instructions and their example, virtuous, and consequently good citizens. In order to give efficacy to our instructions, we are rendered independent : it is our own fault, therefore, if we are not respected and happy.

The world, however, seems to require of us something more than a bare attention to the duties of our office. We have many hours not necefsarily devoted to them. How ought these hours to be employed? There are many plans which we can adopt. Agriculture is a pursuit in which most of us engage; and I acknowledge myself favourable to it under certain limitations. Our superior education, by enabling us to become acquainted with the theory of the art, may render this pursuit useful to ourselves, and to our parishioners. But if it be engaged in with any other view than as an innocent and profitable amusement; if buying and selling, and the anxieties of a farm, fhall ever take the lead in our character and conversation, then I think we descend below our rank; and justly lose our respectability as clergymen. I think we ought to be farmers therefore on a small scale;—that our farms ought never to be larger than what we can manage in the course of a morning or an evening walk, which our health would render necefsary at any rate. Another pursuit, to which I am still more partial, is gardening, and the ornamenting of our manses and glebes. This has a happy influence on the spirits and the temper. It operates on the imagination and the taste like the view of a fine landscape. A neat and ornamented entry to a manse, by means of fhrubbery, and flow

ers, and gravel walks, disposes me to enter it with the pleasing expectation of finding taste and elegant enjoyment within. I am not much acquainted with the private life of Claude de Lorraine; but I have seen some of his works; and I fhould be disappointed if I fhould hear that it was not under the general influence of elegance, and taste, and innocence. This is certainly the tendency of that love of rural beauty which characterises his productions; and it is the tendency of the art which I am recommending. But this also ought to be rather an amusement than a business.

Another pursuit nearly allied to this is botany. All are not equally qualified for its laborious investigations; but those who are, would find in it an inexhaustible store of improving and elegant enjoyment. A collection of the plants in a parish, accurately made, might throw much light on this branch of natural history. It is by dividing great undertakings into small parts, (when this is practicable,) that their progrefs is most effectually promoted. The statistical account of Scotland would not have been so full and satisfactory, if this had not been done.

In

But though these, Sir, be a few of the numerous ways in which a clergyman in the country may pafs much of his time, with pleasure to himself, and advantage to others; yet he ought to have other pursuits which he can conduct within doors. fhort, a clergyman ought to be a literary character; and this corresponds best with what ought to be the principal business of his life, Metaphysics, history, classical learning, are so many roads in a most ex

tensive field, where he may gather both flowers and fruits. Perhaps no clafs of men, who enjoy such favourable opportunities of knowledge, are at lefs pains to make themselves acquainted with the theory of their profession than clergymen. It is the understanding and the beart, which they are employed in cultivating; yet psychology is a science which we do not consider as very necefsary to study. We receive, to be sure, the rudiments of it at the universi ty; but, as if this were enough, we too often think little about it afterwards. We collect, or we compose, a certain number of sermons, which we seldom change. Thus our labour becomes in some measure mechanical; but public discourses ought surely to be suited to the progrefs of improvement in a country. At the same time, therefore, that we study life and manners,. many of our leisure hours might be usefully employ ed in the study of this infant science. We may, in-deed, succeed tolerably well without it, in the same manner as a practical farmer may succeed, without having read lord Kaims's gentleman farmer, or attended Dr Coventry's lectures; but an accurate knowledge of the theory of our art would surely be useful, and enable us at once to benefit our hearers, and to promote the progrefs of the science. Nay, I am convinced, (however strange the observation may appear to many,) that this very study would throw more light on the efsentials of Christianity, than all the dry and rigid systems of divinity, in defence of which contending parties have so often anathematized one another. Christianity is founded on the nature and faculties of

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man it is suited to them, and calculated to im-prove them. The better therefore these faculties are understood, the more successfully will its precepts and doctrines be applied to their cultivation. We should not then hear of cold and abstract disquisitions, on uninteresting points of controversial theology; but our duty would be explained, as naturally arising from the powers which we pofsefs; it would be confirmed by the sacred precepts of religion; and the practice of it enforced by its awful and commanding sanctions. It was in the retirement of a country manse, that Dr Reid laid the foundation of that fame which he so justly acquired, as a metaphysical writer; Dr Robertson, I believe, in a similar situation, commenced his brilliant carreer in bistory; and I think, I have heard that Dr Blair did the same in the department of belles lettres.

The inclosed contains two extracts from a work published some years ago by Dr Zimmerman of Hanover, which you can insert in your Bee, if you think proper. I beg leave to ask you, or any of your correspondents, through the medium of your miscellany, whether the work be translated into English; I mean the doctor's publication, in four volumes octavo, on Solitude. If I am not mistaken, a smaller work of his on the same subject has been translated; but I believe from a French translation by M. Mercier. I acknowledge I have been disappointed in finding so little in the Bee, on the subject of foreign literature; I direct my attention sometimes that way. If you accept of my correspondence, I have a few articles, which I pick up from time to time, at your

service in the mean time an acknowledgment of the receipt of this, will oblige, Sir, yours, &c *.

EIN LIEBHABER.

THE TRAVELLER. No. I.

For the Bee.

THE advantages to be derived from travelling have been already so often pointed out, that it would be impertinent in me to attempt saying any thing new upon the subject. When they go abroad, the most of our countrymen are too young to digest what they see or hear, and are more eager after amusements, than solicitous to improve themselves by making observations on the various humours, habitudes, and modes of life of the inhabitants; or on the climates, laws, and governments of the countries which they visit.

If we consider how few there are capable of reflecting on these matters, even in advanced life, we will not be surprised at the small number that are benefitted by it. But surely a man of parts will reap more advantage from judicious travelling, than from any other mode of instruction.

John William Spencer is a person of this description.

Born to a plentiful fortune in the west of

The Editor will be much obliged to this writer, for future commurications. Some foreign correspondents from whom much with good reason was expected have proved unfaithful. Others are now coming.forward, and there is reason to hope they will increase; but the number of communications that prefs for insertion give little room for other articles, many of which have been long pos poned. There is reason to believe that the Solitude by Zimmerman is not translated.