Cleo. What you said last, nobody ever contradicted; but I do not know what you would be at: does not the Lord Shaftsbury endeavour to do good, and promote the social virtues, and am I not doing the very same? suppose me to be in the wrong in the favourable constructions I have made of things, still it is to be wished for at least, that men had a greater regard to the public welfare, less fondness for their private interest, and more charity for their neighbours, than the generality of them have. Hor. To be wished for, perhaps, it may be, but what probability is there that this ever will come to pass? Cleo. And unless that can come to pass, it is the idlest thing in the world to discourse upon, and demonstrate the excellency of virtue; what signifies it to set forth the beauty of it, unless it was possible that men should fall in love with it? Hor. If virtue was never recommended, men might grow worse than they are. Cleo. Then, by the same reason, if it was recommended more, men might grow better than they are. But I see perfectly well the reason of these shifts and evasions you make use of against your opinion: You find yourself under a necessity of allowing my panegyrics, as you call them, to be just; or finding the same fault with most of my Lord Shaftsbury's; and you would do neither if you could help it: From mens preferring company to solitude, his Lordship pretends to prove the love and natural affection we have for our own species: If this was examined into with the same strictness as you have done every thing I have said in behalf of the three faculties, I believe that the solidity of the consequences would be pretty equal in both. But I stick to my text, and stand up for the social virtues: The noble author of that system had a most charitable opinion of his species, and extolled the dignity of it in an extraordinary manner, and why my imitation of him should be called a banter, I see no reason. He certainly wrote with a good design, and endeavoured to inspire his readers with refined notions, and a public spirit abstract from religion: The world enjoys the fruits of his labours; but the advantage that is justly expected from his writings, can never be so universally felt, before that public spirit, which he recommended, comes down to the meanest tradesmen, whom you would endeavour to exclude from the generous sentiments and noble pleasures that are already so visible in many. I am now thinking on two sorts of people that stand very much in need of, and yet hardly ever meet with one another: This misfortune must have caused such a chasm in the band of society, that no depth of thought, or happiness of contrivance, could have filled up the vacuity, if a most tender regard for the commonwealth, and the height of benevolence did not influence and oblige others, mere strangers to those people, and commonly men of small education, to afflict them with their good offices, and stop up the gap. Many ingenious workmen, in obscure