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for farewel may be a wish that even the angry man--the duellist-the violator of a trust, or the betrayer of a secret-the ungrateful object of our generosity, or the faithless lover, might use with propriety. The reprimanded might apply it as an admonition"take care for the future." The chalenged might interpret it into-" if you escape a hair trigger you will be well off." The person betrayed, might read it as" let your experience make you wise." The forsaken maiden, might accept it as advising her-" to look out for another husband." And thus the receiver of a letter would be at no loss to reconcile the contents with the assurance of the writer.

I confess, Mr. Editor, I think this would be an instance in which this classical age might be considerably improved, and the no-meaning of such complimentary forms would no longer remain as a reproach upon the sincerity of its epistolary style.

Now, Sir, I do expect that my postcript will vindicate the substance of my letter; and that should you insert both in the next Number of your amusing Miscellany, as you have already disposed of many of my humble contributious, you will reasonably believe, that I am, very truly, your obliged and bumble servant; and that in the full extent of the word, I may add the Roman Vale-"go on and prosper.". Or as it it is simply translated by the gentle Quaker.

Amen Corner,

FARE THEE WELL!

Nov. 29th, 1817.

LETTERS

FROM A FATHER TO HIS SON IN AN OFFICE UNDER GOVERNMENT.

LETTER VIII.

MY DEAR G,

-

HAT the greater part of what is

that can improve the mind, form the heart, and refine the manners, of any stripling youth just stepping into manhood, I have the boldness to declare; and this assertion I am sorry to be able to ground upon the evidence which the premature old men of the day, and the more juvenile profligates of fashionable notoriety, bear to the truth of it. Under the sanction of a decent exterior (I beg their pardon for using so homely a word, which their vocabulary does not contain) these ephemerals of vitiated gentility, take the liberty of committing any outrage upon the laws of moral life while they can contrive to keep on the safe side of those judicial restric tions which the courts below are vulgar enough to enforce upon such fringey remnants of half-titled frivolity, these infinitesimals of negative nobility, with as little regard for their nominal pretensions, as they would exercise towards any of the humbler Sabbath-breakers and midnight revellers of St. Giles's, who boast of the patronymic "O's, and Ap's, and Mac's, of their highblooded progenitors.

You are just young enough, G—, to be led into error; and I hope not so far matured in it, as to shut your heart against parental exposure of it. You will perhaps admit, that the ob servation and experience of a father, may have put him in possession of that knowledge of the world, which although it adds but little to his own store of wisdom, yet gives him an opportunity of preventing his son from becoming the dupe and victim of the folly of others. I will conclude, then, that you admit the possibility of this acquisition on the part of one, who lived at least a quarter of a century before you were born; and who, during your progress towards the years of discretion, has seen just enough of the maxims and manners of this very best company to discover, that the surest proof of discretion is, to shun the intercourse of those who so unwarrantably assume

Tcalled the very best company, is this characteristic, with as much anxiety

really the very worst into which a young man can be introduced, is a fact which no one who has noticed the progress of society during the last thirty years will be disposed to deny.-And that the habits and customs of those who expect to be considered by society as the members of this highly polished part of the community, are the most opposite to every principle and practice

as he would avoid the association of persons infected with a pestilential dis

ease.

Indeed, I never knew a young man who has once suffered himself to surrender his time to the risk of such contamination, but has found himself under the urgent necessity of yielding his obligations one by one, of religious, moral, and social duty, to the influen

tial progress of the corruption. His early sense of virtue is imperceptibly benumbed by the contact, until all his better convictions of propriety are paralyzed, and the most deplorable privations of every estimable feeling of the heart ensue There is generally such a cold-hearted unconcern for the purer sensibilities of human nature among these highly re fined ladies and gentlemen, that except a due observance of the meum and tuum of punctilious ceremony, they remain perfectly at ease respecting any event that may occur to raise or depress the worldly condition of those, whom they honor with the distinguish ed title of their dearest friends. Aud if at any time one of this favoured set, has by any chance been enabled to confer a favor upon them, such are their lofty conceptions of their personal claim to the attention, that the affair is perfectly reversed in all its dependencies; you are the obliged individual, by their condescending to accept your well intentioned service, which they regard as sufficiently acknowledged, by a few modish phrases, which inform you, that they are your eternally grateful, your ever obliged, your very faithful and devoted servants. Sentiments which dwell in the heart just as long as they live on the lip; that is, during the few pulsations which enable them to breathe out the uumeaning professions that mingle with the passing air, and are no more thought of.

