guilty of self-complacency: the person so excellent is the person who distinguishes us-and we are too apt to insert into the general eulogium the distinction we ourselves have received from him who is himself so much distinguished by others.

With respect to that fatal and most indelicate, nay, gross maxim, that "a reformed rake makes the best husband;" (an aphorism to which the principles and the happiness of so many young women have been sacrificed;) it goes upon the preposterous supposition, not only that effects do not follow causes, but that they oppose them; on the supposition, that habitual vice creates rectitude of character, and that sin produces happiness: thus flatly contradicting what the moral government of God uniformly exhibits in the course of human events, and what revelation so evidently and universally teaches.

For it should be observed, that the reformation is generally, if not always, supposed to be brought about by the all-conquering force of female charms. Let but a profligate young man have a point to carry, by winning the affections of a vain and thoughtless girl; he will begin his attack upon her heart by undermining her religious principles, and artfully removing every impediment which might have obstructed her receiving the addresses of a man without character. And, while he will lead her not to hear without ridicule the mention of that change of heart which Scripture teaches, and experience proves that the power of Divine grace can work on a vicious character; while he will teach her to sneer at a change which he would treat with contempt, because he denies the possibility of so strange and miraculous a conversion; yet he will not scruple to swear that the power of her beauty has worked a revolution in his own loose practices, which is equally complete and instantaneous.

But, supposing his reformation to be genuine, it would even then by no means involve the truth of her proposition, that past libertinism insures future felicity; yet many a weak girl, confirmed in this palatable doctrine by examples she has frequently admired of those surprising reformations so conveniently effected in the last scene of most of our comedies, has not scrupled to risk her earthly and eternal happiness with a man, who is not ashamed to ascribe to the influence of her beauty that power of changing the heart which he impiously denies to Omnipotence itself.

As to the last of these practical aphorisms, that," there is no medium in marriage, but that it is a state of exquisite happiness, or exquisite misery;" this, though not equally sinful, is equally delusive; for marriage is only one modification of human life, and human life is not commonly in itself a state of exquisite extremes; but is, for the most part, that mixed and moderate state, so naturally dreaded by those who set out with fancying this world a state of rapture, and so naturally expected by those who know it to be a state of probation and discipline. Marriage, therefore, is only one condition, and often the best condition, of that imperfect state of being which, though seldom very exquisite, is often very tolerable; and which may yield much comfort to those who do not look for constant transport. But, unfortunately, those who find themselves disappointed of the unceasing raptures they had anticipated in marriage, disdaining to sit down with so poor a provision as comfort, and scorning the acceptance of that moderate lot which Providence commonly bestows with a view to check

despondency and to repress presumption; give themselves up to the other alternative, and, by abandoning their hearts to discontent, make to themselves that misery with which their fervid imaginations had filled the opposite scale.

The truth is, these young ladies are very apt to pick up their opinions, less from the divines than the poets; and the poets, though it must be confessed they are some of the best embellishers of life, are not quite the safest conductors through it. In travelling through a wilderness, though we avail ourselves of the harmony of singing-birds to render the grove delightful, yet we never think of following them as guides to conduct us through its labyrinths.

Those women, in whom the natural defects of a warm temper have been strengthened by an education which fosters their faults, are very dexterous in availing themselves of a hint, when it favours a ruling inclination, soothes vanity, indulges indolence, or gratifies their love of power. They have heard so often, from their favourite sentimental authors, and their more flattering male friends, “that when nature denied them strength, she gave them fascinating graces in compensation; that their strength consists in their weakness;" and that "they are endowed with arts of persuasion which supply the absence of force, and the place of reason;" that they learn, in time, to pride themselves on that very weakness, and to become vain of their imperfections; till at length they begin to claim for their defects, not only pardon, but admiration. Hence they acquire a habit of cherishing a species of feeling, which, if not checked, terminates in excessive selfishness; they learn to produce their inability to bear contradiction, as a proof of their tenderness; and to indulge in that sort of irritability in all that relates to themselves, which inevitably leads to the utter exclusion of all interest in the sufferings of others. Instead of exercising their sensibility in the wholesome duty of relieving distress and visiting scenes of sorrow, that sensibility itself is pleaded as a reason for their not being able to endure sights of woe, and for shunning the distress it should be exerted in removing. That exquisite sense of feeling which God implanted in the heart as a stimulus to quicken us in relieving the miseries of others, is thus introverted, and learns to consider self not as the agent, but the object of compassion. Tenderness is made an excuse for being hard-hearted; and, instead of drying the weeping eyes of others, this false delicacy reserves its selfish and ready tears for the more elegant and less expensive sorrows of the melting novel or the pathetic tragedy.

