there is an injustice in being moved at the
afflictions of those who deserve to be miserable. We may see, without
pity, Clytemnestra slain by her son Orestes in AEschylus, because she had
murdered Agamemnon her husband; yet we cannot see Hippolytus die by the
plot of his step-mother Phaedra, in Euripides, without compassion, because
he died not, but for being chaste and virtuous.

These are the great authorities so favourable to the stories that end
unhappily. And we beg leave to reinforce this inference from them, that
if the temporary sufferings of the virtuous and the good can be accounted
for and justified on Pagan principles, many more and infinitely stronger
reasons will occur to a Christian reader in behalf of what are called
unhappy catastrophes, from the consideration of the doctrine of future
rewards; which is every where strongly enforced in the History of
Clarissa.

Of this, (to give but one instance,) an ingenious modern, distinguished
by his rank, but much more for his excellent defence of some of the most
important doctrines of Christianity, appears convinced in the conclusion
of a pathetic Monody, lately published; in which, after he had deplored,
as a man without hope, (expressing ourselves in the Scripture phrase,)
the loss of an excellent wife; he thus consoles himself:

Yet, O my soul! thy rising murmurs stay,
Nor dare th' All-wise Disposer to arraign,
Or against his supreme decree
With impious grief complain.
That all thy full-blown joys at once should fade,
Was his most righteous will: and be that will obey'd.
Would thy fond love his grace to her controul,
And in these low abodes of sin and pain
Her pure, exalted soul,
Unjustly, for thy partial good detain?
No--rather strive thy grov'ling mind to raise
Up to that unclouded blaze,
That heav'nly radiance of eternal light,
In which enthron'd she now with pity sees,
How frail, how insecure, how slight,
Is every mortal bliss.

But of infinitely greater weight than all that has been above produced
on this subject, are the words of the Psalmist:

'As for me, says he,* my feet were almost gone, my steps had well nigh
slipt: for I was envious at the foolish, when I saw the prosperity of the
wicked. For their strength is firm: they are not in trouble as other
men; neither are they plagued like