approached the town, "and I might have no place where to repose my weary frame till the morning. How kind and admirable is that arrangement of God, whereby one class of men are disposed and enabled to procure a livelihood by opening their houses for the accommodation of travellers! Their's indeed must be a most unpleasant and ensnaring mode of life ;: and they are therefore entitled to our gratitude and commiseration. Let me be thankful to God and to them, that at such an hour as this, when night is advancing and my powers are exhausted, I am relieved from all anxiety about procuring a safe resting place and suitable refreshment."

It is both curious and instructive to notice the thoughts of different men in the same circumstances, and to mark how every object receives its colouring from the medium through which it is observed. That extraordinary man, DR. JOHNSON, in whose character was united so much of baser metal with much of sterling worth, that one, who takes his principles of thought and action from the ungarbled and uninterpolated writings of inspiration, reads his memoirs with more painful astonishment than pleasurable admiration, looked at an inn with a very different eye from my humble friend. "In contradiction to those who, having a wife and children, prefer domestic enjoyments to those which a tavern affords, I have heard

him assert," says Sir JOHN HAWKINS, " that a tavern chair was the throne of human felicity." "There is nothing," said he to BoswELL, when they stopped together at Chapel House in Oxfordshire, "which has yet been contrived by man by which so much happiness is produced as by a good tavern or inn." Surely it is a prostitution of language, as well as a dangerous incentive to the worst passions of our fallen nature, to affix the name of happiness to that description of enjoyment which is derived from unrestrained selfishness and self-indulgence. But as all earthly happiness is comparative, I can readily conceive that a natural man, (and I use the term, in its scriptural sense, for one who continues in the same moral and spiritual state in which he entered the world,) may find "a tavern chair the throne of human felicity." There he is best able to steep his mind in intoxicating forgetfulness of both temporal and eternal care, and of all that he owes to God, and to his own imperishable soul; and this is the acknowledged aim of those, who, from predeliction frequent a tavern. That is the school where thousands learn violently to break the hallowed ties of family and home, and habitually to forget or contemn the great purposes of their being. With the blunted sensibilities with which such men return to domestic and social scenes, we need not wonder that they

can fully sympathize with SHENSTONE'S melancholy stanza, which frequently was on the lips of JOHNSON,

"Who that has travell'd life's dull round,
Where'er his stages may have been,
May sigh to think he still has found
The warmest welcome at an Inn."

It may be worth while here to mention the very singular but holy desire of ARCHBISHOP LEIGHTON. He used often to say, that if he were to choose a place to die in, it should be an inn, it looking like a pilgrim's going home, to whom this world was all as an inn, and who was weary of the noise and confusion of it. He added, that the officiousness and care of friends was an entanglement to a dying man; and that the unconcerned attendance of those that could be procured in such a place would give less disturbance. He obtained what he desired; for he died at the Bell Inn, in Warwick Lane, London.*

* Of this great and good man Bishop Burnet said, "He had the greatest elevation of soul; the largest compass of knowledge; the most mortified and heavenly disposition that I ever saw in mortal; he had the greatest parts as well as virtues, with the perfectest humility that ever I saw in man; and he had a sublime way of preaching, with so grave a gesture, and such a majesty of thought, of language and pronunciation, that I never saw a wandering eye where he preached; and have seen whole assemblies often melt into tears before him: and of whom I can say with great truth,

Pentered the door of the first respectable inn that presented itself; and though faint with fatigue, his feelings reached a higher degree in the scale of enjoyment, than is ever attained by men who resort to taverns with the sensual taste of JOHNSON and his friends. Having taken a simple repast, and being disposed to improve his evening hours to some good purpose, he called the landlord; "I have a mind to read, landlord, can you accommodate me with a book?" "I am sorry to say, sir, we have no books in the house." "No books! Whát, not one of any description?" "Why yes, sir, I forgot: there is one old large book tying on the table on the landing-place of the stairs, which nobody ever reads." "Allow me to see it." The cumbrous volume was brought and laid before the traveller. "It is a Bible," said he, as he opened its long closed pages. "I believe it is," rejoined the inn-keeper. "But do you never read it?" "No, sir, I have years." "Given up the reading of the Bible, my friend, what may be your reason for that? Do you

given that up many

that in a free and frequent conversation with him for above two-and-twenty years, I never knew him speak an idle word, or one that had not a direct tendency to edification; and I never once saw him in any other temper, but that which I wished to be in the last minutes of my life."

D.

not believe its truth? Do you doubt its being the word of God?" "I believe it all, and therefore I cannot read it. It condemns me in every leaf of the volume." "Condemns you! If indeed you live in sin, walking according to the course of this world, and throwing off the restraints of religion, it does indeed condemn you: but not more than it does every man whose principles and conduct are opposed to the will of God. All such lie under a fearful condemnation. They are exposed to the curse and penalty of God's violated laws." "It goes further than that, sir; for it condemns me by name. Publicans and sinners are always ranked together, and there is not a word of good, or of encouragement for them in the book." His guest smiled at the man's erroneous interpretation and application of the word publican, and explained its scriptural meaning to be a farmer or collector of taxes, an office which the Jews held in the greatest abhorrence, and which was commonly held by men of rapacious and oppressive dispositions. The landlord, however, did not readily concede his own interpretation of the term, which from long custom had been affixed to his profession. "But even if the name did in a scriptural sense belong to you," said P- -,"you are mistaken in your conclusion, that men of the class of publicans are shut out from the divine mercy. St. Matthew was