of probable dangers and miscarriages soon loses its effect; human judgment is not infallible; we may expect to err more frequently than to be right, and our prophecies will often be found to be erroneous. This influences the mind, and not unfrequently engenders a sceptical habit, which directly discredits every thing, on the pretence that some are false. A young mind rising from a perusal of the Rambler would conceive the most melancholy ideas of human nature and human events. Mankind would appear to him as an undistinguished mass of fraud, perfidy, and deceit; oppressing the humble, exalting the base, and levelling the virtuous; awarding its suffrages and honours to the unworthy and degenerate, and turning, with disgust, from the manly struggles of the truly wise and worthy. Life would appear to him as one incessant warfare with envy, malevolence, and falshood; as the as the precarious tenure of a minute, never free from open assault or secret undermining; as beset on every side with misery, with want, with disease; as a road for ever obstructed by the pitfalls of infamy and remorse, and into which every step may plunge us; he will, I say, conceive this life to be a monstrous association of all possible evils, and unattended with any alleviation but religion, and unvisited by any hope but that of futurity and a MERCIFUL CREATOR. The utility of Dr. Johnson's Rambler as a moral work may be justly questioned. Every thing which tends to obstruct the activity of man, and to crush well-founded hopes on this life, severely, merits reprehension. The circle of our pleasures is sufficiently contracted, and our truest happiness can be derived only from the present moment; the past and future being objects either of regret or desire. To restrict them still more is of no avail, whether the end proposed be the advancement either of religion or morality; but it may be the cause of infinite injury. The gloomy representations of life as exhibited by Johnson, have this direct and only tendency, to repress the arm of industry, to check check the vigour of enterprize, to suppress rational wishes, to fill the mind with a hateful distrust of society, and to foster the most pernicious prejudices. They are also capable of repressing other generous sentiments of the mind which form the most important links of human connection. In short, the papers of the Rambler which relate to life, are in his own words, fit only "to disturb the happiness of others, to lessen the little comforts, and shorten the short pleasures of our condition, by painful remembrances of the past, or melancholy prognostics of the future; their only aim is to crush the rising hope, to damp the kindling transport, and alloy the golden hours of gaiety with the hateful dross of grief and suspicion." This might be exemplified by a multiplicity of quotations, were they necessary. But a few only shall here be employed; namely, such opinions as are delivered as axioms, and stand in general divested of all demonstrative support or collateral argument, and sometimes entire delineations.-These will better dis play play the decided bias of Johnson's mind; and consequently, the propriety of admitting him as an unerring guide, or as a safe and judicious moralist. And should he be found sometimes incompetent to that task, it will in no manner detract from his literary character, nor render our admiration of his sublime and stupendous genius less fervid. It will only demonstrate, that a man, whose perceptions have been clouded by poverty, whose mind has been harrassed by complicated miseries, and whose body has been debilitated by disease, so as to impart a settled principle, drawn from the misfortunes of existence, is as incapable of exhibiting a just delineation of life, as a man would be of determining the different shades of colour, whose visual powers were obstructed by that "drop serene” which our immortal Milton has bewailed. Let us suppose a Student, having toiled through the volumes of antiquity, and enlarged his intellect by views of nature, becomes ambitious of disclosing to the world the result of his laborious studies. Conscious of superior acquirements, and desirous desirous of elucidating some learned perplexity, or of exhorting to some important virtue, he is anxious of knowing to whom he confides his knowledge, or for whose moral advancement he subjects himself voluntarily to the task of reformation. Let us suppose this information sought in Johnson. "He that endeavours after fame by writing, solicits the regard of a multitude, fluctuating in measures, or immersed in business, without time for intellectual improvements, he appeals to judges prepossessed by passion, or corrupted by prejudices, which preclude their approbation of any new performance. Some are too indolent to read any thing till its reputation is established; others too envious to promote that fame which gives them pain by its increase. What is new is opposed, because most are unwilling to be taught, and what is known is rejected because it is not sufficiently considered that men more frequently require to be reminded than informed. The learned are afraid to declare their opinion early, lest they should put their reputa |