to find myself again safe and sound in my native country. Not that I am free of the disquiet of my journey; it rings in my ears still in the narration of my wife, who has such talents for description, that, if I had not witnessed the circumstances, I should have supposed Sir D. Dumplin to be a knight of the garter, Colonel O'Shannon a lieutenant-general, and his friend Mr M'Phelim a privy-counsellor. She makes all our acquaintance take notice how much better I am for Harrowgate, though, in fact, I never drank a drop of the water, and, except the company of Mrs Rasp, took no sort of drug whatever. I must confess, however, that I am no worse on the whole, and am not near so much afraid of dying as before I was married. I am, &c. JEREMIAH DY-SOON. No. 48. SATURDAY, December 31, 1785. Discipulus est prioris posterior dies. SEN. THE Lounger having now" rounded one revolving year," may consider himself as an acquaintance of some standing with his readers; and, at this period of gratulations, may venture to pay them the compliments of the season with the freedom of intimacy, and the cordiality of friendship. In the life of a periodical essayist, a twelvemonth is a considerable age. That part of the world in which his subject lies, he has then had an opportunity of viewing in all its different situations ; he has seen it in the hurry of business, in the heyday of amusement, in the quiet of the country; and he now attends it in its course of Christmas festivity and holiday merriment. Yet I know not how it is, that amidst the gratulations and festivity of this returning season, I am sometimes disposed to hear the one, and partake the other, with a certain seriousness of mind not well suited to the vacancy of the time; to look on the jollity around me with an eye of thought, and to impress, in my imagination, a tone of melancholy on the voices that wish me many happy years. As men advance in life, the great divisions of time may indeed furnish matter for serious reflection, as he who counts the money he has spent, naturally thinks of how much a smaller sum he has left behind. Yet, for my own part, it is less from anxiety about what remains of time, than from the remembrance of that which is gone, that I am led into this "mood of pensiveness." In my hours of thoughtful indolence, I am not apt to conjure up phantoms of the future; it is a milder sort of melancholy that I sometimes indulge in recalling the shades of the past. To this perhaps the Lounger's manner and habits of life naturally incline him. To him leisure gives frequent occasion to review his time, and to compare his thoughts. By the Lounger a few ideas, natural and congenial to his mind, are traced through all their connections; while the man of professional industry and active pursuit has many that press upon him in succession, and are quickly dismissed. He who lives in a crowd gains an extensive acquaintance, but little intimacy; the man who possesses but a few friends, enjoys them much, and thinks of them often. Time mellows ideas as it mellows wine. Things in themselves indifferent acquire a certain tenderness in recollection; and the scenes of our youth, though remarkable neither for elegance or feeling, rise up to our memory dignified at the same time and endeared. As countrymen in a distant land acknowledge one another as friends; so objects, to which when present we give but little attention, are nourished in distant remembrance with a cordial regard. If in their own nature of a tender kind, the ties which they had on the heart are drawn still closer, and we recal them with an enthusiasm of feeling which the same objects of the immediate time are unable to excite. The ghosts of our departed affections are seen through that softening medium, which, though it dims their brightness, does not impair their attraction; like the shade of Dido appearing to Æneas, "Agnovitque per umbram Obscuram; qualem primo qui surgere mense The hum of a little tune, to which in our infancy we have often listened; the |