with a mind that at once comprehends the vast, and attends to the minute. The reader of the Seasons wonders that he never saw before what Thomson shows him, and that he never yet has felt what Thomson expresses.'

Great part of this high praise appears to me to have arisen from what has been observed, of Thomson's having studied nature, and painted it as it is. Hardly, and with very few exceptions, will he be found endeavouring to adorn or heighten his descriptions with the religious fictions of antiquity.

As this author has drawn his pictures of nature from nature itself, so the nearer we bring his pictures to the originals from which he draws, the more will we admire them; the nearer our examination is, the more will our mind be filled and kindled with those sentiments which his descriptions produce. They resemble those striking likenesses, those highly finished portraits, which we examine by the side of the persons who sit for them. I am never more delighted with Thomson's Winter, the best of his Seasons, than when I read it in the month of December, and listen to the 'savage howl of the blast,' and see the sky saddened with the gather'd storm.'

A

No. 38. SATURDAY, OCTOBER 22, 1785.

I HAPPENED, a few evenings ago, to have an appointment with a friend of mine, a gentleman of the law, which some particular business prevented him from keeping with his usual punctuality. While I waited for him in his study, I took down from one of his

shelves a book at random, to amuse myself with, till he should come in. In my character of Lounger, I have learned never to put back a book because its subject promises to be a dull one. Though this was a law folio, therefore, I sat down contentedly to peruse it; having often experienced, that, in books where I looked for the least entertainment, I have unexpectedly met with the most. So it happened in this law-treatise; where, on the chapter of Marriage, which chanced to turn up to me, I found the nice distinctions and subtleties of legal investigation so illuminated with a variety of interesting cases, that I shall certainly recommend the book, and particularly the above-mentioned chapter of it, to all my young friends who are engaged in the study of that dry and intricate science. I am persuaded their imaginations will not be less exercised than their judgements, in following the learned author through the numerous pointed illustrations which he gives of the doctrines there laid down. Of those doctrines the abstract seems to be, that though certain smaller deceptions are not sufficient for setting aside a matrimonial engagement; yet a very high degree of deceit made use of by one of the parties to influence and inveigle the other, will render the marriage void and null ab initio, as if no such contract had ever been made.

I was deeply engaged in those speculations, when my friend cut them short by entering the room; and, as his time is precious, we had no leisure to follow them together; though I had much inclination to have asked his assistance in clearing up some legal doubts which the author's reasoning had created in my mind. When I got home at night, the subject recurred to my memory; but, beside a warm fire in a cold evening, even the thoughts of marriage will not keep a man awake. I insensibly fell asleep

in my chair, when a dream took up, as is generally the case, the thread of my waking thoughts, and pursued it in the following whimsical manner.

Methought I was carried into a great hall, which in its gloom, its antique ornaments, and its dustiness, resembled some of our courts of justice, at the further end of which was seated, in the dress and with the insignia of a judge, the learned and worthy author of the treatise above-mentioned. By one of the attendants of the court I was informed, that his office was a sort of chancellorship of matrimony, with the power of confirming or annulling all marriages, as in equity and good conscience should seem to him proper; that this was one of the days appointed for hearings; and that the parties, complainants and respondents, were waiting without, ready to be called in to state their complaints and defences. I, who am a bachelor, which I believe I formerly hinted to my readers, felicitated myself on this happy opportunity of instruction and entertainment, and sat down on one of the benches, to hear with attention the different causes that should be argued.

The first person who came to the bar was a man of rather an ungracious appearance, and a countenance not at all expressive of good-humour. He exhibited his complaint, and prayed for a dissolution of his marriage on the head of deception in his wife's temper; who, as he informed the judge, had made herself appear before marriage one of the sweetest and most engaging young women in the world—that during her virgin-state she had never been seen, at least by the complainant, with a single frown on her brow, and was the very life and soul of every company she was in; but that she had not been married aweek, when he discovered that she was, saving the court's presence, a very devil incarnate; that scarce

a day passed in which she did not abuse himself, illtreat his friends, and whip all the children round; and that he was obliged to change his servants every half-year, except one old cross devil of a cook-maid, whom she kept to vex and plague him. The lady, being called upon for her defence, denied any deception by which the marriage had been brought about, or could now be annulled; for that all her acquaintance could testify how good-natured she was when she was not contradicted; and that before marriage her husband had never contradicted her. She likewise pleaded recrimination in bar of his complaint; and offered to prove that he himself was one of the most cross-tempered men in the world. The judge dismissed the complaint; but recommended to the parties, since they seemed equally dissatisfied, to separate by mutual consent. The husband seemed inclined to adopt this proposition; but the lady rejected it; and, flinging out of court with a toss-up of one side of her hoop, said, she had more spirit than to indulge him in that. The husband growled something, which I could not hear, and followed her.

The second complainant was dressed in a very shabby coat, and had a very indecent length of beard on his face. He prayed a dissolution of his marriage, from a gross deception in point of his wife's person and appearance. He was, he said, chiefly induced to the match, from the beauty of her face and the elegance of her figure, which first had made her his toast, then his mistress, and lastly his wife: that for some little time after his marriage, this deception was perfectly kept up: that in a few months, however, he began to be sensible of it; and, after her becoming pregnant of her first child, it was apparent to every body: that, subsequent to that period, his wife totally neglected all attention

to her shape and complexion; and had ever since been so perfect a slattern as to have forfeited all pretensions to those qualities, on the faith of which he had married her. The lady made no appearance, which some one in court suggested was owing to its being so early an hour, as she seldom rose till twelve, and never was dressed till three. Indeed, upon some question of the judge, it came out, that the husband had never seen her before marriage at an earlfer hour, and seldom even then, but at great dinners, private balls, and public assemblies. His Lordship delayed the further consideration of the cause till another day, recommending to the gentleman, when he appeared there again, to show the respect due to the court, by having his beard shaved, and putting on a clean shirt.

The third prosecutor was an elderly gentleman with a wrinkled face, and a body seemingly very infirm, who came forward to the bar by the help of a staff, or rather crutch. He represented to the court that he had married a few years before, after having lived a bachelor till he was turned of sixty, a young, innocent girl, as he imagined, who had been bred up, at her father's house in the country, in perfect ignorance of the town, its expenses and amusements, who knew only how to knit, work fringes, and border an apron, to assist at making of a pudding, and constructing a gooseberry-pie; whose greatest expense was a silk gown once in two years, with a calico of her own making for morning wear; and whose highest pleasure consisted in dancing at a country wedding, or a Christmas gambol. But that, not long after she was married, she contrived to have him bring her to town, where she spent as much money in one month as it had cost her father to keep her all her life before; and actually wore, at this moment, a cap and feathers, the price of which