guished in common earth. Nature, in its gayest loom, is but a painted vanity.

Are my nerves well strung and vigorous? Is my activity and strength far superior to my neighbours in the days of youth? But youth hath its appointed limit: age steals upon it, unstrings the nerves, and makes the force of nature languish into infirmity and feebleness. Sampson and Goliath would have lost their boasted advantages of stature and their brawny limbs, in the course of half a century, though the one had escaped the sling of David, and the other the ven geance of his own hands in the ruin of Dagon's temple. Man, in his best estate, is a flying shadow and vanity.

Even those nobler powers of human life, which seem to have something angelical in them, I mean the powers of wit and fancy, gay imagination, and capacious memory, they are all subject to the same laws of decay and death. What though they can raise and animate beautiful scenes in a moment, and, in imitation of creating power, can spread bright appearances and new worlds before the senses and the souls of their friends? What though they can entertain the better part of mankind, the refined and polite world with high delight and rapture? These scenes of rapturous delight grow flat and old by a frequent review, and the very powers that raised them grow feeble apace. What though they can give immortal applause and fame to their possessors? It is but the immortality of an empty name, a mere succession of the breath of men; and it is a short sort of immortality too, which must die and perish when this world perishes. A poor shadow of duration indeed, whilę the real period of these powers is hastening every day ; they languish and die as fast as animal nature, which has a large share in them, makes haste to its decay; and the time of their exercise shall shortly be no more.

In vain the aged poet or the painter would call up the muse and genius of their youth, and summon all the arts of their imagination, to spread and dress out some visionary scene in vain the elegant orator would recal the bold and

masterly figures, and all those flowery images which gave ardour, grace, and dignity to his younger composures, and charmed every ear: they are gone, they are fled beyond the reach of their owner's call: their time is past, they are vanished and lost beyond all hope of recovery.

The God of nature has pronounced an impassable period upon all the powers, and pleasures, and glories of this mortal state. Let us then be afraid to make any of them our boast or our happiness, but point our affections to those diviner objects, whose nature is everlasting; let us seek those religious attainments, and those new-created powers of a sanctified mind, concerning which it shall never be pronounced that their time shall be no longer.

O may every one of us be humbly content, at the call of Heaven, to part with all that is pleasing or magnificent here on earth; let us resign even these agreeable talents when the God of nature demands; and when the hour arrives, that shall close our eyes to all visible things, and lay our fleshy structure in the dust, let us yield up our whole, selves to the hands of our Creator, who shall reserve our spirits with himself; and while we cheerfully give up all that was mortal to the grave, we may lie down full of the joyful hope of a rising immortality. New and unknown powers and glories, brighter flames of imagination, richer scenes of wit and fancy, and diviner talents are preparing for us, when we shall awake from the dust, and the mind itself shall have all its faculties in a sublime state of improvement. These shall make us equal, if not superior to angels, for we are nearer a-kin to the Son of God than they are, and therefore we shall be made more like him.

IX. The RAKE reformed in the House of Mourning. FLORINO was young and idle; he gave himself up to all the diversions of the town, and roved wild among the pleasures of sense; nor did he confine himself within the limits of virtue, or with-hold his heart from any forbidden

joy.

joy. Often hath he been heard to ridicule marriage, and affirm that no man can mourn heartily for a dead wife; for then he hath leave by the law to choose a new companion, to riot in all the gayer scenes of a new courtship, and perhaps to advance his fortune too.

When he heard of the death of Serena, "Well," said he, "I will go visit my friend Lucius, and rally him a little on this occasion." He went the next day in all the wantonness of his heart to fulfil his design, inhuman and barbarous as it was, and to sport with solemn sorrow. But when Lucius appeared, the man of gaiety was strangely surprised; he saw such a sincere and inimitable distress sitting on his countenance, and discovering itself in every air and action, that he dropt his cruel purpose, his soul began to melt, and he assumed the comforter.

