bottom, shewing his judgment, and of sometimes making handsome compliments to each of the contending parties.

I shall close this subject with giving you one caution. When you have gained a victory do not push it too far; it is sufficient to let the company and your adversary see it is in your power, but that you are too generous to make use of it. BUDG ELL.

Youth passed in dissipation leaves only sorrowful recollections.

MR. SPECTATor,

'I am now in the sixty-fifth year of my age, and having been the greater part of my days a man of pleasure, the decay of my faculties is a stagnation of my life. But how is it, Sir, that my appetites are increased upon me with the loss of power to gratify them? I write this like a criminal, to warn people to enter upon what reformation they please to make in themselves in their youth, and not expect they shall be capable of it, from a fond opinion some have often in their mouths, that if we do not leave our desires, they will leave us. It is far otherwise; I am now as vain in my dress, and as flippant, if I see a pretty woman, as when in my youth I stood upon a bench in the pit to survey the whole circle of

paroître son discernement, et quelquefois même de donner des éloges aux deux partis.

Je terminerai ce sujet par un avertissement. Lorsque vous aurez gagné la victoire, ne la poussez pas trop loin; il suffit que votre antagoniste et la compagnie voient qu'elle est en votre pouvoir, mais que vous êtes trop généreux pour en user. BUDGELL..

Une jeunesse dissipée ne laisse que de vains

souvenirs.

« M. LE SPECTATEUR,

« Je suis dans ma soixante-cinquième année; et, ayant passé la meilleure partie de ma vie dans les plaisirs, mes sens sont si foibles que ma vie est languissante. Mais d'où vient, je vous prie, que mes appétits augmentent, lorsque mes forces diminuent, et que je n'ai plus le pouvoir de les satisfaire? Je vous parle ingénument comme un criminel, afin que les autres apprennent, par mon exemple, à se corriger de bonne heure, s'ils en ont le désir, et à ne pas se flatter qu'ils en pourrent venir à bout sur leurs vieux jours, sous prétexte que s'ils n'abandonnent pas les plaisirs, les plaisirs les abandonneront eux-mêmes. Il en est bien autrement; je suis aujourd'hui aussi curieux pour mes habits, et aussi plein d'ardeur à la vue d'une jolie femme, que je l'étois dans ma jeunesse,

beauties. The folly is so extravagant with me, and I went on with so little check of my desires, or resignation of them, that I can assure you, I very often, merely to entertain my own thoughts, sit with my spectacles on, writing love-letters to the beauties that have been long since in their graves. This is to warm my heart with the faint memory of delights that were once agreeable to me; but how much happier would my life have been now, if I could have looked back on any worthy action done for my country? If I had laid out that which I had profused in luxury and wantonness, in acts of generosity or charity? I have lived a bachelor to this day; and instead of a numerous offspring, with which, in the regular ways of life I might possibly have delighted myself, I have only to amuse myself with the repetition of old stories and intrigues which no one will believe I ever was concerned in. I do not know whether you have ever treated of it or not; but you cannot fall on a better subject, than that of the art of growing old. In such a lecture you must propose, that no one set his heart upon what is transient; the beauty grows wrinkled while we are yet gazing at her. The witty man sinks into an humourist imperceptibly, for want of reflecting that all things around him are in a flux, and continually changing: thus he is in the space of ten or fifteen years surrounded by a new set of people,

lorsque, debout sur un banc du parterre à la comédie, je lorgnois le cercle des belles. Je pousse même l'extravagance si loin, et j'ai si peu réprimé la fougue de mes désirs, qu'il m'arrive souvent, pour satisfaire mon imagination, de m'asseoir avec mes lunettes sur le nez, et d'écrire des billets doux à des beautés qui ne sont plus depuis long-temps. C'est ainsi qu'un foible souvenir de mes plaisirs passés me réchauffe le cœur ; mais ne serois-je pas infiniment plus heureux si je pouvois me réjouir en secret de ma vie passée, si j'avois fait quelque belle action pour ma patrie, et si j'avois employé, en actes de charité ou de générosité, tout le bien que j'ai prodigué dans la débauche et l'incontinence. J'ai vécu jusqu'ici dans le célibat; et, au lieu d'une postérité nombreuse que j'aurois pu avoir, et qui m'auroit peut-être donné beaucoup de plaisir, il ne me reste pour tout amusement que le récit de quelques vieux contes et d'intrigues surannées où personne même ne veut croire que j'aie jamais eu aucune part. J'ignore si vous avez traité ce sujet; mais il me semble que vous ne sauriez en choisir un meilleur que celui de l'art qui nous enseigneroit à savoir devenir vieux. En traitant cette matière vous nous engageriez à détacher nos cœurs de tout ce qui est passager, car la beauté même se ride à mesure qu'on la contemple. L'homme d'esprit devient insensiblement bizarre, faute de

whose manners are as natural to them as his delights, method of thinking, and mode of living, were formerly to him and his friends. But the mischief is, he looks upon the same kind of error which he himself was guilty of with an eye of scorn, and with that sort of ill-will which men entertain against each other for different opinions. Thus, a crazy constitution, and an uneasy mind is fretted with vexatious passions for young men's doing foolishly, what it is folly to do at all. Dear Sir, this is my present state of mind; I hate those I should laugh at, and envy those I contemn. The time of youth and vigorous manhood, passed the way in which I have disposed of it, is attended with these consequences; but to those who live and pass away life as they ought, all parts of it are equally pleasant; only the memory of good and worthy actions is a feast which must give a quicker relish to the soul than ever it could possibly taste in the highest enjoyments or jollities of youth. As for me, if I sit down in my great chair and begin to ponder, the vagaries of a child are not more ridiculous than the circumstances

which are heaped up in my memory; fine gowns, country-dances, ends of tunes, interrupted conversations, and midnight quarrels, are what must necessarily compose my soliloquy. I beg of you to print this, that some ladies of my acquaintance and my years may be persuaded to wear warm