortunately, seldom bestows its honours or emoluments upon the young; and my friend, too reserved, or too indifferent, to court a set of men on whose good will the attainment of practice, in some degree, depends, found himself, at the end of two years' close attendance at the bar, though high in the esteem of all that knew him well, as poor, and as distant from preferment, as when he first engaged in it. All my assurances that better days would soon shine upon him, and that his present situation had, at first, been the lot of many now raised to fame and distinction, were insufficient to support him. A deep gloom settled on his spirits, and he had already resolved to relinquish this line of life, though he knew not what other to enter upon, when the death of a distant relation unexpectedly put him in possession of an estate, which, though of small extent, was opulence to one that wished for nothing more than independence, and the disposal of his own time.

After many useless remonstrances upon my part, he set out for his mansion in the country, with his mother, and a nephew of eight years old, resolved, as

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