she has no independent provision. To-morrow may ravish from her grasp the frail and precarious props that uphold her. This reflection has made her a pattern of economy and industry. She is, in many respects, her own laundress, and, in all respects, her own sempstress.

She well knows the magic graces that flow from personal purity and habits of delicacy. Beauty is bestowed by some power beyond ourselves. It most commonly entails on the possessor infinite depravity and folly, and can never confer any real good. A temper, serene amidst the evils of life, and the fluctuations of others, forbearing and affectionate to all; manners, soft, mild, full of dignity and personal decorum, constitute the lasting power,the bewitching grace, the irresistible charm -but if I run on thus, I shall write a volume, instead of a letter; so I will stop here, and ask you, Madelina, in what respects this creature of my fancy resembles you?

Are you studious? Do you spend a certain propotion of each day in reading? Were the reflections of any five minutes of your life suggested by any thing you met with in a book? Are any of the terms or ideas, which occur in your conversation, derived from this source? Are your friends and intimates distinguished by their charitable, devout, thoughtful, and home-loving habits? Are none, of them vain, giddy, ridiculously prejudiced or spoilt by fashion?

Are you diligent and economical? Do you spend nothing upon superfluities? Have you, in all you buy, or all you do, a view to future independence, to be raised on your own efforts? Do you perform for yourself all that decency permits, and that a noble humility, a laudable frugality requires you to do?

Is your temper benign and equable? Do you never repine at the want of those advantages of person and fortune, which others possess? Would not a splendid villa and an equipage atone for many misfortunes of yourself and friends?

But let me, above all, inquire, whether rational piety, its sanctions, duties, and consolations, are any thing to you but empty sounds? Have the ideas of a future state, a pure and all-seeing eye, ever found a moment's place in your thoughts? Are you at all acquainted with that principle, which enables us to love merit, though beautiful or rich, and to look down with pity on arrogance and pomp?

To some of these questions, candour may oblige you to answer, but not without reluctance; and your heart, impatient of blame, may whisper-"I have as much of these estimable qualities, as most others. I can scarcely point out one of my acquaintance, who (no older than I) has more simplicity, frugality, industry, charity, candour, or devotion. If I err, my judgment, and not my inclination, is to blame. I ardently wish to attain all that is good, graceful, and lovely in the female character. I am always striving to attain them, and the failure of my efforts humbles and distresses me.

“Above all things, I want to be reputed sensible and learned, but my poor head will not allow it. I cannot keep alive my curiosity for books. When I read, unless it be some fashionable play or novel, all is tedious, dark, and unintelligible: but I did not chuse my own understanding, and I cannot recreate myself; and, though nature will not second my wishes, to reach the highest place, yet I am not the very lowest in the scale. I know myself to possess some sense, some generosity, a heart that is both pure and warm, and principles that will never let me stoop to meanness or falsehood; and my great comfort is, that few are better than me, many, very many, are worse."

Thy pleas, Madelina, are perfectly just. Inclination and zeal will go far to make us better, but they will not do every thing; and whatever charm there may be in diffidences and disclaimings, it is absurd and pernicious to give up our dues.

I rejoice in thy anxiety for improvement, and applaud thee for respecting thyself. In looking round, I also find very few that are thy superiors, but very many that are, in all estimable qualities, much below Madelina.

For the Literary Magazine.

ADVERSARIA.

NO. VII.

DULL authors write more than they think; lively ones think more than they write. When wit inspires, and fancy is on the wing, it is impossible for the writer, under the influence of such spontaneous talents and such impulsive faculties, to train or restrain the range of his creative genius to the present lure of whatever subject he may then have in hand. In such cases, all he can do is to arrest their course, by writing down his ideas, for the amusement of his leisure hours, or to enrich some future work, as occasion may call them forth. This reservoir may be considered as a casket of jewels, the beauty and brilliancy of which we contemplate and admire, without any regard to their arrange

ment.

It may be laid down as a position, which will seldom deceive, that when a man cannot bear his own company, there is something wrong. He must fly from himself, either because he feels a tediousness in life, from the equipoise of an empty mind, which, having no tendency to one motion more than another, but as it is impelled by some external power, must always have recourse to foreign objects; or he must be afraid of the intrusion of some unpleasing ideas, and is, perhaps, struggling to escape from the remembrance of a loss, the fear of a calamity, or some other thought of greater horror.

It has been very ingeniously observed by an Italian moralist, that praise is a tax which merit exacts from the world; but if we pay it ourselves, the world is absolved from the debt.