This is an indifference, or as the French term better expresses it, a nonchalance, which gives so polite an ease to their demeanour, as to captivate the silly fancy of their humble imitators, who in their haste to acquire the manner, insensibly adopt the unprincipled insensibility on which it is formed. And many a young man who was once humble enough to suppose, that a warm and grateful heart was his fairest ornacent, after a short initiation into the habits of his great acquaintance, bas assumed the same high tone of selfreference, and disregarded all considerations, for the more just affections of the heart, as really too vulgar for his use, too common-place to deserve a moment's thought in his estimation.

That this is not a false view of the insolent pride of such persons, the general experience of those whom they

condescend to tolerate as their inferiors, will at once pronounce. But

there is a more pernicious consequence arising out of such dangerous intercourse, which I must notice, as it leads directly to that point to which I referred in my last letter.

Those who are too proud to confess the influence of the virtues of the heart, generally consider themselves too much elevated above the common notice of mankind to restrain its vices. Hence dissipation reigns with all its pernicious influence among them, and woe to the youthful novice who enters the sphere of its dominion; for a moment, perhaps, he hesitates, as he lifts the Circean cup to his lips; but when he sees so many willing subjects of vicious folly, living without thought, and revelling in enjoyment, he begins to listen to their seductive persuasions-he hears the loud laugh with which his scruples are derided, and be pauses no longer, but shows at one draught, that he has courage enough to be as vicious and as mað as the most depraved among them. Still, however, his better sense returns at intervals, and he finds himself often upon the point of yielding to the faithful remonstrance of his conscience, and the unanswerable dissuasives of his reason

- he feels the corrective convictions of right and wrong giving way-be marks the waste of time which his new course of life requires-he forms resolves of prudential reserve, but they are too feeble to resist the exalted examples of those who, with so much winning familiarity, unbend the rigid self-compla cency of their boasted high birth, and permit themselves to be addressed as his friend and his companion. "Surely," he says, "these persons who estimate themselves so much above the common level of society, are not to be reckoned below it because they assert to themselves their just right of independent indulgence, and shall I forfeit their favor and give up their interest merely because I have hitherto been constrained to submit to the old fashioned rules of humble life, the grave saws of a worn-out wisdom that is ever preaching in my ears the precepts of a virtue which is more often adopted from necessity than choice." Thus be labours hard to justify his subjection to evil, and as our moral poet Cowper writes

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With shallow shifts and old devices, worn And tattered in the service of debauch, Covering his shame from his offended sight." When once a young man finds himself compelled to degrade his reason so deplorably, as to make it the apologist of his dissipated inclinations, and the advocate of his vices, it is all over with him, and there is no hope of his conversion from either. This is a condition of his unhappy infatuation in which he soon acquires a boldness of imitation which enables him to vie even with the best company, in unblushing violation of the social virtues. His tongue becomes the apt pupil of his ear, and the sacred name of his God is blasphemed with a flippancy from which there was a time when he would have shrunk with horror. He swears, as the vulgar phrase is," like a lord"—but then "he means no harm by it;" and he simply concludes that there must be a certain grace in an oath, as her ladyship now and then indulges in it. But who ever heard, G. of a man or a woman swearing like a Christian? Perhaps you will express some surprise at a lady's swearing; yet it is not more strange than true; nor is it more monstrous than common among your best sort of company, to hear an oath uttered by a fashionable female, not with the timid lisp of apprehension, but with the full accent of masculine plainness; yet she means no harm by it," notoriety is all she has in view-" the thing's dashing" that's all.

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The next step of the young man's progress in this school of folly and dissipation, is the habit of twisting an observation into a double-entendre by some indecent pun or other; and if he should possess some ingenuity for the practice, he will be encouraged to pursue it by witnessing the relish with which the prurience of it is received by the men, and the promptitude with which it is comprehended by the women. little perseverance in this genteel accomplishment bids fair to place him among the most polished of these “ "pamperers of speech." But you will see that such contaminating converse must infect the very imaginations of the thoughts, and turn the very core of the heart into corruption in which all the fair health and beauty of a modest mind quickly fades and decays. Yet there is an excuse even for this, in which the disciple of these polite preceptors finds his first scruples completely quieted

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he is told it is wit, and that he is the life of the company; he is tapped upon the shoulder by one of his ladyship auditors, and called a wicked creature upon her honour. The young man not knowing the credit of the witness, or the worth of the evidence, begins to feel himself of consequence to the best company, as one among them; and in order that he may keep up his pretensions as the caterer of fun, seizes upon the most sacred subjects and characters for his licentious parodies and libertine ridiculestill, however, he means no harm-he only does it to amuse the best company who always love quizzing-there's nothing criminal in a joke-your strait. laced prigs are the stupidest beings on earth."

