you remember the pain of thirst, do not forget the danger of suffocation. Now, Hamet, tell me your request."

"O Being, kind and beneficent," says Hamet, "let thine eye pardon my confusion. I entreat a little brook, which in summer shall never be dry, and in winter never overflow."-"It is granted," replies the Genius; and immediately he opened the ground with his sabre, and a fountain bubbling up under their feet, scattered its rills over the meadows: the flowers renewed their fragrance, the trees spread a greener foliage, and the flocks and herds quenched their thirst.

If they refuse the society of men, and continue in that state which is reasonably supposed to place happiness most in their own power, they seldom give those that frequent their conversation any exalted notions of the blessing of liberty; for whether it be that they are angry to see with what inconsiderate eagerness other heedless females rush into slavery, or with what absurd vanity the married ladies boast the change of their condition, and condemn the heroines, who endeavour to assert the natural dignity of their sex; whether they are conscious that like barren countries they are free, only because they were never thought to deserve the trouble of a conquest, or imagine that their sincerity is not always unsuspected, when they declare their con. tempt of men; it is certain, that they generally appear to have some great and incessant cause of uneasiness, and that many of them have at last been persuaded by powerful rhetoricians, to try the life which they had so long contemned, and put on the bridal ornaments at a time when they least became them.

Then turning to Raschid, the Genius invited him likewise to offer his petition. "I request," says Raschid, "that thou wilt turn the Ganges through my grounds, with all his waters, and all their inhabitants." Hamet was struck with the greatness of his neighbour's sentiments, and secretly repined in his heart, that he had not made the same petition before him; when the Genius spoke, "Rash man, be not so insatiable! remember, to thee that is nothing which thou canst not What are the real causes of the impatience use; and how are thy wants greater than the which the ladies discover in a virgin state, I shall wants of Hamet?" Raschid repeated his desire, perhaps take some other occasion to examine. and pleased himself with the mean appearance That it is not to be envied for its happiness, apthat Hamet would make in the presence of the pears from the solicitude with which it is avoidproprietor of the Ganges. The Genius then re-ed; from the opinion universally prevalent among tired towards the river, and the two shepherds stood waiting the event. As Raschid was looking with contempt upon his neighbour, on a sudden was heard the roar of torrents, and they found by the mighty stream that the mounds of the Ganges were broken. The flood rolled forward into the lands of Raschid, his plantations were torn up, his flocks overwhelmed, he was swept away before it, and a crocodile devoured him.

Infelix-nulli bene nupta marito.—AUSONIUS. Unbless'd, still doom'd to wed with misery. THE Condition of the female sex has been frequently the subject of compassion to medical writers, because their constitution of body is such, that every state of life brings its peculiar diseases; they are placed, according to the proverb, between Scylla and Charybdis, with no other choice than of dangers equally formidable; and whether they embrace marriage, or determine upon a single life, are exposed, in consequence of their choice, to sickness, misery, and death.

the sex, that no woman continues long in it but because she is not invited to forsake it; from the disposition always shown to treat old maids as the refuse of the world; and from the willingness with which it is often quitted at last, by those whose experience has enabled them to judge at leisure, and decide with authority.

Yet such is life, that whatever is proposed, it is much easier to find reasons for rejecting than embracing. Marriage, though a certain security from the reproach and solitude of antiquated virginity, has yet, as it is usually conducted, many disadvantages, that take away much from the pleasure which society promises, and might afford, if pleasures and pains were honestly shared, and mutual confidence inviolably preserved.

The miseries, indeed, which many ladies suffer under conjugal vexations, are to be considered with great pity, because their husbands are often not taken by them as objects of affection, but forced upon them by authority and violence, or by persuasion and importunity, equally resistless when urged by those whom they have been always accustomed to reverence and obey; and it very seldom appears that those who are thus despotic in the disposal of their children, pay any regard to their domestic and personal felicity, or think it so much to be inquired whether they will be happy, as whether they will be rich.

