cried the son of Adam, "that men who are free from vice should thus suffer so much misery without relief!"-" Be not surprised," said the wretch who was dying; "would it not be the utmost injustice for beings, who have only just sufficient to support themselves, and are content with a bare subsistence, to take it from their own mouths to put it into mine? They never are possessed of a single meal more than is necessary; and what is barely necessary cannot be dispensed with.""They should have been supplied with more than is necessary," cried Asem; "and yet I contradict my own opinion but a moment before: all is doubt, perplexity, and confusion.

Even

the want of ingratitude is no virtue here, since they never received a favour. They have, however, another excellence yet behind; the love of their country is still, I hope, one of their darling virtues."-"Peace, Asem," replied the guardian, with a countenance not less severe than beautiful, "" nor forfeit all thy pretensions to wisdom; the same selfish motives by which we prefer our own interest to that of others, induces us to regard our country preferable to that of another. Nothing less than universal benevolence is free from vice, and that you see is practised here."-" Strange," cries the disappointed pilgrim, in an agony of distress, "what sort of a world am I now introduced to? There is scarce a single virtue, but that of temperance, which they practise; and in that they are no way superior to the brute creation. There is scarce an amusement which they enjoy; fortitude, liberality, friendship, wisdom, conversation, and love of country, all are virtues entirely unknown here; thus it seems, that to be

unacquainted with vice is not to know virtue. Take me, O my genius, back to that very world which I have despised: a world which has Alla for its contriver is much more wisely formed than that which has been projected by Mahomet. Ingratitude, contempt, and hatred, I can now suffer, for perhaps I have deserved them. When I arraigned the wisdom of Providence I only showed my own ignorance; henceforth let me keep from vice myself, and pity it in others."

He had scarce ended, when the genius, assuming an air of terrible complacency, called all his thunders around him, and vanished in a whirlwind. Asem, astonished at the terror of the scene, looked for his imaginary world. When, casting his eyes around, he perceived himself in the very situation, and in the very place, where he first began to repine and despair; his right foot had been just advanced to take the fatal plunge, nor had it been yet withdrawn; so instantly did Providence strike the series of truths just imprinted on his soul. He now departed from the water side in tranquillity, and, leaving his horrid mansion, travelled to Segestan, his native city; where he diligently applied himself to commerce, and put in practice that wisdom which he had learned in solitude. The frugality of a few years soon produced opulence; the number of his domestics increased; his friends came to him from every part of the city, nor did he receive them with disdain; and a youth of misery was concluded with an old age of elegance, affluence, and ease.

VOL. I.

X X

GOLDSMITH.

CHAUBERT THE MISANTHROPE.

AMONGST the variety of human events which come under the observation of every man of common experience in life, many instances must occur to his memory of the false opinions he had formed of good and evil fortune. Things which we lament as the most unhappy occurrences and the severest dispensations of Providence frequently turn out to have been vouchsafements of a contrary sort; whilst our prosperity and success, which for a time delight and dazzle us with the gleams of pleasure and visions of ambition, turn against us in the end of life, and sow the bed of death with thorns, that goad us in those awful moments when the vanities of this world lose their value, and the mind of man being on its last departure, takes a melancholy review of time mispent and blessings misapplied.

Though it is part of every good man's religion to resign himself to God's will, yet a few reflections upon the worldly wisdom of that duty will be of use to every one who falls under the immediate pressure of what is termed misfortune in life. By calling to mind the false estimates we have frequently made of worldly good and evil, we shall get hope on our side, which, though all friends else should fail us, will be a cheerful companion by the way. By a patient acquiescence under painful events for the present, we shall be sure to contract a tranquillity of temper that will stand us in future stead; and, by keeping a fair face to the world, we shall, by degrees, make an easy heart, and find innumerable re

sources of consolation which a fretful spirit never can discover.

"I wonder why I was so uneasy under my late loss of fortune," said a very worthy gentleman to me one day, "seeing it was not occasioned by my own misconduct; for the health and content I now enjoy, in the humble station I have retired to, are the greatest blessings of my life, and I am devoutly thankful for the event which I deplored." How often do we hear young unmarried people exclaim-What an escape have I had from such a man, or such a woman. And yet, perhaps, they had not wisdom enough to suppose this might turn out to be the case at the time it happened, but complained, lamented, and reviled, as if they were suffering persecution from a cruel and tyrannic Being, who takes pleasure in tormenting his unoffending creatures.

An extraordinary example occurs to me of this criminal excess of sensibility in the person of a Frenchman named Chaubert, who happily lived long enough to repent of the extravagance of his misanthropy. Chaubert was born at Bordeaux, and died there not many years ago in the Franciscan convent; I was in that city soon after this event, and my curiosity led me to collect several particulars relative to this extraordinary humorist. He inherits a good fortune from his parents, and in his youth was of a benevolent disposition, subject however to sudden caprices and extremes of love and hatred. Various causes are assigned for his misanthropy; but the principle disgust, which turned him furious against mankind, seems to have arisen from the treachery of a friend, who

ran away with his mistress, just when Chaubert was on the point of marrying her; the ingratitude of this man was certainly of a very black nature, and the provocation heinous, for Chaubert, whose passions were always in extremes, had given a thousand instances of romantic generosity to this unworthy friend, and reposed an entire confidence in him in the matter of his mistress he had even saved him from drowning one day at the imminent risk of his life, by leaping out of his own boat into the Garonne, and swimming to the assistance of his, when it was sinking in the middle of the stream. His passion for his mistress was no less vehement; so that his disappointment had every aggravation possible, and operating upon a nature more than commonly susceptible, reversed every principle of humanity in the heart of Chaubert, and made him for the greatest part of his life the declared enemy of human nature.

After many years passed in foreign parts, he was accidentally brought to his better senses by discovering that through these events, which he had so deeply resented, he had providentially escaped from miseries of the most fatal nature: thereupon he returned to his own country, and entering into the order of Franciscans, employed the remainder of his life in atoning for his past errors after the most exemplary manner. On all occasions of distress Father Chaubert's zeal presented itself to the relief and comfort of the unfortunate, and sometimes he would enforce his admonitions of resignation by the lively picture he would draw of his own extravagancies; in