Acting from such principles as these, Mr Barlow was the common friend of all the species. Whatever his fortune would allow him to perform he never refused to all who stood in need of his assistance. But there is yet a duty which he thought of more importance than the mere distribution of property to the needy--the encouragement of industry and virtue among the poor, and giving them juster notions of morals and religion. "If we have a dog," he would say, "we refuse neither pains nor expense to train him up to hunting; if we have a horse, we send him to an experienced rider to be bitted; but our own species seems to be the only animal which is entirely exempted from our care." When he rode about the country he used to consider with admiration the splendid stables which the great construct for the reception of their horses, their ice-houses, temples, hermitages, grottoes, and all the apparatus of modern vanity. "All this," he would say, "is an unequivocal proof the gentleman loves himself, and grudges no expense that can gratify his vanity; but I would now wish to see what he has done for his fellow-creatures; what are the proofs that he has given of public spirit or humanity, the wrongs which he has redressed, the miseries he has alleviated, the abuses which he has endeavoured to remove!" When he was told of the stubbornness and ingratitude of the poor, he used to say, "that he believed it without difficulty, for they were men in common with their superiors, and therefore must share in some of their vices; but if the interests of humanity were half so dear to us as the smallest article that pleases our palate or flatters our vanity, we should not so easily abandon them in disgust." Mr Barlow happened once to be in company with a lady with whom he was upon a footing of intimacy, who was talking in this manner. "Nobody," she said, "had greater feeling than herself, or was more desirous of assisting her fellow-creatures. When she first came into the country she had endeavoured to relieve all the misery she heard of; she had given victuals to one, physic to a second, and clothes to a third; but she had met with such ill-behaviour and ingratitude in return, that she had long been obliged to resign all her charitable intentions, and abandon the poor to their fate." All the company assented to a doctrine that was so very conformable to their own practice and inclinations, and agreed that nothing could be more injudicious than any attempts to be charitable.