An accident which endangered my life revealed to me at last that the supposed indifference of Mr. Probit proceeded from a scrupulous sense of honour, and the ice once broken, we soon came to an éclaircissement, which ended in my consenting to receive his addresses; much to the displeasure of Lady Dashmore, to whom and her "dear five hundred friends" my conduct affords an inexhaustible theme for censure and comment. I am formally accused of having jilted Sir George, who every body says would have been an unexceptionable match for me, and of rejecting every other suitable offer, in order to throw myself away upon a man whose birth, fortune, and connections are all beneath me. Some ladies attributed my conduct to my having imbibed Methodistical opinions; others affect to suppose, that it springs entirely from a desire to appear as unlike as possible to other people; and a third class, at the head of which is my aunt, kindly throw the whole blame on the absurd education I have received. Now, Mr. Editor, in reply to the first of these charitable assertions, I beg leave to say, that I am both, from principle and education, || a firm member of the established church; and as to the second, I can with truth declare, that far from affecting singularity, I have all my life studied to avoid it. The party who throw the blame on my education, are, I believe, nearest to the truth, and as they chiefly consist of managing mammas, I can only thank them for the kind pity I am informed they bestow up-. on me; and hope that their welleducated daughters, who are so sedulously taught to stifle their natural feelings, and sacrifice their fondest wishes at the shrine of mercenary Hymen, may never repent having received an education which has taught them to value so highly the things of this world. Now, Mr. Editor, having concluded my plain, unvarnished tale, I hope you will agree with me in opinion, that it is a sufficient apology for an heiress of twelve thousand a year bestowing her hand upon a man with an income of not twice as many hundreds; and if this should be the case, you will, by giving my letter a place in your truly moral and elegant publication, oblige your constant reader and very humble servant, LOUISA LOVEWORTH. THE STORY OF ESUPH, OR THE MAN WHO WAS BORN TOO LATE. AMONG all the complaints vent- || age necessarily became wiser and ed by irascibility, perhaps none wiser, promised themselves that are so well founded and irremediable as mine. I suffer bitterly every day from a cause of which I am the innocent victim, and for which I cannot even blame my parents, who, imagining that every Fol. II. No. XI. their offspring must be happier than they were, because their children had the opportunity of adding the experience of their parents to their own observation. Very long before I had arrived PP at the age of manhood my evil || all is not gold that glitters, by re lating some of the childish pranks of her brother, and, among the rest, how he had been naughty one day, and as how, he being shut with cutting out the alternate squares of a red and white chequered bed-curtain, in order, as he said, to make windows. I remember I chuckled heartily at this; but I was soon stopped, by being told that this mischief had some method in it, and that the of no common boy; while my depravity of yesterday, to which this was set in opposition, was horrible indeed. The dreadful crime I had been guilty of was this: Engaged in play with Miss Sukey Jenkins, a young friend of my sister's, we contrived to unlock a door to a room which was intended for a new drawing-room by my mamma, and here the furniture was placed previously to its stars began to shed their influence, and ere I had entered my teens, I began to find myself yes, Mr. Editor, I began to find myselfsuffering under all the sin and ig-up in a bed-room, amused himself nominy of coming into the world at a period when there was an end to all intellectual and moral improvement. Indeed, my very infant days passed in making this discovery, and I became enlightened through the medium of the most hackneyed truisms. Children, I have heard my mother say, chil-window experiment was the action dren were now-a-days such plagues there was no doing any thing with them. When she was a child, she and her brothers were seen without being heard; but her hopeful babes were much more heard than seen. I, who was even much older than my years, was taught to behold with horror the increasing depravity of the rising generation, and made to believe, that, in spite of the theory of pretended sages, we are only treading the retro-arrangement. What a galaxy of grade path of improvement. I read gold struck our astonished sight! of so many better boys and girls Tables were piled on chairs, and in books printed by Messrs. Mar- chairs on sofas; but the discovery shall, of Aldermanbury church-made by Miss Sukey, a girl of a yard, at a time when these books keen eye, was truly ravishing: flat were elegantly bound and gilt, on the ground lay an immense which was long before juvenile looking-glass, clearly reflecting the libraries were established; and I whole height of the room. Sukey found in The Village School, The had often been with her mamma to Adventures of a Mouse, and The Life the bath: "How like it the glass of Goody Two Shoes, such instances looked! Suppose we were to bathe?” of virtue and precocity of talent, Delightful, ravishing thought! All that I began to consider my mam- was prepared; a chair was placed, ma perfectly right in her de- from which my little Musidora was ductions; but the depraved life to plunge; but I fearing the gelid of Master Tommy Hickathrift wave might be too cold for her somewhat staggered me in my frame, thought to try it first. Alas! opinion. One day, however, she the mystery of Ovid's wand waved opened my eyes, and told me that over me. No wave clasped us, but mamma's glass stopped my progress; under my feet its diverging cracks shewed themselves a thousand ways. The dreadful crash spared our tale. Mamma entered the room, once more convinced that the evil mind of man grows with every age, and that none but a brat of 1786 could be guilty of the depravity which shocked her sight. At an age in which intellect begins to expand, my education was well attended to; but I found, in spite of all my assiduity, and the numerous elementary books which constantly issued from the press for my use, that I was not so forward in my learning as my father had been at the same age; although he confessed, that he had scarcely begun to read when I had been through my Latin grammar. If, however, he admitted that I knew more, he said it was less solid than the knowledge he gained; and in every effort I made towards improvement, he forced me to draw the following deductions:-That the more literature was encouraged, the quicker did human nature return to a state of ignorance; and that having been for the last century arriving at a state of human perfection, we must now necessarily descend, in an equal ratio, down the vale