TABLE XIV., In Perse. Astronomers can trace A comet's variousrace. Nor snow, nor ice, nor rain, Were ever sent invain. No meanercreatures can Converse or act as man. Here no mon is secure To sin or mourn no more. TIIE CONCLUSION. 10$ IT may not be amiss to conclude this little book with a short view of the unspeakable advantages of Reading and Writing. Theknowledge of letters is one of the greatest blessings that ever God bestowed on the childrenof men. By thismeans we preserve for our own use, through all our lives, what our memory wouldhavelost in a few days, and lay up a rich trea- sureof knowledge for those that shall come after us. But the Arts of Reading and Writing we can sit at home and acquaint ourselves what is done in all the distant parts of the world, and find what our fathers did long ago in the first age§ of mankind. By this means a Briton holds correspondence with his friends in America or Japan, and manages all his traffic. We learn by this means how the old Romans lived, how the Jews worshipped : We learn what Moses wrote, what Enoch prophesied, where Adam dwelt, and what he did soon after the Creation ; and those who shall live when the day of judgment comes, may learn by the same means what we now speak, and what we do in great Britain, or in the land of China. In short, the Art of Letters does, as it were, revive all the past ages of men, and set them at once upon the stage ; and brings all the nations from afar, and gives them, as it were, a general interview : so that the most distant nations, and distant ages of mankind, may converse together, and grow into ac- quaintance. But the greatest blessing of all, is the knowledge of the Holy Scripture, wherein God has appointed his servants in an- cient times to write down the discoveries which he has made of his power and justice, his providence and his grace, that we who live near the end of time may learn the way to heaved and ever- lasting happiness. Thus Letters give us a sort of immortality in this world, and they are given us in the word of God to support our immor- tal hopes in the next. Thosetherefore who wilfully neglect this sort of knowledge, and despise the Art of Letters, need no heavier curse or pu-
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