You have then already contracted a great debt of gratitude to them. You can pay it by no other method but by using properly the advantages which their goodness has afforded you.

II. If your own endeavours are deficient, it is in vain that you have tutors, books and all the external apparatus of literary pursuits. You must love learning, if you would possess it. In order to love it, you must feel its delights; in order to feel its delights, you must apply to it, however irksome at first, closely, constantly and for a considerable time. If you have resolution enough to do this, you cannot but love learning for the mind always loves that to which it has been long, steadily and voluntarily attached. Habits are formed, which render what was at first disagreeable, not only pleasant but necessary.

III. Pleasant indeed are all the paths which lead to polite and elegant literature. Yours, then, is surely a lot particularly happy. Your education is of such a sort, that its principle scope is to prepare you to receive a refined pleasure during your life. Elegance or delicacy of taste, is one of the first objects of classical discipline; and it is this fine quality which opens a new world to the scholar's view. Elegance of taste has a connection with many virtues, and all of them virtues of the most amiable kind. It tends to render you, at once, good and agreeable. You must, therefore, be an enemy to your own enjoyments, if you enter with reluctance on the discipline, which leads to the attainment of a classical and liberal education.

IV. Without exemplary diligence, you will make but a contemptible proficiency. You may, indeed, pass through the forms of schools and universities; but you will bring The proper sort nothing away from them of real value. and degree of diligence you cannot possess, but by the efforts of your own resolution. Your instructer may, indeed, confine you within the walls of a school, a certain number of hours. He may place books before you, and compel you to fix your eyes upon them; but no authority can chain down your mind. Your thoughts will escape from every external restraint, and amidst the most serious lectures, may be ranging in the wild pursuits of trifles or vices.

V. By laying in a store of useful knowledge, adorning mind with elegant literature, improving and establishing your conduct by virtuous principles, you cannot fail of

your

being a comfort to those who have supported you, of being happy within yourself, and of being well received by mankind. Honour and success in life will probably attend you.

Under

all circumstances, you will have an internal source of const lation and entertainment, of which no sublunary vicissitude can deprive you. Time will show how much wiser has been your choice than that of your idle companions, who would gladly have drawn you into their association, or rather into their conspiracy against good manners, and all, that is honourable and useful. While you appear in society as a respectable and valuable member of it, they will perhaps, have sacrificed, at the shrine of vanity, pride, extravagance, and false pleasure, their health and their sense, their fortunes, and their characters. KNOX.

DUTY OF CHILDREN TO PARENTS.

THE course and compass of Gop's providence, and his methods of establishing and evidencing the measures of reciprocal duty, are no where more remarkable than in the mutual obligations between parents and children.

The child comes into the world entirely helpless, and of himself more destitute of the natural means of security and support, than almost any of the inferior creatures. In this exigency the paternal care steps in to his relief, supplies all his necessities, and relieves all his wants; bears with all his untowardly dispositions, at an age when he is neither ca. pable of being corrected nor convinced; and not only provides the properest food for him, when he is incapable of providing any for himself, but likewise administers it when he is incapable of feeding himself; bears with all degrees of his folly and impertinence; listens to all his trifling and idle enquiries, not only with patience but with pleasure, till they gradually conduct him to health, and strength, and knowledge.

II. But the child is not long arrived at this perfection of his nature, before his parents begin to fall gradually into the same infirmities through which they but lately conducted and supported their children, and to need the same assistance which they lately lent. And first they begin to grow sickly, and then they call for the aid of that health which they cultivated and took care of in their children.

The loss of cheerfulness and good humour commonly succeeds the loss of health, the old parents are uneasy, and fret at all about them. And now is the time for children to or return that tenderness and patience to their parents' peevishness, without sourness or reproof, which their parents had long lent them in all their childish perverseness, at an age when they are not capable of being corrected.

