the kiss snatched with eagerness, and the embrace prolonged with reciprocal delight, filled my breast with tumultuous wishes, which, though I feared to gratify, I did not wish to suppress. Beside all these incentives to dissolute pleasure, there was the dance, which indulged the spectators with a view of almost every charm that apparel was intended to conceal: but of the pleasure of this indulgence I was deprived by the head of the tall man who sat before me; and I suffered again all the vexation which had interrupted my attention to the first act of the play. But before the last scene, my mind had been so violently agitated, and the inconveniences of so long a confinement in a multitude, were become so sensible, I was so much oppressed with heat, and offended with the smell of the candles, that were either burning in the sockets or expiring in smoke, that I grew weary of my situation; my faculties were suspended as in a dream, and I continued to sit motionless, with my eyes fixed upon the curtain, some moments after it fell. When I was rouzed from my reverie, I found myself almost alone; my attachment to the place was dissolved, the company that had surrounded me were gone out, and, without reflecting whither I was to go, I wished to follow them.

When I was returned to the inn, and locked myself into my room, I endeavoured to recover that pleasing tranquillity in which I had been used to resign myself to sleep, and which I now regretted to have once changed for tumult and dissipation. Of my theatrical adventure I remembered no incident with pleasure, but that which when it happened I regarded as a misfortune, the stature of the person who sat before me, which intercepted the more gross indecencies, and defended me from their influence. This reflection immediately opened a new vein of thought; I considered the evening which I had just spent as an epitome of life, and the stage as an emblem of the world.

The youth is all ardour and expectation; he looks around with wonder and curiosity, and he is impatient for the time in which the world is to be thrown open before him. This time arrives: but he finds some unexpected obstacle to enjoyment, and, in the first act of life, he discovers that his hopes are rather transferred to more distant objects than fulfilled by those which are present. As he proceeds, the scene grows more busy, and his attachments to life encrease in number and strength: he is now seduced by temptation: and the moment its influence is suspended, and the pleasure which it promised is at an end, he abhors it as de-basing his nature, disappointing his highest hopes, and betraying him to remorse and regret.

This is the crisis of life, the period upon which immortality depends. Some continue the contest, and become more than conquerors: they reflect, with gratitude to Providence, upon circumstances which intercepted temptations by adversity, and perceive that they owe their safety to incidents which they laboured to prevent. Others abandon themselves to sensuality; and, affecting to believe all things uncertain, eagerly catch at whatever is offered by the present moment, as the whole of their portion: but at length novelty, that mighty charm, that beauty of perpetual influence, novelty is no more! every object that gave delight is become familiar; and is therefore beheld, not with desire, but with disgust.

Thus life at length almost ceases to be a positive good; and men would scarce desire to live, but that they fear to die. Yet the same enjoyments which are despised are also regretted; in time they are remembered without the circumstances that diminished their value; and the wretch who has survived them, wishes that they would return. Life, from this period, is more wearisome in proportion as it is prolonged; nothing is expected with ardour, because age has been too often cheated to trust to the promises of time, and

because to-day has anticipated the enjoyment of tomorrow. The play is now over, the powers of the mind are exhausted, and intellectual pleasure and pain are almost at an end. The last stage, the stage of dotage remains, and this is the pantomime of life: the images are new only in proportion as they are extravagant, and please only because the imagination is distempered or infirm. But the sensibility of corporal misery remains; infirmities multiply; the hours of pain and imbecility pass in anguish which none can alleviate, and in fretfulness which none regard. The palsied dotard looks round with impotent solicitude; he perceives himself to be alone, he has survived his friends, and he wishes to follow them; his wish is fulfilled, he drops torpid and insensible into that gulph which is deeper than the grave, and it closes over him for ever. From this dreadful picture I started with terror and amazement: it vanished; and I was immediately relieved by reflecting that life and the joys of life were still before me; that I should soon return to my paternal inheritance; that my evenings would no more be passed in tumult, and end in satiety; but that they would close upon scenes of domestic felicity, felicity which is pure and rational, and which is still heightened by the hope that it will be repeated tomorrow. And is not the human mind a stranger and a sojourner upon earth? Has it not an inheritance in a better country, that is incorruptible and undefiled? an inheritance to which all may return, who are not so foolish as (after perpetual disappointment in the search of pleasure which they never found) still to continue the pursuit till every hope is precluded, and life terminates either in the stupor of insensibility, or the agonies of despair.

THERE are some subjects upon which a man is better qualified to write, by having lived in the world than in a study; and many of these are of the highest importance. Of the infelicities of matrimony I have been often a spectator; and of some of them I think I have discovered the cause, though I have never entered into a philosophical inquiry concerning the nature of the passions, or the power of reason. The facts from which I have derived my knowledge, I shall state with as much perspicuity as I can, and leave others to make what inferences they please.

Flippanta, a young coquette, whose love of the fashionable follies was perpetually disappointed by the severe authority of a father, threw herself into the arms of a lover of sixty-four; believing that she could with ease impose upon the fondness of dotage, that youth and beauty would render her power absolute and unlimited, and that she would therefore be no longer the slave of formality and caprice. Flippanta was, however disappointed; and in a very few weeks discovered that the economy of a father was now complicated with the

jealousy of a husband; that he was fretful, selfish, and diseased, and expected less from her as a wife than a nurse. Infirmities which she had never felt, she knew not how to pity. He exerted his authority in proportion as he discovered her want of tenderness; and their misery is alleviated only by the hope of surviving each other; in which, it must be confessed, the lady has greatly the advantage.

Sophron, by his insinuating eloquence, prevailed on the mother of Modesta, to devote her as a sacrifice to learned importance. Love is beneath the dignity of grey-headed wisdom; they have therefore separate beds; while the unhappy victim repines in public, under the pomp of ornaments with which she is decorated, to flatter the pride and proclaim the triumph of her lord and master.

Senilis, to keep up the family-name, married a young girl of a ruddy complexion, and a cheerful temper. He is fond of her to distraction; but at the same time so intolerably jealous, that he questions whether the boy, who has fulfilled the hope with which he married, is his own.

Urbana was contracted to Rusticus by the contrivance of their parents, that their family interests, together with their estates, might be united. She had all the passions of a thorough-bred town lady; he the indifference of a downright country 'squire; they therefore never met without mutual upbraidings, in which she was accused of extravagance, and he of brutality. At length they agreed in this one point,-a separate maintenance.

Pervicax and Tetrica have during twenty years been continually thwarting each other. As the husband is hasty, positive, and overbearing, the wife is whimsical, vain, and peevish. They can never agree whether their mutton shall be boiled or roasted; and the words ninny-hammer, noodle, and numscull, are frequently bandied to and fro betwixt them. Their very servants