When feeling stimulates only to self-indulgence; when the more exquisite affections of sympathy and pity evaporate in sentiment, instead of flowing out in active charity, and affording assistance, protection, or consolation to every species of distress within its reach; it is an evidence that the feeling is of a spurious kind, and, instead of being nourished as an amiable tenderness, it should be subdued as a fond and base self-love.

That idleness, to whose cruel inroads many women of fortune are unhappily exposed, from not having been trained to consider wholesome occupation, vigorous exertion, and systematic employment, as making part of the indispensable duties and pleasures of life, lays them open to a thousand evils of this kind, from which the useful and the busy are exempted; and, perhaps, it would not be easy to find a more pitiable object than a woman with a great deal of time and a great deal of money

on her hands, who, never having been taught the conscientious use of either, squanders both at random, or rather moulders both away, without plan, without principle, and without pleasure: all whose projects begin and terminate in self; who considers the rest of the world only as they may be subservient to her gratification; and to whom it never occurred, that both her time and money were given for the gratification and good of others. It is not much to the credit of the other sex, that they now and then lend themselves to the indulgence of this selfish spirit in their wives, and cherish by a kind of false fondness those faults which should be combated by good sense and a reasonable counteraction; slothfully preferring a little false peace, the purchase of precarious quiet, and the popular reputation of good-nature, to the higher duty of forming the mind, fixing the principles, and strengthening the character of her with whom they are connected. Perhaps, too, a little vanity in the husband helps out his good-nature; he secretly rewards himself for his sacrifice by the consciousness of his superiority; he feels a self-complacency in his patient condescension to her weakness, which tacitly flatters his own strength; and he is, as it were, paid for stooping, by the increased sense of his own tallness. Seeing also, perhaps, but little of other women, he is taught to believe that they are all pretty much alike, and that, as a man of sense, he must content himself with what he takes to be the common lot. Whereas, in truth, by his misplaced indulgence, he has rather made his own lot than drawn it; and thus, through an indolent despair in the husband, of being able to effect any amendment by opposition, and through the want of that sound affection. which labours to improve and exalt the character of its object; it happens, that many a helpless, fretful, and daudling wife acquires a more powerful ascendancy than the most discreet and amiable woman; and that the most absolute female tyranny is established by these sickly and capricious humours.

The poets again, who, to do them justice, are always ready to lend a helping hand when any mischief is to be done, have contributed their full share towards confirming these feminine follies; they have strengthened by adulatory maxims, sung in seducing strains, those faults which their talents and their influence should have been employed in correcting. By fair and youthful females an argument, drawn from sound experience and real life, is commonly repelled by a stanza or a sonnet: and a couplet is considered as nearly of the same validity with a text. When ladies are complimented with being

"fine by defect, and delicately weak !”

is not a standard of feebleness held out to them, to which vanity will gladly resort, and to which softness and indolence can easily act up, or rather act down, if I may be allowed the expression?

When ladies are told by the same misleading, but to them high, authority, that "smiles and tears are the irresistible arms with which nature has furnished the weak for conquering the strong," will they not eagerly fly to this cheap and ready artillery, instead of labouring to furnish themselves with a reasonable mind, an equable temper, and a meek and quiet spirit? Every animal is endowed by Providence with the peculiar powers adapted to its nature and its wants; while none, except the human, by graft

ing art on natural sagacity, injures or mars the gift. Spoilt women, who fancy there is something more piquant and alluring in the mutable graces of caprice, than in the monotonous smoothness of an even temper; and who also having heard much, as was observed before, about their "amiable weakness," learn to look about them for the best succedaneum to strength, the supposed absence of which they sometimes endeavour to supply by artifice. By this engine, the weakest woman frequently furnishes the converse to the famous reply of the French minister, who, when he was accused of governing the mind of that feeble queen, Mary de Medicis, by sorcery, replied, "that the only sorcery he had used, was that influence which strong minds naturally have over weak ones."

