acquainted than yourself, Madam, with this truth? Does not your compassionate soul experience at every moment the delightful satisfaction of solacing the unhappy? Setting aside the superfluous precepts of religion, think you that you could by any efforts steel your heart against the tears of the unfortunate? Is it not by rendering our fellow-creatures happy that we establish an empire in their hearts? Enjoy, then, Madam, this delightful sovereignty; continue to bless with your beneficence all that surround you; the consciousness of being the dispenser of so much good will always sustain your mind with the most gratifying self-applause; those who have received your kindness will reward you with their blessings, and afford you the tribute of affection which mankind are ever eager to lay at the feet of their benefactors. Christianity, not satisfied with recommending the love of our neighbor, superadds the injunction of loving our enemies. This precept, attributed to the Son of God himself, forms the ground on which our divines claim for their religion a superiority of moral doctrine over all that the philosophers of antiquity were known to teach. Let us, therefore, examine how far this precept admits of being reduced to practice. True, an elevated mind may easily place itself above a sense of injuries; a noble spirit retains no resentful recollections; a great soul revenges itself by a generous clemency; but it is an absurd contradiction to require that a man shall entertain feelings of tenderness and regard for those whom he knows to be bent on his destruction; this love of our enemies, which Christianity is so vain of having promulgated, turns out, then, to be an impracticable commandment, belied and denied by every Christian at every moment of his life. How preposterous to talk of loving that which annoys us!--of cherishing an attachment for that which gives us pain!--of receiving an outrage with joy!--of loving those who subject us to misery and suffering! No; in the midst of these trials our firmness may perhaps be strengthened by the hope of a reward hereafter; but it is a mere fallacy to talk of our entertaining a sincere love for those whom we deem the authors of our afflictions; the least that we can do is to avoid them, which will not be looked upon as a very strong indication of our love.