thro' the body that spoke ill of his friend.
_Timogenes_ would have scorned to have betrayed a secret, that was
intrusted with him, though the fate of his country depended upon the
discovery of it.

11. _Timogenes_ took away the life of a young fellow in a duel, for
having spoken ill of _Belinda_, a lady whom he himself had seduced in
his youth, and betrayed into want and ignominy. To close his character,
_Timogenes_, after having ruined several poor tradesmen's families, who
had trusted him, sold his estate to satisfy his creditors; but, like a
man of honor, disposed of all the money he could make of it, in paying
off his play-debts, or, to speak in his own language, his debts of
honor.

12. In the third place, we are to consider those persons, who treat this
principle as chimerical, and turn it into ridicule. Men who are
professedly of no honour, are of a more profligate and abandoned nature,
than even those who are actuated by false notions of it, as there is
more hope of a heretic than of an atheist. These sons of infamy consider
honor with old _Syphax_, in the play before mentioned, as a fine
imaginary notion, that leads astray young unexperienced men, and draws
them into real mischief, while they are engaged in the pursuits of a
shadow.

13. These are generally persons, who, in _Shakspeare's_ phrase, are
_worn and hackney'd in the ways of men_; whose imaginations are grown
callous, and have lost all those delicate sentiments which are natural
to minds that are innocent and undepraved. Such old battered miscreants
ridicule every thing as romantic, that comes in competition with their
present interest, and treat those persons as visionaries who dare stand
up in a corrupt age, for what has not its immediate reward joined to it.

14. The talents, interest, or experience of such men, make them very
often useful in all parties, and at all times. But whatever wealth and
dignities they may arrive at, they ought to consider, that every one
stands as a blot in the annals of his country, who arrives at the temple
of _honor_ by any other way than through that of _virtue_.

GUARDIAN, Vol. II. No. 161.

_Human Nature_.

Mr. SPECTATOR,

1. 'I have always been a very great lover of your speculations, as well
in regard to the subject, as to your manner of treating it. Human nature
I always thought the most useful object of human reason, and to make the
consideration of it pleasant and entertaining, I always thoug