digressions, indecent allusions, wild starts of fancy, and every other obliquity of a distorted wit, which vitiate the taste, corrupt the morals, and pervert the principles of young and injudicious readers*. Hence too all those late profound discoveries—that to give youth a religious education is to fill them with bigotry and prejudice; that the right way to teach morality is to make vice appear amiable; that true wisdom and philosophy consist in doubting of every thing, in combating all received opinions, and confounding the most obvious dictates of common sense in the inexplicable mazes of metaphysical refinement; that all establishments, civil or religious, are iniquitous and pernicious usurpations on the liberties of mankind; that the only way to be a good Christian is to disbelieve above one half of the Gospel; that piety and self-government are duties not worth a wise man's notice; that benevolence is the sum of all virtue and all religion, and that one great proof of our benevolence

*Certain eccentric compositions are here alluded to, which were at that time (1767) much in fashion, and have as usual produced a multitude of wretched imitators of a species of writing which does not admit, and is not worthy, of imita tion.

benevolence is to set mankind afloat in uncertainty, and make them as uneasy and hopeless as we can.

When these positions are thus collected together, and proposed without sophistry or disguise to a plain understanding, they appear more like the feverish dreams of a disordered imagination, than the serious assertions of sober and reasonable men. And yet they are notoriously nothing more than a faithful compendium of what some of the most favourite authors of the age, both foreign and domestic, avowedly recommend to us, as maxims of wisdom and rules of conduct. Were they actually adopted as such by the bulk of the people, it is easy to see what wild work they would make in society. In effect, the recent opportunities we have had in this island, of observing the ridiculous extravagancies resulting from those principles, and the infinite absurdities of a practice formed on the too prevailing system of modern ethics, are abundantly sufficient to convince us of their utter unfitness for the uses and the duties of common life, as well as for the purposes of the life to come. behoves us, therefore, to guard our young disciples,

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disciples, with the utmost care, against this visionary fantastic philosophy, which owes its birth to the concurrence of much vanity and little judgment with a warm and ungoverned imagination, and is studious to recommend itself by the united charms of novelty and eloquence. These are indeed to young minds attractions almost irresis tible; but yet a right culture of the understanding will be an effectual security against them; and, with some few improvements, there cannot, perhaps, be a better for that purpose, than the course of study marked out by the wisdom of the University to the youth of this place; and which, to their praise be it spoken, is pursued by them with astonishing application and success.

That judicious mixture of polite letters and philosophic sciences, which is the necessary preparative for their first degree, is admirably calculated at once to refine their taste, enlarge their notions, and exalt their minds. By beginning in the first place with CLASSICAL LITERATURE, and improving the acquaintance they have already made with the best and purest writers of antiquity, they will insensibly acquire a relish

for

for true simplicity and chastity of composition. They will learn strength and clearness of conception, accuracy, order, correctness, copiousness, elegance and dignity of expression. They will find that the most justly approved writers of our own times have formed themselves on those great models; and (as one, who well understood what originality was, expresses himself) they will perceive that," a true genius is not any bold writer, who breaks through the rules of decency to distinguish himself by the singularity of his opinions; but one who, on a deserving subject, is able to open new scenes, and discover a vein of true and noble thinking, which never entered into any imagination before; every stroke of whose pen is worth all the paper blotted by hundreds of others in the whole course of their lives*"

The cultivation of LOGIC, at the same time, and the most useful and practical branches of the MATHEMATICS (which are excellentexamples of severe reasoning and sagacious investigation) will also be of singular

use

* Swift's proposal for correcting, improving, and ascertaining the English tongue; in a Letter to Lord Oxford.

use in preserving our youth from error, in every subsequent part of knowledge. It will teach them to arrange, and methodize, and connect their thoughts; to examine the arguments of others with a nice and critical penetration; to pursue them through a long concatenation of dependent propositions, and discover whether any link in the chain of proofs be wanting; to distinguish sense from sound, ideas from words, hasty and peremp tory decisions from just and legitimate conclusions. It will put them upon their guard against bold and novel opinions, especially if addressed to the imagination by strokes of wit, or to the heart by affecting descriptions, rather than to the understanding by sound and conclusive reasoning. By keeping their judgment in constant exercise, it will improve and strengthen that excellent and useful, but little regarded, faculty. It will instruct them in the several degrees of certainty, and the various kinds of proof, of which different subjects are capable; the just grounds of doubt, assent, or disbelief; the true limits and extent, of the human understanding; that precise point, in short, at