opportunity to escape to make known my sentiments, which she appeared well inclined to return; when suddenly her parents said to me, that my frequent visits to their house did them much honour; that they begged I would continue them, and remain always a friend to the family; but they believed they ought to apprise me, that their daughter had been long before promised to a very rich man of the next town; that his arrival was expected, and they besought me, as a friend, not to offer him any offence.' My young friend gave me to understand that she would have preferred me, but that she must obey. He was handsome, he was amiable; and I soon perceived that my young brunette obeyed without reluctance. You may easily imagine that I became timid and suspicious after all these disappointments; hardly dare I look at a woman, lest I should become enamoured; but the disease quickly banished my fears. I became again in love, and this time was very seriously so. I loved with passion, but with such diffidence, such an apprehension of not succeeding, that I dared not to avow my sentiments to her who had inspired them I regularly passed before her windows three times aday, and, when she appeared, I bowed with the most tender and respectful air, almost touching the ground with my hat. During some days, she appeared there more frequently, and I even remarked, that when she saw me at a distance she fixed herself in her balcony, and answered my salutations with a sweet smile. I was overwhelmed with joy, and employed my thoughts on the means of making myself known to her; when one day that I passed, as usual, before her house, and was walking slowly to prolong the pleasure of being near her, I heard her burst into a fit of laughter, and say, 'come, I pray, my dear friend, come and look at this cringing fellow! he is of all beings on earth the most ridiculous.' A young man approach ed her, and, passing his arm round her waist, laughed heartily with her, as their eyes followed me. I withdrew much quicker than I went, and soon learned that the young man had become her husband two days before. This melancholy adventure, which ought to have humbled me, on the contrary suddenly renewed my courage. I resolved to be no longer the dupe of of my own feelings, and to marry, cost what it would. I went into an assembly of young persons, and addressing myself to her who pleased me the most, I asked to speak to her apart; she granted my request, and the next day I went to her house. Are you at liberty?' said I, entering. Yes,' answered she, 'absolutely free.' Will you accept my heart and hand? 'Both,' said she, smiling, and extending hers. From that moment, I considered myself married: but this engagement, so suddenly formed, was as suddenly dissolved. It would be too tedious to inform you of the particular circumstances; happily before the ceremony, I perceived. In short, she was unfaithful, and God be praised she was not yet my wife. It requires much precaution, thought I; one ought to study a long time, and with much attention, the woman who is to be one's companion. Try once more. I then made a seventh choice, which was more wise and reasonable, a charming young girl, well educated, and who had never been in love. This time no one could accuse me of too much precipitation; I carefully watched all her steps, all her actions, all her intentions, without making my declaration. I hoped incessantly. I was as yet only in the fourth year of vigilance and observation, when in the moment I least expected she was carried off by a young man who knew her only four days. This shall be my last trial, said I; I can no more resolve to begin new amours: I still love the ladies, but this sentiment is ac companied by such timidity, that I cannot again venture to speak to them. For the Literary Magazine. ANECDOTE OF A SWISS CAPTAIN IN FRANCE. A Swiss captain of grenadiers, whose company had been cashiered, was determined, since Mars had no more employment for him, to try if he could not procure a commission in the corps of Venus; or, in other words, if he could not get a wife: and, as he had no fortune of his own, he reasoned, and very justly, that it was necessary his intended should have enough for them both. The captain was one of those kind of heroes to whom the epithet of hectoring blade might readily be applied: he was nearly six feet high, wore a long sword, and fiercely-cocked hat: add to which, he was allowed to have the most martial pair of whiskers of any grenadier in the company to which he had belonged. To curl these whiskers, to comb and twist them round his fore-finger, and to admire them in the glass, formed the chief occupation and delight of his life. A man of these ac. complishments, with the addition of bronze and rhodomontade, of which he had a superfluity, is supposed to stand at all times, and in all coun tries, a good chance with the ladies. Accordingly, after a little diligent attention and artful inquiry, young lady was found, exactly such a one as we may well suppose a person with his views would be glad to find. She was tolerably handsome, not more than three and twenty, with a good fortune; and, what was better still, her fortune was entirely at her own disposal. a Our captain, who thought now or never was the time, having first found means to introduce himself as a suitor, was incessant in his endeavours to carry his point. His tongue was eternally running in praise of her superlative charms; and in hyperbolical accounts of the flames, darts, and daggers, by which his lungs, liver, and midriff were burnt up, transfixed, and gnawed away. He who, in writing a song to his sweetheart, described his heart to be without "one drop of gravy, like an over-done muttonchop," was a fool at a simile when compared