fund of fatisfaction with which I could supply the lofs of my customary amusements. I unhappily told my aunt, in the first warmth of our embraces, that I had leave to stay with her ten weeks. Six only are yet gone, and how shall I live through the remaining four? I go out and return; I pluck a flower, and throw it away; I catch an insect, and when I have examined its colours, set it at liberty; I fling a pebble into the water, and see one circle spread aster another. When it chances to rain, I walk in the great hall, and watch the minute-hand upon the dial, or play with a litter of kittens, which the cat happens to have brought in a lucky time. My aunt is asraid I shall grow melancholy, and theresore encourages the neighbouring gentry to visk us. They came at first with great eagerness to see the sine lady from London, but when we met, we had no common topick on which we could converse; they had no curiosity aster plays, operas, or musick: and I find as little fatisfaction from their accounts of the quarrels or alliances of families, whose names, when once I can escape, I shall never hear. The women have now seen me, know how my gown is made, and are fatisfied; the men are generally asraid of me, and fay little, because they think themselves not at liberty to talk rudely. Thus am I condemned to solitude; the day moves flbwly forward, and I see the dawn with uneasiness, because I consider that night is at a great distance. I have tried to sleep by a brook, but find its murmurs ineffectual; so that I am forced to be awake at least twelve twelve hours* without visits, without cards, without laughter, and without flattery. I walk because I am disgusted with sitting still, and sit down because I am weary with walking. I have no motive to action, nor any object of love, or hate, or sear, or inclination. I cannot dress with spirit, for I have neither rival nor admirer. I cannot dance without a partner, nor be kind, or cruel, without a lover. Such is the lise of Euphelia, and such it is likely to continue for a month to come. 1 have not yet declared against existence, nor called upon the destinies to cut my thread; but I have sincerely resolved not to condemn myself to such another summer, nor too hastily to flatter myself with happiness. Yet I have heard, Mr. Rambler, of thofe who never thought themselves so much at ease as in solitude, and cannot but suspect it to be some way or other my own sault, that, without great pain, either of mind or body, I am thus weary of myself: that the current of youth stagnates, and that I am languishing in a dead calm, for want of some external impulse. I shall therefore think you a benesactor to our sex, if you will teach me the art of living alone; for I am confident that a thousand and a thousand and a thousand ladies, who afsect to talk with ecstasies os the pleasures of the country, are in reality, like me, longing for the winter, and wishing to be delivered srom themselves by company and diversion. I am, SIR, Yours, Euphelia. Numb. 43. Tuesday, Augujl 14, 1750. Flumint ftrpetuo lorrins solet acriut ire, Sed tamen btec brerjis tft, ilia pertunis aqua. Qi ta in course impetuous soon the torrent dries, IT is observed by those who have written on the constitution of the human body, and the original of those diseases by which it is afflicted, that every man comes into the world morbid, that there is no temperature so exactly regulated but that some humour is fatally predominant, and that we are generally impregnated, in our first entrance upon lise, with the seeds of that malady, which, in time, shall bring os to the grave. This remark has been extended by others to the intellectual faculties. Some, that imagine themselves to have looked with more than common penetration into human nature, have endeavoured to persuade us that each man is born with a mind formed peculiarly for certain purposes, and with desires unalterably determined to particular objects, from which the attention cannot be long diverted, and which alone, as they are well or ill pursued, must produce the praise or blame, the happiness or misery, of his suture lise. This pofition has nor, indeed, been hitherto proved with strength proportionate to the assurance with which it has been advanced, and, perhaps, will never gain much prevalence by a clofe examination. If the doctrine of innate ideas be itself disputable, there seems to be lirtle hope of establishing an opinion, which suppofes that even complications of ideas have been given us at our birth, and that we are made by nature ambitious, or covetous, before we know the meaning of either power or money. Yet as every step in the progression of existence changes our pofition with respect to the things about us, so as to lay us open to new assaults and particular dangers, and subjects us to inconveniencies from which any other situation is exempt as a public or a private lise, youth and age, wealth and poverty, have all some evil clofely adherent, which cannot wholly be escaped but by quitting the state to which it is annexed, and submitting to the incumbrances of some other condition; so it cannot be denied that every difference in the structure of the mind has its advantages and its wants: and that sailures and desects being inseparable from humanity, however the powers of understanding be extended or contracted, there will on one side or the other always be an avenue to error and miscarriage. There seem to be some souls suited to great, and others to little employments; some formed to soar aloft, and take in wide views, and others to grovel on the ground, and confine their regard to a narrow sphere. Of these the one is always in danger of becoming useless by a daring negligence, the other by a scrupulous solicitude i the one collects many T 3 ideas, ideas, but consused and indistinct; the other is busted in minute accuracy, but without compass and without dignity. The general error of thofe who possess powersul and elevated understandings, is, that they form schemes of too great extent, and flatter themselves too hastily with success; they seel their own force to be great, and, by the complacency with which every man surveys himself, imagine it still greater: they theresore look out for undertakings worthy of their abilities, and engage in them with very little precaution, for they imagine that, without premeditated measures, they shall be able to find expedients in all disficulties. They are naturally apt tQ consider all prudential maxims as below their regard, to treat with contempt thofe securities and resources which others know themselves obliged to provide, and disdain to accomplish their purpofes by established means, and common gradations. Precipitation thus incited by th<; pride of intellectual superiority, is very fatal to great designs. The resolution of the combat js seldom equal to the vekmence of the charge. He that meets with an opposition which he did not expect, lofes his courage. The violence of his first onset is succeeded by a lasting and unconquerable languor; miscarriage makes him searsul of giving way to new hopes; and the contemplation of an attempt, in which he has fallen below his own expectations, is painsul and vexatious* he theresore naturally turns his attention to more pleasing objects, and habituates his imagination to other entertainments, till, by flow degrees, he quits his first pursuit, and suffers some other project to take |