It were to be wished that so great a degree of patural infelicity might not be increased by adventitious and artificial miseries; and that beings, It may be urged, in extenuation of this crime, whose beauty we cannot behold without admira- which parents, not in any other respect to be tion, and whose delicacy we cannot contemplate numbered with robbers and assassins, frequently without tenderness, might be suffered to enjoy commit, that in their estimation, riches and hapevery alleviation of their sorrows. But, however piness are equivalent terms. They have passed it has happened, the custom of the world seems their lives with no other wish than of adding to have been formed in a kind of conspiracy acre to acre, and filling one bag after another, and against them, though it does not appear but they imagine the advantage of a daughter sufficiently had themselves an equal share in its establish- considered, when they have secured her a large ment; and prescriptions which, by whomsoever they were begun, are now of long continuance, and by consequence of great authority, seem to have almost excluded them from content, in whatsoever condition they shall pass their lives.

jointure, and given her reasonable expectations of living in the midst of those pleasures with which she had seen her father and mother solacing their age.

There is an economical oracle received among

the prudential part of the world, which advises fathers to marry their daughters, lest they should marry themselves; by which I suppose it is implied, that women left to their own conduct generally unite themselves with such partners as can contribute very little to their felicity. Who was the author of this maxim, or with what intenion it was originally uttered, I have not yet discovered; but imagine, that however solemnly it nay be transmitted, or however implicitly received, it can confer no authority which nature has lenied; it cannot license Titius to be unjust, lest Caia should be imprudent; nor give right to imprison for life, lest liberty should be ill employed. That the ladies have sometimes incurred imputations which might naturally produce edicts not much in their favour, must be confessed by their warmest advocates; and I have indeed seldom observed, that when the tenderness or virtue No. 40.] of their parents has preserved them from forced marriage, and left them at large to choose their own path, in the labyrinth of life, they have made any great advantage of their liberty; they commonly take the opportunity of independence to trifle away youth and lose their bloom in a hurry of diversions, recurring in a succession too quick to leave room for any settled reflection; they see the world without gaining experience, and at last regulate their choice by motives trifling as those of a girl, or mercenary as those of

its reward. For this reason it is common to find | ment, it was by too frequent compliance with so men break out into rage at any insinuations to licitations to sing, for that her manner was some · the disadvantage of their wit, who have borne what ungraceful, and her voice had no great with great patience reflections on their morals; compass. It is true, says Floretta, when I sung and of women it has been always known, that three nights ago at Lady Sprightly's I was hoarse no censures wound so deeply, or rankle so long, with a cold; but I sing for my own satisfaction, as that which charges them with want of beauty. and am not in the least pain whether I am liked. As men frequently fill their imaginations with However, my dear Felicia's kindness is not the trifling pursuits, and please themselves most with less, and I shall always think myself happy in so things of small importance, I have often known true a friend. very severe and lasting malevolence excited by unlucky censures, which would have fallen without any effect, had they not happened to wound a part remarkably tender. Gustulus, who valued himself upon the nicety of his palate, disinherited his eldest son, for telling him that the wine, which he was then commending, was the same which he had sent away the day before not fit to be drunk. Proculus withdrew his kindness from a nephew, whom he had always considered as the most promising genius of the age, for happening to praise in his presence the graceful horsemanship of Marius. And Fortunio, when he was privy-counsellor, procured a clerk to be dismissed from one of the public offices, in which he was eminent for his skill and assiduity, because he had been heard to say that there was another man in the kingdom on whose skill at billiard's he would lay his money against Fortunio's.

From this time they never saw each other without mutual professions of esteem, and declarations of confidence, but went soon after into the country to visit their relations. When they came back, they were prevailed on, by the importunity of new acquaintance, to take lodgings in different parts of the town, and had frequent occasion, when they met, to bewail the distance at which they were placed, and the uncertainty which each experienced of finding the other at home.

