the reft: they fupport themselves by temporary expedients, and every day is loft in contriving for the morrow.

"This, however, was an evil, which, though frequent, I faw with lefs pain, because I could relieve it. Yet fome have refused my bounties; more offended with my quickness to detect their wants, than pleafed with my readiness to fuccour them and others, whofe exi-gencies compelled them to admit my kindness, have never been able to forgive their benefactress. Many, however, have been fincerely grateful, without: the oftentation of gratitude, or the hope of other favours."

"In families, where there is or is not poverty, there is commonly difcord: if a kingdom be, as Imlac tells us, a great family, a family likewise is a little kingdom, torn with factions, and expofed to revolutions. An unpractifed obferver expects the love of parents and children to be conftant and equal; but this kindnefs feldom continues beyond the years of infancy: in a fhort time. the children become rivals to their parents, Benefits are allayed by reproaches, and gratitude debafed by envy.

"Parents

"Parents and children feldom act in concert: each child endeavours to ap propriate the esteem or fondness of the

parents, and the

parents,

with yet

lefs

temptation, betray each other to their children; thus fome place their confidence in the father, and fome in the mother, and by degrees, the house is filled with artifices and feuds.

"The opinions of children and parents, of the young and the old, are naturally oppofite, by the contrary effects of hope and defpondence, of expectation and experience, without crime or folly on either fide. The colours of life in youth and age appear different, as the face of nature in spring and winter. And how can children credit the affertions of parents, which their own eyes fhow them to be falfe?

"Few parents act in such a manner as much to enforce their maxims by the credit of their lives. The old man trufts wholly to flow contrivance and gradual progreffion: the youth expects to force his way by genius, vigour, and precipitance. The old man pays regard to riches, and the youth reverences virtue. The old man deifies prudence: the youth commits himself to magnanimity and chance. The young man, who intends no ill, believes that none is intended, and therefore acts with openness and candour: but his father, having fuffered the injuries of fraud, is impelled to fufpect, and too often allured to practise it. Age looks with anger on the temerity of youth, and youth with contempt on the fcrupulofity of age. Thus parents and children, for the greatest part, live on to love lefs and

lefs:

1

lefs: and, if those whom nature has thus closely united are the torments of each other, where fhall we look for tenderness and confolation ?"

"Surely, faid the prince, you must have been unfortunate in your choice of acquaintance: I am unwilling to believe, that the most tender of all relations is thus impeded in its effects by natural neceffity."

"Domestick difcord, anfwered fhe, is not inevitably and fatally neceffary; but yet it is not eafily avoided. We fel-dom fee that a whole family is virtuous: the good and evil cannot well agree; and the evil can yet lefs agree with one another: even the virtuous fall fometimes to variance, when their virtues are of different kinds, and tending to In general, thofe parents

extremes.

have most reverence who most deserve

H 6,

it::