At a time when it has become fashionable for every self-sufficient coxcomb to sneer, in all the fancied consciousness of superiority, at the intellectual qualities of woman, it gives me pleasure to find my own opinion fortified by that of the learned Vicessimus Knox. He stigmatizes the notion that learning belongs not to the female character, and that the female mind is not capable of a degree of improvement equal to that of the other sex. The present times, he says, and every liberal reader can attest the truth of the assertion, exhibit most honourable instances of female learning and genius. The superior advantages of boys' education are perhaps, the sole reason of their subsequent superiority. Learning is equally attainable, and, I think, equally valuable, for the satisfaction arising from it, to a woman as a man.

The oriental poetry exhibits the most picturesque scenes of nature, and illustrates every moral sentiment or argumentative assertion by similies, not indeed exact in the resemblance, but sufficiently analogous to strike and gratify the imagination. Strong imagery, animated sentiment, warmth and vivacity of expression, all of which are the effects of a lively fancy, are its constant characteristics. The accuracy of logic, and the subtlety of metaphysics are of a nature too frigid to influence the oriental writer. He feels not the beauty of demonstration, he pursues not the chain of argument, and he submits to the force of persuasion rather from the dictates of his feeling than from any rational conviction. He endeavours to influence his reader in the same manner,

and commonly excites an emotion so violent, as to produce a more powerful effect than would be experienced even from conclusive argumentation.

Horace, the politest writer whom the world ever produced, was a satirist, though there is every reason to believe that his natural disposition was not severe. The truth is, he was a man of the world, as well as a man of reflection, and wrote his remarks on men and things in familiar verse, not without censuring them, indeed, but without indulging the asperity of sarcasm. He probed every wound with so gentle a hand, that the patient smiled under the operation. The gay friend of Mecenas had lived in courts, and knew too much of the world to think he could reform the voluptuous part of it by abrupt severity.

It is not among the least happy effects of a studious life, that it with draws the student from the turbulent scenes and pursuits, in which it is scarcely less difficult to preserve innocence than tranquility. Successful study requires so much attention, and engrosses so much of the heart, that he who is deeply engaged in it, though he may, indeed, be liable to temporary lapses, will seldom contract an inveterate habit of immorality. There is, in all books of character, a reverence for virtue, and a tendency to inspire a laudable emulation. He who is early, long, and successfully conversant with them will find his bosom filled with the love of truth, and finely affected with a delicate sense of honour.

Through all the vicissitudes of life, he has a source of consolation in the retirement of his library, and in the principles and reflections of his own bosom.

The want of employment is one

of the frequent causes of vice; but he who loves a book will never want employment. The pursuits of learning are boundless, and they present to the mind a delightful variety which cannot be exhausted. No life is long enough to see all the beautiful pictures which the arts and sciences, or which history, poetry, and eloquence are able to display. The man of letters possesses the power of calling up a succession of scenes to his view infinitely numerous and diversified. He is therefore secured from that unhappy state which urges many to vice and dissipation, merely to fill a painful vacuity. Even though his pursuits should be trifling, and his discoveries unimportant, yet they are harmless to others, and useful to himself, as preservatives of his innocence.

If we consider Swift's prose style, we shall find a certain masterly conciseness, that has never been equalled by any other writer. The truth of this assertion will more evidently appear, by comparing him with some of the writers of his own time. Of these Dr. Tillotson and Mr. Addison are to be numbered among the most eminent. Addison has all the powers that can captivate or improve: his diction is easy, his periods are well turned, his expressions are flowing, and his humour is delicate. Tillotson is nervous, grave, majestic, and perspicuous. We must join both these characters together to have an adequate idea of Swift: yet as he outdoes Addison in humour, he excels Tillotson in perspicuity. The archbishop, indeed, confines himself to subjects relative to his profession; but Addison and Swift are more diffusive writers. They continually vary in their manner, and treat different topics in a different style. When the writings of Addison terminate in party, he loses himself extremely, and from a delicate and just comedian deviates into one of the lowest kind.

It is well observed, by our late venerable president, that every observation in Swift's "Contests and Dissentions between the Nobles and Commons of Rome" is justified by the history of every government we have considered. How much more naturally, says he, had this writer weighed the subject than Mr. Turgot! Perhaps there is not to be found, in any library, so many accurate ideas of government, expressed with so much perspicuity, brevity, and precision.

Vanity makes terrible devastation in a female breast: it batters down all restraints of modesty, and carries away every seed of virtue.

Jeremy Collier, in his Essay on Power, gives a good reason for the supposed superior strength of men in the beginning of the world-" to supply their defect of skill." Art and address are capable of effecting many things now, that required bodily strength then. They were at first, says he, more giants in their limbs than their understandings; but when the mind grew larger, the body became less. The same reason he might have added for their longevity also to make experience supply the deficiency of science.

