birth he entered into an eternal being; and the short article of death he will not allow an interruption of ⚫ life; since that moment is not of half the duration as his ordinary sleep. Thus is his being one uniform and consistent series of cheerful diversions and moderate cares, without fear or hope of futurity. Health to him is more than pleasure to another man, and sickness less affecting to him than indisposition is to others. I must confess, if one does not regard life after this manner, none but idiots can pass it away with any tolerable patience. Take a fine lady who is of a delicate frame, and you may observe, from the hour she rises, a certain weariness of all that passes about her. I know more than one who is much too nice to be quite alive. They are sick of such strange frightful people they meet; one is so awkward, and another so disagreeable, that it looks like a penance to breathe the same air with them. You see this is so very true, that a great part of ceremony and good breeding among the ladies turns upon their uneasiness; and I will undertake, if the how-do-ye-servants of our women were to make a weekly bill of sickness, as the parish-clerks do of mortality, you would not find in an account of seven days, one in thirty that was not downright sick or indisposed, or but a very little better than she was, and so forth. It is certain, that to enjoy life and health as a constant feast, we should not think pleasure necessary; but, if possible, to arrive at an equality of mind. It is as mean to be overjoyed upon occasions of good fortune, as to be dejected in circumstances of distress. Laughter in one condition, is as unmanly as weeping in another. We should not form our minds to expect transport on every occasion, but know how to make it enjoyment to be out of pain. Ambition, envy, vagrant desire, or impertinent mirth, will take up our minds, without we can possess ourselves in that sobriety of heart which is above all pleasures, and. can be felt much better than described. But the ready way, I believe, to the right enjoyment of life is, by a prospect toward another, to have but a very mean opinion of it. A great author of our time* has set this in an excellent light, when, with a philosophical pity of human life, he spoke of it in his Theory of the Earth in the following manner: "For what is this life but a circulation of little mean actions? We lie down and rise again, dress and undress, feed and wax hungry, work or play, and are weary, and then we lie down again, and the circle returns. We spend the day in trifles, and when the night comes we throw ourselves into the bed of folly, among dreams, and broken thoughts, and wild imaginations. Our reason lies asleep by us, and we are for the time as arrant brutes as those that sleep in the stalls or in the field. Are not the capacities of man higher than these? And ought not his ambition and expectations to be greater? Let us be adventurers for another world. It is at least a fair and noble chance; and there is nothing in this worth our thoughts or our passions. If we should be disappointed, we are still no worse than the rest of our fellow-mortals; and if we succeed in our expectations, we are eternally happy."—T. * Dr. Thomas Burnet, master of the Charter-house. Theoria Telluris, 4to., Amst., 1699, p. 241. No. 170.] FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 14, 1711. In amore hæc omnia insunt vitia : injuriæ, Bellum, pax rursum- TER. Eun., act i, sc. I. In love are all these ills: suspicions, quarrels, female corre UPON looking over the letters of my spondents, I find several from women complaining of jealous husbands, and at the same time protesting their own innocence; and desiring my advice on this occasion. I shall therefore take this subject into my consideration; and the more willingly, because I find that the Marquis of Halifax, who in his Advice to a Daughter, has instructed a wife how to behave herself toward a false, an intemperate, a choleric, a sullen, a covetous or a silly husband, has not spoken one word of a jealous husband. "Jealousy is that pain which a man feels from the apprehension that he is not equally beloved by the person whom he entirely loves." Now because our inward passions and inclinations can never make themselves visible, it is impossible for a jealous man. to be thoroughly cured of his suspicions. His thoughts hang at best in a state of doubtfulness and uncertainty; and are never capable of receiving any satisfaction on the advantageous side; so that his inquiries are most successful when they discover nothing. His pleasure arises from his disappointments, and his life is spent in pursuit of a secret that destroys his happiness if he chance to find it. An ardent love is always a strong ingredient in his passion; for the same affection which stirs up the jealous man's desires, and gives the party beloved so beautiful a figure in his imagination, makes him believe she kindles the same passion in others, and appears as amiable to all beholders. And as jealousy thus arises from an extraordinary love, it is of so delicate a nature, that it scorns to take up with anything less than an equal return of love. Not the warmest expressions of affection, the softest and most tender hypocrisy are able to give any satisfaction where we are not persuaded that the affection is real, and the satisfaction mutual. For the jealous man wishes himself a kind of deity to the person he loves. would be the only pleasure of her senses, the employment of her thoughts, and is angry at everything she admires, or takes delight in, beside himself. He Phædra's request to his mistress, upon his leaving her for three days, is inimitably beautiful and natural: Cum milite isto præsens, absens ut sies: Meus fac sis postremo animus, quando ego sum tuus. TER. Eun., act i, sc. 2. Be with yon soldier present, as if absent. All night and day love me: still long for me: Give your whole heart, for mine's all yours, to me. COLEMAN. The jealous man's disease is of so malignant a nature, that it converts all it takes into its own nourishment. A cool behavior sets him on the rack, and is interpreted as an instance of aversion or indifference; a fond one raises his suspicions, and looks too much like dissimulation and artifice. If the person he loves be cheerful, her thoughts must be employed on another; and if sad, she is certainly thinking on himself. In short, there is no word or gesture so insignificant, but it gives him new hints, feeds his suspicions, and furnishes him with fresh matters of discovery: so that if we consider the effects of his passion, one would rather think it proceeded from an inveterate hatred, than an excess of love; for certainly none can meet with more disquietude and un-. easiness than a suspected wife, if we except the jealous husband. But the great unhappiness of this passion is, that it naturally tends to alienate the affection which it is so solicitous to engross; and that for these two reasons, because it lays too great a constraint on the words and actions of the suspected person, and at the same time shows you have no honorable opinion of her; both of which are strong motives to aversion. Nor is this the worst effect of jealousy; for it often draws after it a more fatal train of consequences, and makes the person you suspect guilty of the very crimes you are so much afraid of. It is very natural for such who are treated ill and upbraided falsely, to find out an intimate friend that will hear their complaints, condole their sufferings, and endeavor to soothe and assuage their secret resentments. Beside, jealousy puts a woman often in mind of an ill thing that she would not otherwise perhaps have thought of, and fills her imagination with such an unlucky idea, as in time grows familiar, excites desire, and loses all the shame and horror which might at first attend it. Nor is it a wonder if she who suffers wrongfully in a man's opinion of her, and has therefore nothing to forfeit in his esteem, resolves to give him reason for his suspicions, and to enjoy the pleasure of the crime, since she must undergo the ignominy. Such probably were the considerations that directed the wise man in his advice to husbands: |