But though it be fair so to study the tempers, defects, and weaknesses of others, as to convert our knowledge of them to the promotion of their benefit and our own; and though it be making a lawful use of our penetration to avail ourselves of others for "their good to edification ;" yet all deviations from the straight line of truth and simplicity, every plot insidiously to turn influence to unfair account, all contrivances to extort from a bribed complaisance what reason and justice would refuse to our wishes; these are some of the operations of that lowest and most despicable engine, selfish cunning, by which little minds sometimes govern great ones.

The

And, unfortunately, women, from their natural desire to please, and from their sometimes doubting by what means this grand end may be best effected, are in more danger of being led into dissimulation than men ; for dissimulation is the result of weakness; it is the refuge of doubt and distrust, rather than of conscious strength, the dangers of which lie another way. Frankness, truth, and simplicity, therefore, as they are inexpressibly charming, so are they peculiarly commendable, in women; and nobly evince that while the possessors of them wish to please, (and why should they not wish it?) they disdain to have recourse to anything but what is fair and just and honourable, to effect it; that they scorn to attain the most desired end by any but the most lawful means. beauty of simplicity is indeed so intimately felt and generally acknowledged by all who have a true taste for personal, moral, or intellectual beauty, that women of the deepest dissimulation often find their account in assuming an exterior the most foreign to their character, and exhibiting the most engaging naïveté. It is curious to see how much art they put in practice in order to appear natural; and the deep design which is set at work to display simplicity. And indeed this feigned simplicity is the most mischievous, because the most engaging of all the Proteus forms which artifice can put on. For the most free and bold sentiments have been sometimes hazarded with fatal success under this unsuspected mask. And an innocent, quiet, indolent, artless manner has been adopted as the most refined and successful accompaniment of sentiments, ideas, and designs, neither artless, quiet, nor innocent.

CHAPTER XVII.

On Dissipation, and the modern habits of fashionable life.

PERHAPS the interests of true friendship, elegant conversation, mental improvement, social pleasure, maternal duty, and conjugal comfort, never received such a blow as when fashion issued out that arbitrary and universal decree, that "everybody must be acquainted with everybody;" together with that consequent, authoritative, but rather inconvenient clause, that "everybody must also go everywhere every night." The implicit and devout obedience paid to this law is incompatible with the very being of friendship; for as the circle of acquaintance expands, and it will be continually expanding, the affections will be beaten out into such thin laminæ as to leave little solidity remaining. The heart, which is continually exhausting itself in professions, grows cold and hard. The feelings of kindness diminish in proportion as the expression of it becomes more diffuse and indiscriminate. The very traces of "simplicity and godly sincerity," in a delicate female, wear away imperceptibly by constant collision with the world at large. And perhaps no woman takes so little interest in the happiness of her real friends, as she whose affections are incessantly evaporating in universal civilities; as she who is saying fond and flattering things at random to a circle of five hundred people every night.

The decline and fall of animated and instructive conversation has been in a good measure effected by this barbarous project of assembling en masse. An excellent prelate,* with whose friendship the author was long honoured, and who himself excelled in the art of conversation, used to remark, that a few years had brought about a great revolution in the manners of society; that it used to be the custom, previously to going into company, to think that something was to be communicated or received, taught or learnt; that the powers of the understanding were expected to be brought into exercise, and that it was therefore necessary to quicken the mind, by reading and thinking, for the share the individual might be expected to take in the general discourse; but that now, knowledge, and taste, and wit, and erudition, seemed to be scarcely considered as necessary materials to be brought into the pleasurable commerce of the world; because now there was little chance of turning them to much account; and therefore, he who possessed them, and he who possessed them not, were nearly on a footing.

It is obvious also that multitudinous assemblies are so little favourable to that cheerfulness which it should seem to be their very end to promote, that if there were any chemical process by which the quantum of spirits, animal or intellectual, could be ascertained, the diminution would be found to have been inconceivably great, since the transformation of man and woman from a social to a gregarious animal.

But if it be true that friendship, society, and cheerfulness, have sustained so much injury by this change of manners, how much more pointedly does the remark apply to family happiness!

Notwithstanding the known fluctuation of manners and the mutability

The late Bishop Horne.