When I visit the agreeable Seat of my honoured Friend Ruricola, and walk from Room to Room revolving many pleasing Occurrences, and the Expressions of many just Sentiments I have heard him utter, and see the Booby his Heir in Pain while he is doing the Honours of his House to the Friend of his Father, the Heaviness it gives one is not to be expressed.  Want of Genius is not to be imputed to any Man, but Want of Humanity is a Man’s own Fault.  The Son of Ruricola, (whose Life was one continued Series of worthy Actions and Gentleman-like Inclinations) is the Companion of drunken Clowns, and knows no Sense of Praise but in the Flattery he receives from his own Servants; his Pleasures are mean and inordinate, his Language base and filthy, [his [2]] Behaviour rough and absurd.  Is this Creature to be accounted the Successor of a Man of Virtue, Wit and Breeding?  At the same time that I have this melancholy Prospect at the House where I miss my old Friend, I can go to a Gentleman’s not far off it, where he has a Daughter who is the Picture both of his Body and Mind, but both improved with the Beauty and Modesty peculiar to her Sex.  It is she who supplies the Loss of her Father to the World; she, without his Name or Fortune, is a truer Memorial of him, than her Brother who succeeds him in both.  Such an Offspring as the eldest Son of my Friend, perpetuates his Father in the same manner as the Appearance of his Ghost would:  It is indeed Ruricola, but it is Ruricola grown frightful.

I know not to what to attribute the brutal Turn which this young Man has taken, except it may be to a certain Severity and Distance which his Father used towards him, and might, perhaps, have occasioned a Dislike to those Modes of Life which were not made amiable to him by Freedom and Affability.

We may promise our selves that no such Excrescence will appear in the Family of the Cornelii, where the Father lives with his Sons like their eldest Brother, and the Sons converse with him as if they did it for no other Reason but that he is the wisest Man of their Acquaintance.  As the Cornelii are eminent Traders, their good Correspondence with each other is useful to all that know them, as well as to themselves:  And their Friendship, Good-will and kind Offices, are disposed of jointly as well as their Fortune, so that no one ever obliged one of them, who had not the Obligation multiplied in Returns from them all.

It is the most beautiful Object the Eyes of Man can behold, to see a Man of Worth and his Son live in an entire unreserved Correspondence.  The mutual Kindness and Affection between them give an inexpressible Satisfaction to all who know them.  It is a sublime Pleasure which encreases by the Participation.  It is as sacred as Friendship, as pleasurable as Love, and as joyful as Religion.  This State of Mind does not only dissipate Sorrow, which would be extream without it, but enlarges Pleasures which would otherwise be contemptible.  The most indifferent thing has