But he has not yet attained every qualification for this best company until he has been as drunk as a lord. He had heard, perhaps, that a real gentleman never disgraces himself by intoxication, as he had also heard that a man of refined manners and genuine good breed. ing never swears, nor deals in offensive ambiguities of expression, and that he has too much respect for religion to ri-, dicule either its ordinances or its ministers. But since our youth has kept the best company he knows this to be allfudge and humbug-two elegant expletives of much comprehensive extent of meaning, which are well understood by the best company, and by nobody else. He drinks his bottle, therefore, because he looks upon it as a proof of, manliness; and he boasts of having knocked up Lord John, Sir Harry, and the Major, t'other night, but he was not touched; he walked off with a couple of bottles, and was as well as he is at. the time he tells you this. His boast, however, is in danger of contradiction, when some one of the honourable, Misses insinuates, with a facetious, half-oath, that he was rather fresh when he came into the drawing-room, and that he was monstrous loving. He rebuts this charge, by declaring upon his. soul, that he was quite clear-not the least muddled-for that he can at any time drink two bottles-wine has no effect upon him. Now, here's a young man, G not more than 22 years of age, by getting into the best company, ruined in head and heart, and just as completely so as if he had herded with the lowest of his species. There is another part of his career, however, in which be is made to feel, perhaps, more of the

pernicious consequences of all this dissipation than he is willing to allow are attached to it, until he feels that he is no longer able to keep the best company-he is stripped at the card-table of what he had laid by to pay his tailor's bill-the larger portion of his last quarter's salary. But then he strives to console himself with the recollection that he lost his money in the best company. He then sets about devising some method of recovering his repeated losses, and studies the mysteries of gambling with unremitting application until he knows as much as his dear quality friends, who had taken advantage of his ignorance, and robbed him of the scanty contents of his purse with as little scruple as so many fool pads would have taken that purse from him. He is not now contented with his former consolation, when he was assured by the high-blooded gamblers that he lost his money like a gentleman!—he now resolves to win like a sharper-and in due Course of probation he is taken in by the male and female proficients in this branch of thievery, as a participator in the spoils of other vain and silly pigeons like himself. However, if he is told that he plays high, by some of his humbler associates, he has an excsue ready for them- he keeps the best company, and he is fond of a game of whist-there's no harm in now and then playing a rubber.

Well, G. whither does all this description tend, and what is my object in thus exposing the vicious follies of this victim of the best company? I will tell you. A young man, who thinks that he is honoured by being admitted into the society of those who condescend to call him friend, and who affect to patronize him, not so much for his sike as to impress upon his unsuspecting mind an idea of their own importance in society, steps out of his station, in which he might have been virtuously happy, and risks the sacrifice of every a niable principle without the possibi lity of reaping a single benefit, which his factitiously great associates have induced him to expect, by assurances which they are conscious they cannot realize, and by promises which they never mean to perform. Led on by the hope which he foolishly cherishes, in spite of repeated disappointments, he conforms his morals to maxims which he cannot but, despise, and assi milates his manners with habits which

disgust him. The danger is in his continuing the association so long as to contract a taste for the vicious applica tion of both to the character of his mind and the conduct of his life; for in this case a love of dissipation is sure to follow; and this invariably produces a contempt for the more sober-minded regulations of society, and a constant strug gle against those constraints to which the dependence of his station or the duties of his calling in life insist upon his submission. But if nothing more ruinous than the waste of his time should ensue, he will find, in the end, that this brings a bitterness of reflection along with it which will be the source of considerable disquietude to him, and of much subsequent disappointment in those views which industry and temperance would have secured to his possession.

When I see a young man, who has nothing but his assiduity and his wages to depend upon, surrendering the one to the frivolous society of the would-begreat, and squandering the other in their spurious pleasures, I contemplate him as heaping up for his old age (if his constitution hold out to that period) a hoard of evils, with which poverty and remorse are sure to recompense his improvidence.