to our hero. One day, as he was ranting, kneeling, and beseeching his goddess to send him of an errand to pluck the diamond from the nose of the great mogul, and present it to her divinityship, or suffer him to step and steal the empress of China's enchanted slipper, or the queen of Sheba's cockatoo, as a small testimony of what he would undertake to prove his love, she, after a little hesitation, addressed him thus : "The protestations which you daily make, captain, as well as what you say at present, convince me there is nothing you would not do to oblige me: I therefore do not find much difficulty in telling you, I am willing to be yours, if you will perform one thing which I shall request of you." Tell me, immaculate angel," cried our son of gunpowder; "tell me what it is: though, before you speak, be certain it is already done." "Captain," replied the fair one, "I shall enjoin nothing impossible. The thing I desire, you can do with the utmost ease. It will not cost you five minutes' trouble. Yet, were it not for your so positive assurances, I should, from what I have observed, almost doubt of your compliance ?" "Madam !—(Be so kind, reader, as to imagine the captain's utter astonishment) My whiskers! Cut off my whiskers! Excuse me. Cut off my whiskers! Madam! Any thing else; any thing that mind can, or cannot imagine, or tongue describe. But, for my whiskers, you must grant me a salvo there." "And why so, good captain? Surely any gentleman who had but the tythe of the passion you express, would not stand upon such a trifle?" "A trifle, madam! My whiskers a trifle! No, madam, no; my whiskers are no trifle. Had I but a single regiment of fellows whiskered, and like me, I myself would be the grand Turk of Constantinople. My whiskers, madam, are the last thing I should have supposed you would have wished me to sacrifice. There is not a woman, married or single, maid, wife, or widow, that does not admire my whiskers.” "May be so, sir: but if you marry me, you must cut them off." "And is there no other way? Must I never hope to be happy with you, unless I part with my whiskers ?" "Never." hour has my pen been in my hand, my ink and paper before me, but no subject occurs. I have been endeavouring to collect my thoughts in vain; I cannot find a sufficiency for a single passage; they wander from one subject to another like those light bodies that float on the surface of the deep to and fro, beaten this way by one wave and that by another, unable to remain stationary long enough to fix themselves to any point of rest. Such is the state of my mind, and it is one certainly very unfavourable to my present purpose. Yet this very dearth of ideas, or of confusion in their arrangement, has, by acting upon itself, given rise to some reflections on the causes in which they may originate. The mind of the writer should, like that of the philosopher, be able to lay aside the cares of life, and apply itself to the subject of its speculations, to pursue the direction to which his speculations may lead him in a strait line, without deviation; it is thus only that the subject will be made to unfold itself, and stand exposed to view in all the colours which nature or fancy may bestow upon it. When I went to school, I frequently returned a borrowed penknife, pencil, &c., to my teacher, with this boyish injunction, " mind, sir, I have brought it back." "Do you mind it," he would reply, “I have other things to attend to; the mind which must torture itself for means to supply a large family with bread cannot attend to trifles." And is it thus ; does he who has many cares resting on his mind feel less sensibly the respective weight of each, and is he capable of supporting them collectively with as little suffering as he who has but one? has nature kindly restricted and humbled the pride of prosperity, and diminished the arrogance of power, by an equal distribution of the cares of life, in weight if not in number? has she given the lonely, the afflicted children of adI HAVE sat down to write a versity the consolation of the assur"Reflector." For more than an ance that they bear no more than "Why then, madam, farewell: I would not part with a single hair of my whiskers, if Catherine the czarina, empress of all the Russias, would make me king of the Calmucs: and so good morning to you." Had all the young ladies, in like circumstances, equal penetration, they might generally rid themselves, with equal ease, of the interested and unprincipled coxcombs by whom they are pestered: they all have their whiskers; and seek for fortunes, to be able to cultivate, not cut them off. For the Literary Magazine. THE REFLECTOR. VOL. VIII. NO. XLIX. 5 their share of wretchedness which has been laid on the whole human race? does the monarch who sways the sceptre of dominion over obedient millions enjoy his power with no less anxiety and care than the lowest of his subjects? If it is so, then men are indeed equal, and the old proverb, "every one has his trouble," is a true one. Then why all this contention about power, dominion, and pre-eminence, about glory, wealth, and fame, if, by possessing all these things, we only change our condition by giving one cause of care for another; if our enjoyments are not increased, nor cur sorrows diminished? There are few persons who do not at times feel a certain restlessness, a sort of confusion in the operations of the mind, which disables them from fixing their attention to a single point; though they may continually attempt to force their thoughts to flow in a certain channel, the endeavour seems to be as vain as it would be to try to make a stream of water rise above the head of the fountain which supplies it. This seldom happens, except when some cause of care is predominant; that cause