throughout life. Hence, of what more avail is the virtue of the Roman
fathers, or are the amiable friendships of Scipio and Lelius, than
as so many amusing fictions to exercise the imaginations of schoolmen
in drawing outlines of character, which experience does not finish.
Friends, like certain flowers, bloom around us in the sunshine of
success; but at night-fall or at the approach of storms, they shut up
their hearts; and thus, poor victims being rifled of their mind's
content, with their little string of enjoyments broken up for ever,
are abandoned to the pity or scorn of bystanders. It is impossible to
reflect for a moment on such a crisis, without dropping a tear for the
self-created infirmities of man: but there are considerations at which
he shudders, and which he would rather varnish over with the sophistry
of his refinement, and the fallacies of self-conceit.

I fear that I am breaking my rule in not confining myself to a few
shades of debt and conscience, with a view of determining how far they
are usually reconciled among us. The task may not prove altogether
fruitless; notwithstanding, to find honest men, would require the
lantern of Diogenes, and perhaps turn out like Gratiano's wheat.

In our youthful days, we all remember to have read a pithy string of
Maxims by Dr. Franklin; and we are accustomed to admire the pertinence
of their wit,--but here their influence too often terminates. Since
Franklin's time, the practice of getting into debt has become more and
more easy, notwithstanding men have become more wary. Goldsmith, too,
gives us a true picture of this habit in his scene with Mr. Padusoy, the
mercer, a mode which has been found to succeed so well since his time,
that, with the exception of a few short-cuts by sharpers and other
proscribed gentry, little amendment has been made. Profuseness on the
part of the debtor will generally be found to beget confidence on that