In order to preserve the vigour of the moral faculty, it is of the utmost consequence to keep young people as ignorant as possible of those crimes that are generally thought most disgraceful to human nature. Suicide, I believe, is often propagated by means of newspapers. For this reason, I should be glad to see the proceedings of our courts kept from the public eye, when they expose or punish monstrous vices. The last mechanical method of promoting morality that I shall mention, is to keep sensibility alive, by a familiarity with scenes of distress from poverty and disease. Compassion never awakens in the human bosom, without being accompanied by a train of sister virtues. Hence the wise man justly remarks, that "By the sadness of the countenance, the heart is made better." A late French writer, in his prediction of events that are to happen in the year 4000, says, "That mankind in that æra shall be so far improved by religion and government, that the sick and the dying shall no longer be thrown, together with the dead, into splendid houses, but shall be relieved and protected in a connection with their families and society." For the honour of humanity, an institution[13], destined for that distant period, has lately been founded in this city, that shall perpetuate the year 1786 in the history of Pennsylvania. Here the feeling heart, the tearful eye, and the charitable hand, may always be connected together, and the flame of sympathy, instead of being extinguished in taxes, or expiring in a solitary blaze by a single contribution, may be kept alive, by constant exercise. There is a necessary connection between animal sympathy, and good morals. The priest and the Levite, in the New Testament, would probably have relieved the poor man who fell among thieves, had accident brought them near enough to his wounds. The unfortunate Mrs. Bellamy was rescued from the dreadful purpose of drowning herself, by nothing but the distress of a child, rending the air with its cries for bread. It is probably owing, in some measure, to the connection between good morals and sympathy that the fair sex, in every age and country, have been more distinguished for virtue, than men; for how seldom do we hear of a woman, devoid of humanity? [13] A public dispensary. Lastly, ATTRACTION, COMPOSITION, and DECOMPOSITION, belong to the passions as well as to matter. Vices of the same species attract each other with the most force: hence the bad consequences of crowding young men, whose propensities are generally the same, under one roof, in our modern plans of education. The effects of composition and decomposition upon vices, appear in the meanness of the school-boy being often cured by the prodigality of a military life, and by the precipitation of avarice, which is often produced by ambition and love.