all the accomplishments which render human creatures lovely can afford us a moment's assurance of life. And they stimulate us to virtue, by affording us the comfortable assurance, that if we lead an amiable, well spent life, however short, we are sure, when dead, to be embalmed with the tears of the virtuous.

In the North Parish in Weymouth, on the 14th instant, Widow Mary Ripley, who had attained, (wanting a few days,) the age of one hundred and four years. Her existence was commensurate with one entire century, and a part of the preceding and following century. Till within a very short time before her death she possessed very considerable bodily strength and alertness, a sense of hearing which was remarkably good, and a distinctness of vision by which she could recognize people with whom she was acquainted, by the features of the face, without the help of glasses. She early made a public profession of religion, and through her long life, gave evidence, that its doctrines and precepts were deeply engraven on her heart. A few days before her death sensible that the time of her departure was at hand, she expressed a firm and stedfast hope in the divine mercy, and a desire to depart and be with Christ. She died without a struggle or a groan, leaving a very numerous train of descendants; the number, from their local situations cannot easily be ascertained. Blessed are the dead which die in the Lord. New-York....Mrs. Mary Bancker, wife of Christopher Bancker, Esq. January 22. New-London....Mr. John Tom was found drowned in a well pond at Hebron.

24. Chambersburg, Pennsylvania....At the dwelling of the Franklin Repository, Mr. Benjamin January, bookbinder, late of the city of Philadelphia.

24. Philadelphia....Caleb Jackson, an aged and respectable inhabitant of this city....formerly of Chester county.

29.

Mrs. Margaret Harper, relict of Mr. Thoma

Harper, formerly of this city, merchant.

New-York.......Miss Catharine Clarkson Rutherford, of the city of Trenton, in the 18th year of her age.

January 14. Philadelphia.....In the sixty-seventh year of his age, after a severe illness of twenty days, Mr. Zachariah Poulson, printer, father of the editor of the American Daily Advertiser. He was a native of Copenhagen, the metropolis of Denmark, and emigrated with his father from thence to this city in the year 1749, where he has since generally resided, and has always been esteemed, by those who knew him, for his integrity, for the sincerity and ardor of his friendship, and for the amiable and inoffensive deportment. He bore his affliction without a murmer, and departed with that resignation and humble confidence which is inspired by religion and a consciousness of a well spent life. On the following day his remains were born to the cemetry of the Moravian church, by respectable brethren of the typographical art, and interred in the presence of a considerable number of his friends.

14. Of a consumption, in the twenty-fourth year of his age, Mr. Charles Bush. As he was deservedly respected while living, so he died lamented by all who had the pleasure of his acquaintance.

When blooming youth is snatched away,

By Death's resistless hand;
Our hearts' the mournful tribute pay,
Which pity must demand.
While pity moves the rising sigh,
O may this truth impress'd
With awful pow'r, I too must die!
Sink deep in every breast.

John Tucker, a soldier in Ashford barracks. He died at 4 o'clock in the morning; before twelve, on the same day, his widow was married to another man, and in the evening the happy couple followed the corpse of the first husband to the grave as chief mourners.

ROBINSON CRUSOE.

THIS evening was a most unwelcome one. The weather would not suffer me to go abroad, and I had planned business abroad of the most agreeable nature. At home there was no employment or amusement, for which I had any relish....I took my seat, therefore, by the fire, in the most irksome and impatient mode imaginable, and after sitting an halfhour away in listless musing and fruitless regrets, betook myself, at last, to my book-case. As it contained nothing new, I went thither in the dark, determined to bestow an hour on the first book on which my hand should accidentally light.

The volume, thus taken up at random, proved to be Robinson Crusoe; and, agreeably to my previous resolution, I began the perusal of it. I received this book, as a present, when a child of ten years old, and read it with all the raptures

which it usually affords to children. Twenty years have since elapsed, and during that time, it has laid quietly in my book-case. Numberless times have I ran over my books in search of something to beguile a lonely hour. "Robinson Crusoe," have I said, as my eye glanced over it, "that's stale. Ihave ransacked the bowels of that long ago. Besides, it is a tale only fit for children." Now, however, I began my task with desperate resolution ; but very soon did I discover sufficient reasons for continuing it in the book itself. Every thing was new to me. Either the particulars had been entirely forgotten, or they appeared to me in a light entirely new, and suggested reflections which had never before occurred, and which, indeed, could not possibly occur to the raw and unexperienced imagination of a child. I never read a work which appeared before me robed in so much novelty and singu

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larity as this work now wears. I know of none, whose plan is, in any degree, similar to it, and which has more importance and dignity. Ino longer see in it, the petty adventures of a shipwrecked man, the recreations of a boyish fancy; but the workings of a mind, left to absolute and unaccustomed solitude; and a picture of the events by which the race of man is dispersed over the world, by which desert regions are colonized, and the foundations laid of new and civilized communities.

The felicity with which the story is expanded....the exquisite judgment displayed in giving conduct and feelings to the hero of the tale, suitable to his education, character, and situation are truly admirable, and form a subject for the meditation of the strongest and most intelligent minds. No quality is more conspicuous in this narration than genius, or the power which supplies the place of experience; and images to itself, the feelings flowing from situations in which the author never was, and perhaps never could be actually placed.

This tale is said to have been founded on the adventures of an Alexander Selkirk; but if Selkirk's story be truly related by Sir Richard Steel, it appears merely to have suggested to Defoe his plan, and not to have supplied him with materials. There is nothing in common between the real and fictitious characters, but the mere circumstance of passing some time, alone, upon a desert island. In all other points, their destinies and characters are not only different, bat opposite.

It is somewhat remarkable, that Robinson's adventures are exceedingly trite, or absurdly marvellous, before his shipwreck, and after his departure from his island. Captivity, in Barbary, was a favourite theme with the fabulists of that age, and as this misfortune frequently befel the mariners of Christian Europe, it is surprising that invention, when it expatiated on this subject, has ever been so barren and

absurd. I should like to see an edition of Robinson Crusoe, in which nothing was retained but what was connected with the island.

I begin to suspect that some disadvantages arise from reading valuable books at a very early age. A child can comprehend very imperfectly the feelings and conduct of men; and though the young and old of the same species must always have something in common, and therefore every narrative in which men perform a part, must be, in some degree, intelligible to men of all ages, yet the conceptions of the young are always crude and erroneous; and experience proves, that the first impression is extremely obstinate. As the present age has furnished numberless books expressly designed for the young, in which the characters, reasonings, and incidents are adapted to their comprehension and sensibility, it is inexcuseable to tie them down to works suited to a riper age.

Henceforth, when any of my friends are particularly auxious for something new and interesting in the literary way, I shall recommend them to Robinson Crusoe, provided they have not read the book since their fifteenth year.

FRIENDSHIP.

How many harangues have been delivered upon friendship from old Cicero's speeches to his friends under a plane tree, to my friend T......'s last night by my fire-side. T........, indeed, is no servile copyist, for his notions of friendship are directly the reverse of Cicero's..... According to Jack, this passion, which all the world have combined to extol as a virtue, is no better than a specious vice. It is merely one of the innumerable forms which selflove assumes. He measures every man's affection for another by the gratification which his pride assumes. Tom loves Will merely because Will shews respect for Tom and interest in his concerns. Tom values and esteems Will, be