208 STUDIES OF NATURE. 



to enter the harbour. How much more wretched 

 are thofe who, having devoted their youth to vir- 

 tue, reduced by that treacherous commerce with 

 the World, look backward, and regret the plea- 

 fures of youth, which they knew not how to prize ! 

 The empty glare which encompalTes the wicked, 

 dazzles their eyes ; they feel their faith ftaggering, 

 and they are ready to exclaim with Brutus: — 

 *' O Virtue ! thou art but an empty name." Where 

 Ihall we find books and preachers capable of re- 

 floring confidence to them in tempefls, which have 

 fliaken even the Saints ? They transfix the foul 

 with fecret wounds, and torment it with gnawing 

 ulcers, which (hrink from difcovery. They are 

 beyond all poffibility of relief, except from a fo- 

 ciety of virtuous men, who have been themfelves 

 tried through all the combinations of human woe, 

 and who, in default of the ineffectual arguments 

 of reafon, may bring them back to the fentiment 

 •of virtue, at leafl by that of their friendOiip. 



There is in China, if I am not miflaken, an 

 eflablidiment fimilar to that which I am propofing. 

 At lead certain Travellers, and, among others, 

 Ferdinand Mendez Pinïo, make mention of a houfe 

 of Mercy, which takes up and pleads the caufe of 

 the poor and the opprefled, and which, in an in- 

 finite number of inftances, goes forth to meet the 

 calls of the miferable, much farther than our cha- 

 ritable 



