"Thus, in the great mysterious system of change, by which the universe is governed, we see one thing gradually drop into another; and, amidst a perpetual fluctuation of its parts, the great order of the world goes on with unchangeable constancy. While one day telleth another, and one night certifieth another;' while the seasons return with unfailing regularity, and the great and governing laws of nature preserve an unerring uniformity; a silent succession of parts, a perpetual course of renewal and decay in the organization of the particulars which compose this great whole, make the tenure of life and all its circumstances awfully precarious in the midst of such general certainty and catholic order.

"This fickle constitution of our natures I can easily apply to myself; I can imagine the hand with which I am writing palsied and decayed;-but on thy dear face I cannot suppose a wrinkle; I cannot figure to my fancy that victory of time, which shall destroy the charms of that mouth I have so often hung over enraptured. Yet, my dear Emily, that beauty must yield, all paramount as it is at present; and unless the grave interfere, those features will one day have nothing but the mind to illuminate them, though such a mind as would have made thee handsome in spite of rules.

"You complain of the grave turn of my reflections, and recommend me to mix in the world, and take a part in its contests and ambitions. Indeed, my child, I am not dull, except when you are from me: as for grave reflections, this is surely not a merry being that we possess; and it is more our own folly than the comedy of life which makes some of us go so laughingly through it. But into the contests and ambitions of the world, another consideration deters me from embarking-and that is, the

vanity and uncertainty with which they are attended. I am no novice in the game of life; and it is from conviction that I affirm all that part of it to be but a splendid cheat in which our solid comforts are played against a slippery and hazardous elevation. I should as soon persuade myself to sacrifice my friend to a momentary jest, as to give up what I conceive to be the serious business of life for the short-lived vanity of rising in the world.

Happily, you have more reading than experience in the affairs of mankind; but your reading supplies you with sufficient examples of the disappointment of every scheme of aggrandisement whose views terminate with our present existence. In all the compass of history, I know of no instance in which ambition has ended in enjoyment, or wherein its troubles and sacrifices have been ultimately rewarded. Those have turned it to the best account who have voluntarily descended from their heights, and anticipated the changes of fortune by a timely abdication. Yet these have in some measure cut off their own retreat by an unavoidable depravation of their minds in a course of ambitious pursuits: for a mind once exercised to cabal and intrigue, is unhappy in its own element, and unfitted for every other.

"If, then, after all our endeavours, and all our anxieties, the best we can do with our bargain is to forfeit the deposit, how infinitely wiser to rest satisfied as we are, and give up the concern altogether! I am sure you are not unacquainted with the name of Pyrrhus, although you may happen to be with this anecdote of him. What do you propose to self in this expedition against the Romans?' says To conquer all Italy,' answers the moAnd what next?' Next we will make

Cineas.

narch.

Sicily our own.’

your

sail into Africa, and bring that country into subjection to our arms.' 'And after this?' • After this, we will sit down and be merry.' And what,' returns Cineas,

at present?

prevents your majesty from doing so

"In truth, the only conquest necessary to be gained for the attainment of this object, is the conquest of one's-self; and if I have not advanced in this sufficiently far to render myself merry, I am at least become by its assistance tolerably tranquil. I think I am armed against most of the vicissitudes of this world, except those in which love is concerned ; and here, indeed, should any cross accident intervene, I cannot answer for my own philosophy, or even for my life. Ah! why, my dearest Emily, do we yet delay to complete that felicity which is within our grasp, and to raise what rampart we can round our loves, by such means as our stars afford us? I have seen the rev. Mr. OLIVE-BRANCH to-day, who has promised to perform the ceremony of our nuptials. This kind promise on his part seems in a manner to strengthen those sacred bonds which unite us; to give alacrity to my confidence, and security to my hopes. He says the verses you sent are exquisite, and ought to afford me some consolation. They are indeed beautiful; but a smile from thee, dear girl, would have wrought a more powerful effect.-Adieu."

The history of all times and all nations is so replete with examples of sudden elevations and sudden downfalls in the lives of particular persons, that I have forborne to introduce any instances in aid of my observations. Besides which, the riotous sports of fortune in a neighbouring kingdom have afforded such a train of unprecedented revolutions, as beggars all former experience. The vulgar details of the

day are full of lessons on the instability of greatness, and the vanity of ambition; the very elements of civilization have been destroyed in a moment, and society itself disbanded. In the general agitation and tumult, the very mud of the community has been excited from the bottom of the pool, which no longer reflects from its surface the human face divine, but exhibits a dark and melancholy abyss, in which nothing is traceable, nothing distinct; nothing but a squalid commixture of human woes and depravities. At this moment, how many testimonies to the instability of grandeur are spread over this part of the globe! How many are wandering without homes, whose homes were principalities; and how many have exchanged their palaces for prisons! How humiliating are these lessons to the pride of human nature! But a little while ago our shores were visited by a mendicant general, supplicating an asylum in that country whose establishments he had menaced with certain overthrow, whose prosperity he had viewed with derision, and whose fair and flourishing land in his heart he had vowed to destruction.

Such catastrophes instruct us in the littleness of our pride and pretensions, and show us the folly of all those hopes which depend upon man for their accomplishment. They are greater, indeed, than such as fall within the experience of ordinary men, and more awful by their magnitude; but they are only the same, on a greater scale, with those constant miscarriages in lower life, with which every attempt is accompanied, that is not founded on principles of prudence and probity, and makes no provision for those perpetual shocks and vicissitudes which place disappointment and disaster among the moral certainties of life.

N° 66. SATURDAY, AUGUST 17.

Salis est, mi Tiberi, si hoc habemus ne quis nobis male facere possit. SUETON. in Aug.

"Let them say what they please, Tiberius; it is enough revenge for us, that we are out of the reach of their malice."

THE reader may naturally wonder, that, considering the prevalence of scandal in the world, it has not drawn upon itself, before this time, the attention of the LOOKER-ON. The truth is, that, like a cautious physician, I am not fond of being called in upon desperate occasions; and I really regard the propensity to slander and detraction as one of the most incurable diseases to which the mind of man is subject. It seems hardly to undergo the common fluctuations which we may observe in the course of other vices. In all ages and all nations it has been triumphantly mischievous; and from Hesiod to Addison, every moral writer has complained of it, as the prevailing infirmity of his times. The gigantic growth, ascendancy, and universality of this evil, arise from the extraordinary nourishment it receives from all the bad propensities of our nature: there is no passion but what lends to it some assistance; and the sources which contribute to sustain it are so various and inexhaustible, that, before it can be subdued in the mind, a thousand collateral supports must be destroyed.