wholly possesses the mind, and oppresses it; all other thoughts, if they strike the attention, glance off from it like water from an oily substance, and the very exertion we may make to lay aside the predominating care is painful. Here we can trace a considerable resemblance between the human mind and the members of the body: the hand once filled can contain no more; thus it is with the mind: there are some considerations which so completely fill it, that it can contain nothing else. Thus the lover's waking thoughts and nightly dreams are of his mistress; if he speaks, it is of her, or should he be drawn from the subject, he soon returns to it; grief produces the same effects, and, indeed, all those passions and emotions which are capable of being excited to intensity. To this rule I think there are not many exceptions. Cæsar, if I mistake not, boasts of dictating to several secretaries at one and the same time, but the limits of human power enables the greater part of mankind to do but one thing at a time, wherever the power necessary to be exerted is placed in the same member of the body, or the same faculty of the mind. The pursuit of this vagrant and irregular train of thoughts has brought me nearly to the end of my paper, and to the end of my reasoning at present, without drawing an unerring inference. I have merely thrown together a few detached hints, which may be useful to another who chuses to pursue the same course of speculation. Yet, to account in some measure for this irregularity, it becomes me to mention, that I have just returned from the funeral of a much regretted friend*, and the recollection of his good qualities, and my deep sense of his loss, has produced that restlessness and that confusion which is so evident is this paper. THERE will soon be published in Philadelphia a new and interesting work, entitled "the Columbiad, a poem, in ten books, by Joel Barlow." This work will be ornamented with twelve engravings, which have been done in England by the most eminent artists, and at great expence. They are in the first style of elegance. The typographical part, wholly American, is executed in a manner highly creditable to the several artists employed. The paper by Amies, the type by Binny and Ronaldson, and the printing, with consummate taste and care, by Fry and Kammerer; it will be published * This paper was written nearly two years since. by C. and A. Conrad and Co., in one volume, quarto. A work like this, on a great national subject, must excite a high degree of interest. In the present instance, we are confident that the public expectation will not be disappointed; and while the Columbiad will be cited as a monument of American genius, the publishers are determined that this edition shall do equal honour to our arts. vo. B. and T. Kite have in the press, and will publish early in November, Chaptal's Chemistry, with improvements and additions by James Woodhouse, M. D., professor of chemistry in the university of Pennsylvania, in two volumes, octaThey have also in the press, a letter on the Inoculation of the Vaccina; practised in Sicily, by doctor Francesco Calcagni, translated from the Italian, by Edward Cutbush, M. D.-A sketch of the character, and an account of the last illness of the Rev. John Cowper, A. M. written by his brother, the late William Cowper, Esq., of the Inner Temple. They have likewise issued proposals for publishing Elements of Natural Philosophy; explaining the laws and principles of attraction, gravitation, mechanics, pneumatics, hydrostatics, hydraulics, electricity, and optics; with a general view of the solar system, adapted to public and private instruction, by John Webster, with notes and corrections, by Robert Patterson, professor of mathematics in the university of Pennsylvania. Samuel F. Bradford will shortly publish a new and interesting work, entitled, A Portraiture of Methodism, being an impartial view of the rise, progress, doctrine, discipline, and manners, of the Wesleyan methodists, by Joseph Nightingale. A very interesting work, received by the last arrivals from London, entitled, "The Last Year of the Reign and Life of Louis XVI, by Francis Hue, one of the officers of the king's chamber, named by that monarch, after the 10th of August, 1792, to the honour of continuing with him and the royal family, translated from the French, by R. E. Dallas, Esquire," is putting to press by Mr. James Humphreys. In addition to the above, Mr. Humphreys has put to press, and will speedily publish, "An account of the Life and Writings of that celebrated divine, Hugh Blair, one of the ministers of the high church, and professor of rhetoric and belles lettres, in the university of Edinburgh, by the late John Hill, LL. D, professor of humanity in the university, and fellow of the royal society of Edinburgh." Mr. Thomas Dobson has issued proposals for publishing, in one volume, octavo, The History of Baptism, by the Rev. R. Robinson, of Cambridge, England, abridged by the Rev. Samuel Jones, D. D. By late accounts from London we are informed, that an interesting compilation is preparing for the press, a transcript of which the author, an unwearied advocate in the cause of humanity, intends to transmit here for publication, by an early opportunity. It is to be entitled The History of the Rise, Progress, and Accomplishment of that Great Event, the Abolition of the Slave Trade, by Thomas Clarkson, and will be comprised in two thick octavo volumes. The following new publications have appeared in the course of the last month: A Tour through Holland, along the right and left banks of the Rhine to the south of Germany, in the summer and autumn of 1806. By sir John Carr, author of the Stranger in France, Northern Summer, Stranger in Ireland, &c. |