III. In the next place, the old parents grow troublesomely talkative, and (as youth is too apt to think) impertinent, and dwell eternally upon the observations and adventures of their times and early years. Remember, you also had your time of being talkative and impertinent, and your parents bore with you; but with this difference, you asked them silly and trifling questions, and they now tell you wise and useful observations.

But they are troublesome, because they tell them too often. The answer to this is very obvious; if your parents bore your folly, you may well bear their wisdom; and although perhaps they talk more than is necessary to inform you of present things, yet their conversation turns mostly upon things past, perhaps past many years before you came into the world, and consequently such as they must know a thousand times better than you.

IV. Or though they should talk more than is necessary to inform you, they do not talk more than is necessary to inform your servants or your children, who are now come to an age of asking many questions: and therefore Providence hath well appointed, that their grand-father, or their grand-mother, is now in a humour to answer them all, and to supply them with a store of useful observations which they want; nay, which they want to hear over and over again, which they want to have inculcated a thousand times, and which, without his assistance, would require a course of years to acquire for themselves. So that the humour of talkativeness, which is commonly thought so troublesome in old people, hath its use, and is most excellently appointed by Almighty God. But if it were not, the children, in bearing with it, do but barely return their parents what they long since owed them.

V. In the next place, the strength of the old parents fails them, and they cannot walk without a support; but sure you will not let them want one! How many years did they bear you in their arms! How many more did they

lead you where you would be, and save you from falling, and from danger! And will you now suffer those old limbs to totter and fall to the earth, which so often sup. ported and saved yours when they were weak and tender, and unable to support and save themselves? Certainly you will not, you cannot at once be guilty of so much cruelty and ingratitude.

VI. In the last place the understanding of the old parents begins to fail, and the strength of their minds doth not long outlive the strength of their bodies, but decays gradually, till they become again children; their teeth fall, and their tongues falter, and they are once more infants, and are now confined to their beds, as they were first to their cradles This is the last stage of life; and here they demand all that care and compassion, and tenderness at your hands, when they are just going out of the world, which you called for at theirs when you first came into it.

CONSTITUTION OF THE UNITED STATES.

The CONSTITUTION framed for the UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, by a Convention of Deputies from the States of New-Hampshire, Massachusetts, Connecticut, New-York, New-Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, North-Carolina, South-Carolina, and Georgia, at a Session, begun May 25, and ended September 17, 1787.

WE, the People of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, ensure domestick tran. quillity, provide for the common defence, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

ALL legislative powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States, which shall consist of a Senate and House of Representatives.

SECTION II.

The house of representatives shall be composed of members, chosen every second year by the people of the several states, and the electors in each state shall have the qualifications requisite for electors of the most numerous branch of the state legislature.

No person shall be a representative who shall not have attained to the age of twenty-five years, and been seven years a citizen of the United States, and who shall not, when elected, be an inhabitant of that state in which he shall be chosen.

Representatives and direct taxes shall be apportioned among the several states, which may be included within this Inion, according to their respective numbers, which shall be determined by adding to the whole number of free persons, including those bound to service for a term of years, and including Indians not taxed, three fifths of all other persons. The actual enumeration shall be made with. in three years after the first meeting of the Congress of the United States, and within every subsequent term of ten years, in such manner as they shall by law direct. The number of representatives shall not exceed one for every thirty thousand, but each state shall have at least one representative; and, until such enumeration shall be made, the state of New-Hampshire shall be entitled to choose three, Massachusetts eight, Rhode-Island and Providence Plantations one, Connecticut five, New-York six, New-Jersey four, Pennsylvania eight, Delaware one, Maryland six, Virginia ten, North-Carolina five, South-Carolina five and Georgia three.

When vacancies happen in the representation from any state, the executive authority thereof shall issue writs of election to fill such vacancies.

The house of representatives shall choose their speaker and other officers; and shall have the sole power of impeachment.

SECTION III.

The senate of the United States shall be composed of two senators from each state, chosen by the legislature thereof, for six years; and each senator shall have one

vote.

Immediately after they shall be assembled in consequence of the first election, they shall be divided as equally as may