Florino's methods of consolation were all drawn from two topics: Some from fate and necessity, advising an heroic indolence about unavoidable events, which are past and cannot be reversed; and some were derived from the various amusements of life which call the soul abroad, and divide and scatter the thoughts, and suffer not the mind to attend to its inward anguish. "Come, Lucius," said he, "come, smooth your brows a little, and brighten up for an hour or two. Come along with me to a concert this evening, where you shall hear some of the best pieces of music that were ever composed, and performed by some of the best hands that ever touched an instrument. To-morrow I will wait on you to the play, or if you please, to the new opera, where the scenes are so surprising and so gay, they would almost tempt an old hermit from his beloved cell, and call back his years to three-and-twenty. Come, my friend, what have the living to do with the dead? Do but forget your grievances a little and they will die too: Come, shake off the spleen, divert your heart with the entertainments of wit and melody, and call away your fancy from these gloomy and seless contemplations." Thus he ran on in his own way CC 4

of

of talking, and opened to his mourning friend the best springs of comfort that he was acquainted with.

Lucius endured this prattle as long as he was able to endure it, but it had no manner of influence to stanch the bleeding wound, or to abate his smarting sorrows. His pain waxed more intense by such sort of applications, and the grief soon grew too unruly to contain itself.

Lucius then asked leave to retire a little : Florino followed him softly at a distance to the door of his closet, where indeed he observed not any of the rules of civility or just decency, but placed himself near enough to listen how the passion took its vent: and there he heard the distressed Lucius mourning over Serena's death in such language as this:

What did Florinq talk about? Necessity and Fate ? Alas! this is my misery, that so painful an event cannot be reversed, that the divine will has made it fate, there is a necessity of my enduring it.

Plays, and music, and operas! What poor trifles are these to give ease to a wounded heart? To a heart that has lost its choicest half! A heart that lies bleeding in deep anguish, under such a keen parting stroke, and the long, long absence of my Serena! She is gone. The desire of my eyes and the delight of my soul is gone. The first of earthly comforts, and the best of mortal blessings. She is gone, and she has taken with her all that was pleasant, all that could brighten the gloomy hours of life, that could soften the cares, and relieve the burdens of it. She is gone, and the best portion and joy of my life is departed. Will she never return, never come back, and bless my eyes again? No; never, never. She will no more come back to visit this wretched world, and to dry these weeping eyes. That best portion of my life, that dearest blessing is gone, and will return no more, Sorrows in long succession await me while I live; all my future days are marked out for grief and darkness. Let the man who feels no inward pain at the loss of such a partner dress his dwelling in black shades

and

:

and dismal formalities: Let him draw the curtains of darkness around him, and teach his chambers a fashionable mourning but real anguish of heart needs none of these modish and dissembled sorrows. My soul is hung round with dark images in all her apartments, and every scene is sincere lamentation and death.

I thought once I had some pretences to the courage of a man: but this is a season of untried distress: I now shudder at a thought, I start at shadows, my spirits are sunk, and horror has taken hold of me. I feel passions in me that were unknown before; love has its own proper grief and its peculiar anguish. Mourning love has those agonies and those sinkings of spirit, which are known only to bereaved

and virtuous lovers.

I stalk about like a ghost, in musing silence, till the gathering sorrow grows too big for the heart, and bursts out. into weak and unmanly wailings. Strange and overwhelming stroke indeed! It has melted all the man within me down to softness: my nature is gone back to childhood again: I would maintain the dignity of my age and my sex, but these eyes rebel and betray me; the eye-lids are full, they overflow; the drops of love and grief trickle down my cheeks, and plough the furrows of age there before their

time.

How often in a day are these sluices opened afresh? The sight of every friend that knew her calls up my weakness, and betrays my frailty. I am quite ashamed of myself, What shall I do? Is there nothing of manhood left about my heart? I will resist the passion, I will struggle with nature, I will grow indolent, and forbid my tears. Alas! poor feeble wretch that I am! In vain I struggle; in vain I resist: The assumed indolence vanishes; the real passion. works within, it swells and bears down all before it the torrent rises and prevails hourly, and nature will have its way. Even the Son of God, when he became man, was found weeping at the tomb of a darling friend. Lazarus died, and Jesus went.

: