article has feen exhibited in this metropolis, a reprefentation of him in this ignominious confinement, which could not fail of exciting in the fpectator's breast a generous compaffion.

His recent escape from France, is now the subject of converfation with all ranks and claffes of people. The mode by which it was effected, demands our admiration. A great mind is ever fertile of expedients. There are various accounts of his flight. We present to our readers the following fhort detail, taken from a refpectable print. It is ftamped with the marks of authenticity:

"Sir Sydney Smith landed at Portsmouth, on Saturday, May 5th, from his Majesty's fhip Argo, of 44 guns, Captain Brown. He made his escape in an open boat from the coaft of France, and was picked up by the Argo. After taking fome refreshment at the George Inn, he fet off in a poft chaise for London. However, before he could poffibly get away, his arrival was publicly known, when a vast number of the inhabitants affembled at the inn, and infifted to draw him to the outfide of the gates before they would allow the horses to be put to the carriage. They then teftified their joy of his return to his native country by loud and repeated huzzas.

The accident by which he and two others obtained their liberty is fomewhat extraordinary. For greater fecurity, they had been removed from their late prifon, and were on their way to a place in the interior, with the ufual escort. A vaft concourfe of people being collected to fee SIR SYDNEY pass, and a dangerous tumult having arifen, the prisoners found an opportunity to escape from the coach, and immediately mingled with the crowd. Their knowledge of the French language, and prefence of mind, precluded detection, and they easily obtained a writer in the woods, where they happily remained conracter in hiwo days and two nights. Fortune continuing of his eccentrr efforts, they at last obtained a paffage by

committing

committing themselves, in an open boat, to the fea, and were taken up by the Argo, who landed them at Portfmouth on Saturday evening, whence, at ten o'clock, they immediately set off for London.

Two expreffes were fent off on their arrival at the Admiralty, one to Sir Sydney's father, at Dover, and the other to Lord Spencer, then at Windfor, who immediately returned to town, with whom Sir Sydney yesterday dined. He foon after his arrival paid his refpects to the PRINCE OF WALES."

Such are the particulars of Sir Sydney's escape which have yet transpired. Should a more circumftantial account be laid before the public, we fhall prefent it to our readers in our next Number. In the mean time, we cannot but remark, that with the fuccefs of his attempt it is impoffible not be pleased. We applaud the adroitness with which it must have been planned, and the alacrity by which it was fully accomplished. Indeed we offer the liberated captive our fincere congratulations. Nor can we close this narrative, without expreffing a perfuafion, that ere long we fhall have to record fome still more eminent fervices, performed by this hero in behalf of his country.

THE REFLECTOR.

[No. XV.]

"The paffion excited by beauty is, in fact, nearer to a species of melancholy, than to jollity or mirth.”

THE

Burke on the Sublime and Beautiful.

HE melancholy of lovers has been a subject of general obfervation; and it hath been enquired how a quality fo replete with felicity, as is understood of love, fhould prove, in the first inftance. little more than mifery to its poffeffor? It would appear, however, as our

fenfations

parent

fenfations of mirth are never productive of ultimate fatisfaction, that beauty, which is in most minds the of love, thould, in order to the profperity of its offspring, be attended with "a fpecies of melancholy." Thofe objects from which we derive our greatest pleasures, are moftly of a penfive defcription. The dance may amuse and delight us-but it is almost inftantaneously obliterated, while circumftances affecting to the heart, are experienced with tenderness, and treasured with affiduity. Love is not talkative. In familiar life, the chief fources of our amusement are derived from converfing with the intelligent, and those around us; while the lover, ftrange as it may feem, however accomplished and cultivated his mistress, is best gratified by a filent attention to her beauties, and a fort of mute admiration. Women do not appear to be properly acquainted with this truth. They would confider fuch a fuitor as ftupid: the rattler they admire; and it is but a ftep from admiration to love. The dear delightful dog, who can prate gaily of what he does not comprehend, and launch forth into a thousand idle eulogiums of a beauty to which he is infenfible;-this sweet compound of every thing that is light, pretty, and agreeable, will be preferred to the man of fenfe and affection, merely because the latter, from the very nature of fenfe and affection, is incapable of fuch folly. We know it has been said, that the same things will act differently on different individuals, and the affertion may hold good in a majority of instances. But love, which has been called the universal paffion, unless in cafes of inability, is uniform in its effect. Real love is always timid, folicitous, attentive. Thefe are qualities not to be affected, and they ferve to diftinguish the value of the fame fentiment in its manifold applications.

Among those pleasures which are dear to recollection, we trace few that are strictly mirthful. There is fomething in mirth not at all congenial to contemplation, an act characteristic of the memory. What is cherished by reflection, will be found interesting to the heart. Love,

it

it is known, gathers strength and stability from abfence; deprived awhile of its object, a thousand little tenderneffes are valued as fubjects of the firft regard, which, when received, were but cominonly efteemed. Abfence is a kind of death, and there is no one who need be apprifed of the benevolence we feel towards thofe who can offend no more. But all this would not happen to love, if it were not, as Mr. Burke fays of beauty, allied to a fpecies of melancholy.

To thofe who have accompanied the human mind in its progrefs from childhood to maturity, and from thence to the decline of life, this inclination in man to ideas in themselves folitary and pensive, must be clearly evident. Even youth, the very spring of hilarity, has a bias to melancholy. This is daily demonftrated in the poetry of our most cultivated young men and it may not appear fo extraordinary if we confider, that the diftinction between melancholy and grief is effentially marked; the firft as a pleafing, the latter as a corroding paffion. Grief is certainly inimical to the playfulness of our early days; but melancholy, fo far from having a fimilar influence, by giving a kind of fhade to our ideas, feems to relieve us from the too great luftre of a juvenile imagination; it is a grove to defend us from the over-powering influence of the noon-day fun, where we fit and contemplate with more effect the furrounding landscape: it is, in fact, the evening of thought.

No one thinks of addreffing his mistress in the language of mirth. All our poets, excepting Cowley and Waller, have treated plaintively of love: thefe were frange exceptions-Cowley, a fanciful metaphyfician, and Waller, a fprightly courtier; the former was far. fetched and obtrufe, the last, though fometimes tender, was on the whole rampant and debonaire; and, while Cowley is fuppofed to have had no miftrefs, Waller had too many to love any: it would therefore be idle to enumerate thefe writers as exceptions to a general rule. Beauty implies fome kind of perfection, and it does VOL. IV.

B

not

not matter, while that perfection is understood, whether it be real or imaginary. Perhaps it may be affirmed, that the contemplation of every species of perfection, is attended with melancholy on two accounts-it always carries with it the ideas of greatnefs and purity, which infpire us with a melancholy refpect; while we imbibe a kind of regret or penfiveness, in the comparison which we are tempted to draw betwixt ourselves and the object of our admiration. Certain, however, it is, whatever obfcurities may be found to attach to the explication I have attempted on this occafion, that "the paffion excited by beauty is, in fact, nearer to a species of melancholy, than to jollity or mirth."

A

GOSSIPIANA.

[No. XVII.]

MILTON'S DAUGHTERS.

S Milton at his death left his affairs very much in

the power of his widow, though the acknowledged that he died worth fifteen hundred pounds, yet fhe allowed but one hundred pounds to each of his three daughters. Anne, the eldeft, was decrepid and deformed! but had a very handfome face: fhe married a masterbuilder, and died in child-bed of her first child, who died with her. Mary, the second, lived and died fingle. Deborah, the youngest, in her father's life time went over to Ireland with a lady; and afterwards was married to Mr. Abraham Clarke, a weaver in Spitalfields, and died in August, 1727, in the 76th year of her age. She is faid to have been a woman of good understanding and genteel behaviour, though in low circumstances. As she had been often called to read Homer and Ovid's Metamorphofes to her father, she could have repeated a confiderable