to rank, to office, and to wealth."- The governor looked sternly at him, and his face reddened with indignation: "I am not indeed," said he, "a stranger to the name of Zoroes; I have heard of such a man, who lives on the mischiefs of faction, who foments divisions that he may increase his own consequence, and creates parties that he may guide them in the blindness of their course; who sows public contention that he may reap private advantage, and thrives amidst the storms that wreck the peace of his country."- He gave the signal to the guards, who hurried Zoroes to his fate. His pun ishment was cruel, but somewhat analogous to his character and his crimes. He was exposed in an island of the Nile to the crocodiles that inhabit it. "You After witnessing this disagreeable exercise of justice, it was with pleasure I beheld a beautiful female, dressed with equal elegance and splendour, tripping towards the throne, and seemingly pleased with the admiration of the surrounding multitude. In a sweet accent, though with a manner rather infantine, she informed the governor, that some months ago she had married a man of fourscore, who had nothing to recommend him but his immense wealth, of which she previously stipulated that she should have the absolute disposal. see," said she, "the use I make of it. These jewels are esteemed the finest in the province; and I hope soon to possess a set still more precious." The governor, without hearing more of her prattle, pronounced a sentence which, I confess, I thought somewhat severe. He ordered her to be stripped of all her costly ornaments, and to be sent home in a plain garment to the house of her husband, with instructions, that, during the remainder of his days, she should be constrained to live constantly with him, and permitted to see no other company what ever. While I was commiserating the hard fate of the fair unfortunate, the crier pronounced my own name, in a deep and hollow tone of voice. This alarmed me so much, that I awaked in no small consternation, and was very well pleased to find myself quietly in my own bed in the good town of Edinburgh. Of all men living, a Lounger must ever be the most puzzled to give an account of his life, conversation, and mode of living; and therefore, however wise the law of Amasis may be, I fairly own that I was happy to find I was not subject to it. M 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 at tends 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; 'tis with 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 tender ness in recollection; and the scenes of our youth, though remarkable neither for elegance nor 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 gave 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 recall 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 EN. vi. 452. The hum of a little tune, to which in our infancy we have often listened; the course of a brook, which in our childhood we have frequently traced; the ruins of an ancient building which we remember almost entire; these remembrances sweep over the mind with an enchanting power of tenderness and melancholy, at whose bidding the pleasures, the business, the ambition, of the present moment fade and disappear. Our finer feelings are generally not more grateful to the fancy than moral to the mind. Of this tender power which remembrance has over us, several uses might be made; this divinity of memory, did we worship it aright, might lend its aid to our happiness as well as to our virtue. An amiable and ingenious philosopher has remarked, that in castle-building no man is a villain.* In like manner it may perhaps be pronounced that every man is virtuous in recollection; he rests with peculiar satisfaction on the remembrance of such actions as are most congenial to the better parts of his nature, on such pleasures as were innocent, on such designs as were laudable. It were well, if, amidst the ardour of pursuit, or the hopes of gratification, we sometimes considered that the present will be future, as well as that the future will be present; that we anticipated reflection as well as enjoyment. Not only in those greater and more important concerns, which are what Shakspeare calls "stuff o' the conscience," but in the lesser and more trivial offices of life, we should be more apt to conduct ourselves aright, did we think that we were one day to read the drama in which we now perform; and that of ourselves, and the other personages of the scene, we were to judge with a critical severity. This indulgence of memory, this review of time, would blunt the angry and discordant passions that often prey on our own quiet as well as on the peace of others. Scarce any man is so hard of heart as to feel himself an enemy over the grave of his foe; and the remembrance of contests, however just, with those who are now no more, comes across an ingenuous mind with a sort of self-accusation. The progress of time, though it may not have swept our adversaries from the earth, will probably have placed both them and us in circumstances such as to allay, if not to extinguish, our resentment. Prosperity to us, or misfortunes to them, may have soothed our *Dr. Reid, in his "Essays on the Intellectual Powers of Man." |