Thus are the fondest and firmest friendships dissolved, by such openness and sincerity as interrupt our enjoyment of our own approbation, or recall us to the remembrance of those failings which we are more willing to indulge than to correct.

we are sure to conquer; and whose attack, therefore, will bring us honour without danger. But when a man feels the reprehension of a friend seconded by his own heart, he is easily heated into resentment and revenge, either because he hoped that the fault of which he was conscious had escaped the notice of others; or that his friend had looked upon it with tenderness and extenuation, and excused it for the sake of his other virtues; or had considered him as too wise to need advice, or too delicate to be shocked with reproach: or, because we cannot feel without pain those reflections roused which we have been endeavouring to lay asleep; and when pain has produced anger, who would not willingly believe, that it ought to be discharged on others, rather than on himself?

It is by no means necessary to imagine, that he who is offended at advice, was ignorant of the fault, and resents the admonition as a false charge; for perhaps it is most natural to be en Felicia and Floretta had been bred up in one raged, when there is the strongest conviction of house, and shared all the pleasures and endear-our own guilt. While we can easily defend our ments of infancy together. They entered upon character, we are no more disturbed at an accu life at the same time, and continued their confi-sation, than we are alarmed by an enemy whom dence and friendship; consulted each other in every change of their dress, and every admission of a new lover; thought every diversion more entertaining whenever it happened that both were present, and when separated justified the conduct, and celebrated the excellencies, of one another. Such was their intimacy, and such their fidelity, till a birth-night approached, when Floretta took one morning an opportunity, as they were consulting upon new clothes, to advise her friend not to dance at the ball, and informed her that her performance the year before had not answered the expectation which her other accomplishments had raised. Felicia commended her sincerity, and thanked her for the caution; but told her that she danced to please herself, and was in very little concern what the men might take the liberty of saying, but that if her appearance gave her dear Floretta any uneasiness, she would stay away. Floretta had now nothing left but to make new protestations of sincerity and affection, with which Felicia was so well satisfied, that they parted with more than usual fondness. They still continued to visit, with this only difference, that Felicia was more punctual than before, and often declared how high a value she put upon sincerity, how much she thought that goodness to be esteemed which would venture to admonish a friend of an error, and with what gratitude advice was to be received, even when it might happen to proceed from mistake.

The resentment produced by sincerity, whatever be its immediate cause, is so certain, and generally so keen, that very few have magnani mity sufficient for the practice of a duty, which, above most others, exposes its votaries to hardships and persecution; yet friendship without it is of very little value, since the great use of so close an intimacy is, that our virtues may be guarded and encouraged, and our vices repressed in their first appearance by timely detection and salutary remonstrances.

It is decreed by Providence, that nothing truly valuable shall be obtained in our present state, but with difficulty and danger. He that hopes In a few months, Felicia, with great serious- for that advantage which is to be gained from unness, told Floretta, that though her beauty was restrained communication, must sometimes hasuch as gave charms to whatever she did, and zard, by unpleasing truths, that friendship which her qualifications so extensive, that she could not he aspires to merit. The chief rule to be observ fail of excellence in any attempt, yet she thought ed in the exercise of this dangerous office, is to herself obliged by the duties of friendship to in- preserve it pure from all mixture of interest or form her, that if ever she betrayed want of judg-vanity; to forbear admonition or reproof, when

K

our consciences tell us that they are incited, not by the hopes of reforming faults, but the desire of showing our discernment, or gratifying our own pride by the mortification of another. It is not indeed certain, that the most refined caution will find a proper time for bringing a man to the knowledge of his own failings, or the most zealous benevolence reconcile him to that judgment, by which they are detected; but he who endeavours only the happiness of him whom he reproves, will always have either the satisfaction of obtaining or deserving kindness; if he succeeds, he benefits his friend; and if he fails, he has at least the consciousness that he suffers for only doing well.

No day's remembrance shall the good regret,
Nor wish one bitter moment to forget;
They stretch the limits of this narrow span,
And, by enjoying, live past life again.-F. LEWIS.