of ignorance. be informed at common-balls and conventicles, that I lived in a city to which Nineveh herself was holy, and that even the Queen of Sheba would arise in judgment against the town in which I was doomed to vegetate. What then does such a wretch as I am in this breathing world, I know not. I expect to follow my doom, and behold the degeneracy of my country. How can I perform my religious duties, who have never heard a Tillotson, a Beveridge, or a Berkeley! how enjoy the beauties of the imitative arts, who exist when Kneller, Lely, and Rubens are no more! I who have heard of the superior excellence of Barry, Garrick, Woodward, or Pritchard, can I tamely sit to hear an O'Neil, a Kean, a Kemble, or a Siddons? The merits of a Knight, a Dowton, and a Liston, are forgotten in my father's details of a Woodward and a Shuter. I find this to be impossible; and I dwell on the full-bottomed wig of Quin's Cato, and of Garrick's Macbeth and Othello in a full - dress suit of bag-wig and sword, with English regimentals, as the most unnatural, of course the most sublime essence of wit imaginable. The applause we give to a Wellington, I find is due only to the achievements of a Marlborough or a Cumberland; and our petty "Unhappy child of an unpropitious era!" I exclaimed: " al-cavils at the measures of ministers though no Bolingbroke writes to must bow before the invectives of shake your religious faith; no a Horne, a Junius, or a Henley, American war impoverishes your Fain would I take up my pen, and country; no tobacco bills or revo- tell my brethren how they are delutions disturb your repose, yet are generated; but, alas! Milton and you the victim of a thousand evils!" Shakspeare have lived before me, And even though Bonaparte was and inform me how useless is my once more prevented from inva- exertion. Swift has hurled his inding my native shore, still was I to "vectives, and Butler lashed with his ridicule. I have lived to be amused only with the idle attempts of people to become wiser than our ancestors. I smile at your Institutions for gaining Knowledge; your Societies for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures, and Commerce; your Royal Academies; and your exertions for pro- | moting Morality and Religion. Wives are so bad now-a-days, that I have not ventured to take one of these harpies, though I have often thought they dressed almost as decently as the aunt Debs and the grandmammas hanging round me; yet where shall I find one who would work me such mobair chair-seats as that on which I am sitting, or draw me pictures equal to those non-entities which my mamma cut out with her scissars? who, like her, never shew their ig norance by opening their mouths: or who now will come to our arms, the best of all possible companions, from Mrs. Glasse's Cookery, The Housekeeper's Assistant, Nelson's Fasts and Festivals, The Remains of Betsy Thoughtless, The Lives of Jemmy and Jenny Jessamy, or Mrs. Rowe's Letters?" Servants are nothing to what they were in my mother's time. Peaches and nectarines have not the flavour they used to have. The sun does not shine as in Queen Anne's days; the seasons are changed, and every thing, and every day, informs me of my misfortunes; while crows, choughs, and jackdaws scream out as I approachHere comes the man who was born too late! THE FEMALE TATTLER, The feather'd husband, to his partner true, The shining down, proud crest, and purple wings: With kindred colours mark'd: did he not so, are sometimes known to enforce To possess the same preferences, and the same aversions, is the definition of friendship by a celebrated writer of antiquity: and why may it not be applied to love, if friend-rank and fortune, equality in views ship with woman is its sister, as the and wishes, and equality in temsong declares? and songs, though per, in those who form the bymethey too often deal in nonsense, || neal union, afford the most certain, because it is the most rational, || possess, or even to have the choice prospect of matrimonial happiness. It is a rule which ought to be observed in all occurrences of life, but particularly in the domestic or married part of it, to encourage and preserve a disposition to please and be pleased. That, however, cannot be supported, but by considering things in a right point of view, and as Nature has formed them, and not as our fancies or passions would have them. of, these united qualities, I would recommend them to consider their comparative value, and how to balance them against each other. He that has fine talents, with a moderate estate and an agreeable person, is far preferable to him who is indebted for his consequence and importance in the world to little else than his wealth; for talents may acquire riches, but riches cannot purchase talents. At the same time, wit and capacity are only estimable when they are found There is an exclamation of a husband in one of the comedies of Terence, which I have read in aed on good-nature, and directed to translation of those admirable plays augment or enliven the means of (for I do not pretend to understand rational pleasure. They must have Latin), which has always pleased observed little of life who do not me for the warmth of his affection, know certain ingenious men, whose -the forcible promise of his fidelity, abilities are too often employed and the certainty of his happiness; in making themselves and those but he does not rest his love upon around them uneasy. Prone to the the beauty of her person, the ele-indulgence of vanity and the love gance of her manner, her grace, of pleasure, they cannot support her wit, or her superior under-life without quick sensations and standing and admirable accom- gay reflections: they are strangers plishments, but because their tem- to tranquillity and the calm exerpers are the same, and their humours cise of reason; or they are either agree. elevated into an excess of enjoyment, or sink into a state of depression. Of all men living, they are most to be avoided by her who looks for the sober joys of domestic life in a husband. Soon satiated with present objects, they fly to new acquisitions of enjoyment, and run the round of pleasure, as the bee passes from flower to flower, but unlike that sagacious insect, without collecting sweets from any of them. I need not observe what is so well known to all, that a choice in marriage is one of the most important considerations in the pro-gress of our existence. This state is the foundation and chief band of social life: nor can I address my unmarried readers on a subject which is so essential to their happiness. A virtuous disposition, a good understanding, an agreeable person, and an easy fortune, are objects that, as far as circumstances will allow, should be chiefly regarded in forming the hymeneal union. But as it may not be in the power of all my female readers to At the same time, there is a kind of man, and I wish there were more of them, possessing both wit and sense, who reflects upon the duties attached to his character as a ra |