Plato calls the passions the wings of the soul. According to this metaphor, a bird may be considered as the type of it. In applying this figure to the several characters of men, some to be eagles, others bats, a few swans, and the rest but geese : not one phoenix among the flock. The same philosopher, in another place, styles them the chariot-horses of the soul; by which it is implied, that, though strong and fleet, they should be under command. These

Volucres Pyrois & Eous & Æthon, Solis equi, quartusque Phlegon,

should be restrained by Phoebus, and not resigned to the nerveless hand of Phaton. Might not this latter allusion of Plato likewise hint a comparison between some souls and cart-horses, mules, asses, &c.?

Lord William Russel was the sad victim to his virtuous design of preserving the liberty and constitution of his country, from the attempts of the most abandoned set of men that ever governed it. True patriotism, not ambition nor interest, directed his intentions. Posterity must applaud his unavailing engagements, with the due censure of the Machiavelian necessity of taking off so dangerous an opposer of the machinations of his enemies. The law of politics gives sanction to the removal of every obstacle to the designs of the statesman. At the same time, we never should lessen our admiration and pity of the generous characters who fell sacrifices to their hopes of delivering purified to their descendants the corrupted government of their own days. To attempt to clear lord Russel from the share in so glorious a design, would be to deprive him of the most brilliant part of his character. His integrity and ingenuousness would not suffer even himself to deny him from that part of the charge. Let that remain unimpeached, since he continues so perfectly acquitted of the most distant design of making assassination a means, or of intriguing with a foreign monarch, the most repugnant to the religion and freedom of his country, even though it were to accomplish so lau dable an object.

Before the introduction of printing, the student, who revolted at the idea of languishing in the sloth of monkery, had scarcely any scope for his industry and talents, but in the puerile perplexities of scholastic philosophy, as little adapted to call forth the virtues of the heart as to promote useful knowledge: but since

that important era in the annals of learning, every individual, even the poorest of the muses' train, has been enabled, without difficulty, to consult those great masters in practical and speculative ethics, the Greek and Roman philosophers. He is taught by the same instructors who formed a Xenophon and a Scipio, and can hold converse, in the retirement of his chamber, with the celebrated sages of antiquity, with nearly the same advantages as if he actually sat with Socrates beneath the shade of the plane tree, walked with Plato in the Lyceum, or accompanied Cicero to his Tusculan villa.

For the Literary Magazine. OBJECTIONS TO VACCINATION.

ONE of the most curious facts, in the history of human opinions, is the light in which it is now customary, among medical enquirers, to regard the inoculated small-pox. Formerly, when the faculty espoused the practice of inoculation, the arguments and eloquence were endless which were employed in proving its advantages. The benefits arising from preparing the constitution for the disease, and from selecting the suitable and most convenient season and age for contracting it; the superior mildness and safety of the malady contracted in this mode, were all fruitful topics of persuasion.

Lately, the vaccinating system has obtained the preference: and such is the nature of the mind, engaged in defending any favourite system, that physicians seem not contented with proving that the vaccine is an antidote against the natural small-pox, far milder and safer than the variolous inoculation, but they now discover, what would formerly have ranked the discoverer among prejudiced and silly old women, that, in truth, inoculation has done more harm than good. It has contributed to diffuse the small-pox

VOL. III. NO. XIX.

much more than formerly. Hence the chances of contracting it natu rally have been greatly multiplied. It has likewise occasioned more mortality upon the whole, since inoculation does not continually save from death; it is only less likely to end fatally than the natural disease. It is hard to assign the exact proportion of this difference, but it seems to be generally allowed, that more individuals have died of the inoculated small-pox, than formerly died of the natural. Supposing the latter to kill all that it attacks, and the former only one out of twenty, yet if two only are sick of the latter disease, two only can die of it, whereas if sixty are sick of the former, the deaths may be three in number, which is a greater actual mortality by one half.

Those versed in medical history may know whether this consequence was ever urged against the use of inoculation. If it were, it was, no doubt, rejected with derision and contempt; yet now the whole faculty combine to affirm its truth, and, if their reports be true, the introducers of inoculation into Europe were the murderers, and not the benefactors, of the human race.

By recent accounts from Great Britain it appears, that the vaccine has lately suffered some formidable attacks. Its enemies have discovered instances in which the variolous has been contracted after the vaccine infection; and some have even started a suspicion that the security afforded by the vaccine is only temporary.

These circumstances have excited great alarm and anxiety in the public. Some well-attested cases having taken place in a certain quarter of London, in which smallpox followed vaccination, a medical committee, composed of the most eminent practitioners, was formed to investigate these cases. This committee has published, in its report, a minute and faithful account of every fact connected with these cases. After admitting the regular progress of the previous vaccination

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