So few of the hours of life are filled up with ob-
jects adequate to the mind of man, and so fre-
quently are we in want of present pleasure or
employment, that we are forced to have recourse
every moment to the past and future for supple-
mental satisfactions, and relieve the vacuities of
our being, by recollection of former passages, or
anticipation of events to come.

her first nest the ensuing season, of the same materials, and with the same art, as in any fol lowing year; and the hen conducts and shelters her first brood of chickens with all the prudence that she ever attains.

It has been asked by men who love to perplex any thing that is plain to common understandings, how reason differs from instinct: and Prior has with no great propriety made Solomon himself declare, that to distinguish them is the fool's ignorance, and the pedant's pride. To give an accurate answer to a question, of which the terms are not completely understood, is impossible; we do not know in what either reason or instinct consist, and therefore cannot tell with exactness how they differ; but surely he that contemplates a ship and a bird's nest, will not be long without finding out, that the idea of the one was impressed at once, and continued through all the progressive descents of the species, without variation or improvement; and that the other is the result of experiments compared with experiments; has grown, by accumulated observation, from less to greater excellence; and exhibits the collective knowledge of different ages and various professions.

Memory is the purveyor of reason, the power which places those images before the mind upon which the judgment is to be exercised, and which treasures up the determinations that are once passed, as the rules of future action, or grounds of subsequent conclusions.

be pushed forward by an invincible fatality, with out power or reason for the most part to prefer one thing to another, because we could make no comparison but of objects which might both hap pen to be present.

It is, indeed, the faculty of remembrance, which may be said to place us in the class of moral agents. If we were to act only in consequence of some immediate impulse, and receive no diI cannot but consider this necessity of search-rection from internal motives of choice, we should ing on every side for matter on which the attention may be employed, as a strong proof of the superior and celestial nature of the soul of man. We have no reason to believe that other creatures have higher faculties, or more extensive capacities, than the preservation of themselves, or their species requires; they seem always to be fully employed, or to be completely at ease without employment, to feel few intellectual miseries or pleasures, and to have no exuberance of understanding to lay out upon curiosity or caprice, but to have their minds exactly adapted to their bodies, with few other ideas than such as corporeal pain or pleasure impress upon them.

Of memory, which makes so large a part of the excellence of the human soul, and which has so much influence upon all its other powers, but a small portion has been allotted to the animal world. We do not find the grief with which the dams lament the loss of their young, proportionate to the tenderness with which they caress, the assiduity with which they feed, or the vehemence with which they defend them. Their regard for their offspring, when it is before their eyes, is not, in appearance, less than that of a human parent; but when it is taken away, it is very soon forgotten, and, after a short absence, if brought again, wholly disregarded.

We owe to memory not only the increase of our knowledge and our progress in rational inquiries, but many other intellectual pleasures, Indeed, almost all that we can be said to enjoy is past or future; the present is in perpetual mo tion, leaves us as soon as it arrives, ceases to be present before its presence is well perceived, and is only known to have existed by the effects which it leaves behind. The greatest part of our ideas arises, therefore, from the view before or behind us, and we are happy or miserable, according as we are affected by the survey of our life, or our prospect of future existence.

With regard to futurity, when events are at such a distance from us that we cannot take the whole concatenation into our view, we have generally power enough over our imagination to turn it upon pleasing scenes, and can promise ourselves, riches, honours, and delights without intermingling those vexations and anxieties with which all human enjoyments are polluted. If fear breaks in on one side, and alarms us with dangers and disappointments, we can call in hope on That they have very little remembrance of any the other, to solace us with rewards, and escapes, thing once out of the reach of their senses, and and victories; so that we are seldom without scarce any power of comparing the present with means of palliating remote evils, and can genethe past, and regulating their conclusions from rally soothe ourselves to tranquillity, whenever experience, may be gathered from this, that their any troublesome presage happens to attack us. intellects are produced in their full perfection. It is therefore, I believe, much more cominon The sparrow that was hatched last spring makes | for the solitary and thoughtful, to amuse then

selves with schemes of the future, than reviews afford. It ought, therefore, to be the care of of the past. For the future is pliant and ductile, those who wish to pass the last hours with comand will be easily moulded by a strong fancy fort, to lay up such a treasure of pleasing ideas, into any form: but the images which memory as shall support the expenses of that time, which presents are of a stubborn and untractable na- is to depend wholly upon the fund already acture, the objects of remembrance have already quired. existed, and left their signature behind them impressed upon the mind, so as to defy all attempts of razure or of change.

