is a virtue which denotes veneration for the Deity, and love and tenderness to our friends. This distinguished virtue, like many others, received among the Romans divine honours, and was made one of their gods. Aelius Glaebrio first erected a temple to this divinity, which he did upon the spot on which a woman had fed with her own milk her aged father, who had been imprisoned by order of the senate, and deprived of all aliment. The story is well known, and is given at length in authors which are in the hands of every schoolboy. See Cicero de divu. i. and Valerius Maximus, v. c. 4. and our article FILIAL Piety.

If piety was thus practised and thus honoured in Heathen antiquity, it surely ought not to be less so, among Christians, to whom its nature is better defined, and to the practice of which they have motives of greater cogency. A learned and elegant writer has said that the want of piety arises from the want of sensibility; and his observations and arguments are so just and so well expressed, that we cannot do better than transcribe them.

"It appears to me (says Dr Knox), that the mind of man, when it is free from natural defects and acquired corruption, feels no less a tendency to the indulgence of devotion than to virtuous love, or to any other of the more refined and elevated affections. But debauchery and excess contribute greatly to destroy all the susceptible delicacy with which nature usually furnishes the heart; and, in the general extinction of our better qualities, it is no wonder that so pure a sentiment as that of piety should be one of the first to expire.

"It is certain that the understanding may be improved in a knowledge of the world, and in the arts of succeeding in it, while the heart, or whatever constitutes the seat of the moral and sentimental feelings, is gradually reeding from its proper and original perfection. Indeed experience seems to evince, that it is hardly possible to arrive at the character of a complete man of the world, without losing many of the most valuable sentiments of uncorrupted nature. A complete man of the world is an artificial being; he has discarded many of the native and laudable tendencies of his mind, and adopted a new system of objects and propensities of his own creation. These are commonly gross, coarse, sordid, selfish, and sensual. All, or either of these attributes, tend directly to blunt the sense of every thing liberal, enlarged, disinterested; of every thing which participates more of an intellectual than of a sensual nature. When the heart is tied down to the earth by lust and avarice, it is not extraordinary that the eye should be Piety.

Seldom lifted up to heaven. To the man who spends his Sunday (because he thinks the day fit for little else) in the counting-house, in travelling, in the tavern, or in the brothel, those who go to church appear as fools, and the business they go upon as nonsense. He is callous to the feelings of devotion; but he is tremblingly alive to all that gratifies his senses or promotes his interest.

"It has been remarked of those writers who have attacked Christianity, and represented all religions merely as diversified modes of superstition, that they were indeed, for the most part, men of a metaphysical and a disputatious turn of mind, but usually little distinguished for benignity and generosity. There was, amidst all their pretensions to logical sagacity, a cloudiness of ideas, and a coldness of heart, which rendered them very unfit judges on a question in which the heart is chiefly interested; in which the language of nature is more expressive and convincing, than all the dreary subtleties of the disfavour metaphysicians. Even the reasoning faculty, on which we so greatly value ourselves, may be perverted by excessive refinement; and there is an abstruse, but vain and foolish philosophy, which philosophizes us out of the noblest parts of our noble nature.

One of those parts of us is our instinctive sense of religion, of which not one of those brutes which the philosophers most admire, and to whose rank they wish to reduce us, is found in the slightest degree to participate.

"Such philosophers may be called, in a double sense, the enemies of mankind. They not only endeavour to entice man from his duty, but to rob him of a most exalted and natural pleasure. Such, surely, is the pleasure of devotion. For when the soul rises above this little orb, and pours its adoration at the throne of celestial majesty, the holy fervour which it feels is itself a rapturous delight. Neither is this a declamatory representation, but a truth felt and acknowledged by all the sons of men; except those who have been defective in sensibility, or who hoped to gratify the pride or the malignity of their hearts by singular and pernicious speculation.

"Indeed all disputatious, controversial, and metaphysical writings on the subject of religion, are unfavourable to genuine piety. We do not find that the most renowned polemics in the church militant were at all more attentive than others to the common offices of religion, or that they were actuated by any peculiar degree of devotion. The truth is, their religion centered in their heads, whereas its natural region is the heart. The heart! confined, alas! in colleges or libraries, unacquainted with all the tender charities of husband, father, brother, friend; some of them have almost forgotten that they possess a heart. It has long ceased to beat with the pulsations of love and sympathy, and has been engrossed by pride on conquering an adversary in the theological combat, or by impatient anger on a defeat. With such habits, and so defective a system of feelings, can we expect that a doctor of the Sorbonne, or the disputing professor of divinity, should ever feel the pure flame of piety that glowed in the bosoms of Mrs Rowe, Mrs Talbot, or Mr Nelson?

"It is however certain, that a devotional taste and habit are very desirable in themselves, exclusive of their effects in meliorating the morals and disposition, and promoting present and future felicity. They add dignity, pleasure, and security to any age: but to old age they are the most becoming grace, the most substantial support, and the sweetest comfort. In order to preserve them, it will be necessary to preserve our sensibility; and nothing will contribute so much to this purpose as a life of temperance, innocence, and simplicity."

Of piety, as it denotes love and tenderness to our friends, there have been many distinguished instances both in ancient and modern times. See FAMILIAL Piety, FRATERNAL and PARENTAL Affection, &c.

The following example of filial piety in China, taken from P. Du Halde's description of that country, will not we trust be disagreeable to our readers. "In the commencement of the dynasty of the Tang, Lou-tao-tsong, who was disaffected to the government, being accused of a fault, which touched his life, obtained leave from those who had him in custody, to perform the duties of the Tao to one of his deceased friends. He managed matters so well, that giving his keepers the slip, he fled to the house of Lou Nan-kin, with whom he had a friendship, and there hid himself. Lou Nan-kin, notwithstanding the strict search that was made, and the severity of the court against those who conceal prisoners that have escaped, would not betray his friend. However, the thing coming to be discovered, Lou Nan-kin was imprisoned; and they were just on the point of proceeding against him, when his younger brother presenting himself before the judge, 'It is I, Sir,' said he, 'who have hidden the prisoner; it is I who ought to die, and not my elder brother.' The eldest maintained on the contrary, that his younger brother accused himself wrongfully, and was not at all culpable. The judge, who was a person of great sagacity, fitted both parties to effectually, that he not only discovered that the younger brother was innocent, but even made him confess it himself: 'It is true, Sir,' said the younger all in tears, 'I have accused myself falsely; but I have very strong reasons for so doing. My mother has been dead for some time, and her corpse is not yet buried; I have a sister also who is marriageable, but is not yet disposed of: these things which my brother is capable of managing, I am not, and therefore desire to die in his stead. Vouchsafe to admit my testimony.' The commissioner gave an account of the whole affair to the court, and the emperor at his solicitation pardoned the criminal."