In this paper, I design to give a sketch-like view of those illustrious predecessors, whose footsteps I am endeavoring to follow in humble imitation.

Cotton Mather, quoting Basil, mentions a certain art of drawing many doves, by anointing the wings of a few with a fragrant ointment, and so sending them abroad, that by the fragrancy of the ointment, they may allure others into the house. There are a certain class of writers, whose object it is to fill up men's minds and spare time, and to allure them to goodness, not merely by the ponderous truths of theology, or the deep arguments of philosophy, but by the fragrance of those intellectual wings, with which they wake the fancy and infold the heart.

I have already mentioned Addison. After some

considerable interval, followed the illustrious author of the Rambler. Of a work so well known, it may be both difficult and needless to say any thing new, or which has not a thousand times been presented to the reader's mind. It is a book, which is always the delight of young students in colleges, when they begin to write themes; because it has exactly the unbusiness-like style, which the mind relishes and craves when it writes solely for criticism; but our admiration of Johnson almost always abates with the progress of life. His false antithesis, his uniform roll of sentence, his pomposity and pendentry have often been pointed out, and severely censured; yet, after all his errors, where is the man, who like him, can chain the attention to mere didactic discussion without the aid of narrative? Criticism, with me, I have already remarked, is an affair of feeling; and if I were to be called to watch with a sick man, where the object was to sit in idleness and repell sleep, and if a narrative volume were prohibited, I would certainly take a volume of the Rambler.

He has certainly his weak points; his allegories I always pass over; though all Addison's are excellent. His wit is much what we may suppose his dancing would have been, had he, as was reported of him, taken lessons of Vestris. His pictures of life and manners are rather clumsy; and his women are strange formal phantoms, such as earth never saw and I hope never will see. But when he writes a paper on the

misery of man, the vanity of life and the solemnities of a death-bed, he warbles out his groans with the sweetest melody, and I am sure to follow his eloquence though his philosophy should lead me to despair. His criticisms, too, if not always true, are always supremely beautiful.

It has been lamented by some serious people, that both he and Addison, when they touch with so much felicity, on some of the parts of religion, had not more clearly seen, or more clearly displayed the central truth-the terms of our acceptance with the Deity. There are expressions in both these great writers, on this point, which every evangelical reader wishes away. But we should consider in all works, the writer's end; and what would have been the condition of English literature if Addison and Johnson had had the principles of Voltaire and Rousseau!

Τόσσον ἔυερθ' αΐδεω, ὅσον οὐρανὸς ἐς ἀπὸ γαίης.

Scarcely had Johnson finished his Rambler, when Dr. Hawkesworth began his renowned work. The Adventurer was partly written by Johnson, and in most of its pages closely imitates him. But it is not as an imitator that Hawkesworth's best excellence appears. His peculiar brightness, as it appears to me, is the skill with which he can construct some natural story to illustrate some moral principle. I recollect

one which began in thoughtless lying and ended in a fatal duel.

The Mirror has all the characteristics of the man who has been called the Scotch Addison. Indeed the author of the Man of Feeling, could not fail of producing an interesting periodical. His book, I should suppose, must be a favorite with the ladies; and most youthful eyes, like mine, have probably wept over the stories of Sir Edward and La Roche. This writer is inexpressibly tender and delicate. But this is his chief praise. His natural tenderness supplies the place of deeper principle; and there are few of our popular writers who have so seldom bound their precepts on the conscience, by the strong sanctions of revealed religion.

I have not space to characterize the World, the Looker-on, the Lounger, the Connoisseur, and various other volumes written with various ability, and destined to oblivion, from their very number, perhaps, rather than their want of merit. But one I must notice-Cumberland's Observer; a periodical paper only in name; but a beautiful repository of literary history and criticism. His criticism, however, too often revolves on one pivot, and that fixed in a wrong position. In analyzing a drama, he always turns a very scrutinizing eye on the probability of the fable— the last thing I think of when I read a play; for I agree with Mr. Puff, in Sheridan's Critic-"O lud, Sir, if people who want to listen, or overhear, were

not always connived at in a tragedy, there would be no carrying on any plot in the world." There is no end to such criticism.

From British writers let us turn to those of our own land; and here the first shape that meets us, is the renowned Franklin. His good sense taught him, to write to the circumstances and wants of his own country, and hence instead of conjuring up the aristocratic images of a foreign land, and painting them in colors which had already been exhausted, he remembered that he dwelt among the farmers and tradesmen of an infant country—all of them free and equal, and all struggling for a subsistence; and hence he teaches them the lessons of frugality and economy. He was the first American author who possessed the patavinity of morals; and in this respect his sagacity, his originality, his rustic wit and household wisdom, are equal to all antiquity and above all praise. His style, too, is the happiest for his purpose imaginable. It is a great pity, that in addition to his life and essays, another little volume, consisting of his beauties, (and his essence is in his beauties,) has not been collected. If a man could believe prudence to be the sum of virtue, could live as Franklin did, to be eighty years old, and then return, as Franklin wished, to live his life over again, then this great writer's morality would be all existence could wish, or conscience demand. But if there be