As the satisfactions, therefore, arising from memory are less arbitrary, they are more solid, and are, indeed, the only joys which we can call our own. Whatever we have once reposited, as Dryden expresses it, in the sacred treasure of the past, is out of the reach of accident, or violence, nor can be lost either by our own weakness, or another's malice:

-Non tamen irritum

Quodcunque retro est efficiet, neque
Diffinget, infectumque reddet,

Quod fugiens semel hora vixit.

Be fair or foul, or rain or shine,

The joys I have possess'd, in spite of fate are mine.
Not Heaven itself upon the past has power,

But what has been, has been, and I have had my hour.

DRYDEN.

There is certainly no greater happiness than to be able to look back on a life usefully and virtuously employed, to trace our own progress in existence, by such tokens as excite neither shame nor sorrow. Life, in which nothing has been done or suffered, to distinguish one day from another, is to him that has passed it as if it had never been, except that he is conscious how ill he has husbanded the great deposit of his Creator. Life, made memorable by crimes, and diversified through its several periods by wickedness, is indeed easily reviewed, but reviewed only with horror and remorse.

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-Petite hinc, juvenesque senesque,

Finem animo certum, miserisque viatica canis.

I AM no great admirer of grave writings, and therefore very frequently lay your papers aside before I have read them through; yet I cannot but confess that, by slow degrees, you have raised my opinion of your understanding; and that, though I believe it will be long before I can be prevailed The great consideration which ought to influ- upon to regard you with much kindness, you ence us in the use of the present moment, is to have, however, more of my esteem than those arise from the effect, which, as well or ill applied, whom I sometimes make happy with opportuniit must have upon the time to come; for though ties to fill my tea-pot, or pick up my fan. I shall its actual existence, be inconceivably short, yet therefore choose you for the confidant of my disits effects are unlimited; and there is not the tresses, and ask your counsel with regard to the smallest point of time but may extend its con- means of conquering or escaping them, though sequences, either to our hurt or our advantage, I never expect from you any of that softness and through all eternity, and give us reason to re-pliancy, which constitutes the perfection of a member it for ever, with anguish or exultation.

The time of life, in which memory seems particularly to claim predominance over the other faculties of the mind, is our declining age. It has been remarked by former writers, that old men are generally narrative, and fall easily into recitals of past transactions, and accounts of persons known to them in their youth. When we approach the verge of the grave it is more eminently true:

Vita summa brevis spem nos vetat inchoare long am.

Life's span forbids thee to extend thy cares,
And stretch thy hopes beyond thy years.

CREECH.

We have no longer any possibility of great vicissitudes in our favour: the changes which are to happen in the world will come too late for our accommodation; and those who have no hope before them, and to whom their present state is painful and irksome, must of necessity turn their thoughts back to try what retrospect will

companion for the ladies: as, in the place where I now am, I have recourse to the mastiff for protection, though I have no intention of making him a lap-dog.

My mamma is a very fine lady, who has more numerous and more frequent assemblies at her house than any other person in the same quarter of the town. I was bred from my earliest infancy in a perpetual tumult of pleasure, and remember to have heard of little else than messages, visits, play-houses, and balls; of the awkwardness of one woman, and the coquetry of another; the charming convenience of some rising fashion, the difficulty of playing a new game, the incidents of a masquerade, and the dresses of a court-night. I knew before I was ten years old all the rules of paying and receiving visits, and to how much civility every one of my acquaintance was entitled; and was able to return, with the proper degree of reserve or of vivacity, the stated and established answer to every compliment; so that I was very soon celebrated as a wit and a beauty, and had heard before I was