renown or celebrity. The love of renown, or desire of fame and reputation, appears to be one of the principal springs of action in human society. Glory therefore is not to be contemned, as some of the ancient philosophers affected to teach; but it imports us to regulate our pursuit after it by the dictates of reason; and if the public approbation will not follow us in that course, we must leave her behind. We ought to have our judgments well instructed as to what actions are truly glorious; and to remember, that in every important enterprise, as Seneca observes, "Reete facti facie merces est officii frudus: ipsum officium est: "The reward of a thing well done, is to have done it; the fruit of a good office is the office itself." Those who by other methods scatter their names into many mouths, show they rather hunt after a great reputation than a good one, and their reward is oftener infamy than fame.

Men generally, and almost instinctively, affix glory only to such actions as have been produced by an innate desire for public good; and we measure it by that degree of influence which any thing done has upon the common happiness.

If the actions of the hero conduct soonest to glory and with the greatest splendor, and if the victorious general is so great after a signal engagement; it is because the service he has done is for the moment, and for all; and because we think, without reflecting, that he has saved our habitations, our wealth, and our children, and every thing that attaches us to life. If the man of science, who in his study has discovered and calculated the motions of the heavenly bodies, who in his alembics has unveiled some of the secrets of nature, or who has exhibited to mankind a new art, rises to fame with less noise; it is because the utility which he procures is more widely diffused, and is often of The consequences, therefore, of these two advantages are as opposite as the causes are different; and while the benefits procured by the warrior appear to have no more influence, and while his glory becomes obscure, that of a celebrated writer or inventor still increases, and is more and more enlarged. His works every day bring back his name to that age which uses them, and thus still add to his celebrity and fame.

This posthumous fame indeed has been decried by some writers. In particular, the author of the Religion of Nature delineated has treated it as highly irrational and absurd. "In reality (says he) the man is not known ever the more to posterity, because his name is transmitted to them: He doth not live, because his name does. When it is said, Julius Cæsar subdued Gaul, conquered Pompey, &c. it is the same thing as to say, the conqueror of Pompey was Julius Cæsar; i.e. Cæsar and the conqueror of Pompey is the same thing; Cæsar is as much known by one designation as by the other. The amount then is only this, that the conqueror of Pompey conquered Pompey; or somebody conquered Pompey; or rather, since Pompey is as little known now as Cæsar, somebody conquered somebody. Such a poor business is this boasted immortality! and such is the thing called glory among us! To discerning men this fame is mere air, and what they despise if not shun."

But surely it were to consider too curiously (as Horatio says to Hamlet) to consider thus. For (as the elegant author of Fitzosborne's Letters observes) although fame with posterity should be, in the strict analysis of it, no other than what is here described, a mere uninteresting proposition, amounting to nothing more than that somebody acted meritoriously; yet it would not necessarily follow, that true philosophy would banish the desire of it from the human breast; for this passion may be (as most certain it is) wisely implanted in our species, notwithstanding the corresponding object should in reality be very different from what it appears in imagination. Do not many of our most refined and even contemplative pleasures owe their existence to our mistakes? It is but extending some of our senses to a higher degree of acuteness than we now possess them, to make the fairest views of nature, or the noblest productions of art, appear horrid and deformed. To see things as they truly and in themselves are, would not always, perhaps, be of advantage to us in the intellectual world, any more than in the natural. But, after all, who shall certainly assure us, that the pleasure of virtuous fame dies with its possessor, and reaches not to a farther scene of existence? There is nothing, it should seem, either absurd or unphilosophical in supposing it possible at least, that the praises of the good and the judicious, the sweetest music to an honest ear in this world, may be echoed back to the mansions of the next; that the poet's description of fame may be literally true, and though she walks upon earth, she may yet lift her head into heaven.

To be convinced of the great advantage of cherishing this high regard to posterity, this noble desire of an after-life in the breath of others, one need only look back upon the history of the ancient Greeks and Romans. For what other principle was it which produced that exalted strain of virtue in those days, that may well serve, in too many respects, as a model to these? Was it not the consentiens laus bonorum, the incorrupta vox bene judicantium (as Tully calls it), "the concurrent approbation of the good, the uncorrupted applause of the wise," that animated their most generous pursuits?

In short, can it be reasonable to extinguish a passion which nature has universally lighted up in the human breast, and which we constantly find to burn with most strength and brightness in the noblest and best-formed bosoms? Accordingly revelation is so far from endeavouring to eradicate the seed which nature has thus deeply planted, that she rather seems, on the contrary, to cherish and forward its growth. To be exalted with honour, and to be had in everlasting remembrance, are in the number of those encouragements which the Jewish dispensation offered to the virtuous; and the person from whom the sacred Author of the Christian system received his birth, is herself represented as rejoicing that all generations should call her blessed.