I do not alarm myself with the appre hension that such will be your lot; yet I can appeal to the sad experience of many a oue among those who filled in their youth the same station as yourself, for the truth of what I have advanced.

For safety sake, however, I venture to prescribe to you a preventive against so afflictive a defeat of hopes, once justified by good conduct, but eventually frustrated by vicious association.

Despise the vanities of that pride which seeks its gratifications in a contempt of moral decorum.

Be content to keep within your station, and to adorn it by the virtues which its duties require.

Never look above you until you are secure of the ground on which you

move.

Let not the specious professions of those who are too great in their own eyes to take any trouble of being good in the eyes of others, deceive you out of that humble-mindedness which is the mainspring of every just feeling and worthy action.

Suspect the friendship of every one whose advice tends to alienate you from those obligations in the fulalling of

which consists all moral and social excellence. And shun the company of all from whose lips you hear that excellence ridiculed, and set at nought.

Be not induced by the sophistry of the vicious to allow a necessity for vice; for there cannot be any good reason for doing a bad thing. The poet will show you why.

Such reasonings (if that name must needs belong

Texcuses in which reason has no part)
Serve to compose a spirit well inclined
To live on terms of amity with vice,
And sin without disturbance.

Make your heart your happiest home, and you will always be in the best company-for your thoughts will never drive you into dissipation by self-reproach.

Consider the wise as the most honourable part of society, and the virtuous as the wisest.

Never be ashamed of showing that you are a Christian, if you would not be ashamed of yourself as a man, and remember that the plain dress of unaf fected piety is of more value than all the tinselled glitter of quality binding in the world.

And let me hope that you will believe him who gives you this advice, to have done so from no other motives than those which may be supposed to actuate an affectionate father. W.

A CONVERSAZIONE.
(Continued from page 309.)
ERE Mr.

HERI perceiving that the

Conversazione Party, to which he had been invited in right of his wife, consisted of a medley of characters, in which contrariety seemed to form the most prevalent feature, took upon him to assume his own; and knowing the irritability of the Baronet, as well as that of Lady S, and the little reserve which both retained in the expression of their sentiments, very considerately broke short the growing contest betwem them: and addressing himself to Miss G as the Mistress of the bouse, requested her permission, with the concurrence of the company, to give his opinion upon the question which had been reported to him.-That Lady, who understood in all its reference this application of Mr. -, very readily admitted it, and entreated him to proceed.-Lady S had already marshalled all her forces of tongue-the ar

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tillery of her eyes was planted in hostile array-the whole materiel of repartee was ready for assault, and the City Baronet began to shrink from the tremendous menace, when Miss Gbegged she might hear Mr. solution of the problem which had been advanced-Lady Smade a strong effort to subdue her rising ire, and, with a murmuring echo of Sir B's last words, "the knowing ones,' convulsively ejaculated

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Well, if it must be so, it must, but I protest against the rudeness of such personal reflections; Sir B- I shall not forget it."

"I did'nt intend your Ladyship should," was the Baronet's reply, and settling himself on his chair by throw ing one knee over the other, he put himself into a deliberate posture of listening earnestness. .. Mr.

said he, we are all attention." "Monstrous!" whispered Lady S to Mrs.; Did you ever know any thing so affronting ?"

With a turn of the upper lip and a toss of the head, Mrs. seemed pci fectly to respond to her Ladyship's wrathful ejaculation; and throwing her self back upon the sofa and shutting her eyes, seemed to await her husband's discussion of her paradox with an unconcern which seemed to say, ' Aye, you may say what you please, but I have resolved not to attend to it.'

Here, Mr. Editor, I could not help indulging the impression of my thoughts, which, had I thought aloud, would have broke into the following ejaculation:

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Whence is it, that, in conjugal life, we see so much incongruity of temper and disparity of mind combined in an union of two persons, who, by their own choice, have solemnly vowed to travel in company through the vicissitudes of this world to the grave; and thorny as the path is, by this dissimilarity, even the few roses which might have been secured are left ungathered, in consequence of the petulant anxiety of one of the parties, that they may not be enjoyed by the other. Strange infatuation! miserable waywardness of heart! Can the sweet ingenuousness of youthful affection have prompted to such au union? Can that mutual regard which ought to lead two hearts to the altar of their God, have equally influ enced both? Here is a man who had intellect enough to guide, and education enough to instruct, his wife, linked

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