immediately perceive the propriety of the question; but after having waited a while for insormation, I was told that the lady's grandmother had a great great grandmother that was an attendant on Anna Bullen, and suppofed to have been top much a favourite of the king.

If once there happens a quarrel between the principal persons of two families, the malignity is continued without end, and it is common for old maids to fall out about some election, in which their grandfathers were competitors; the heart-burnings of the civil war are not yet extinguished; there are two families in the neighbourhood who have destroyed each other's game from the time of Philip and Mary; and when an account cameof an inundation, which had injured the plantations of a worthy gentleman, one of the hearers remarked, with exultation, that he might now have some notion of the ravages committed by his ancestors in their retreat from Bofworth.

Thus malice and hatred descend here with an inheritance, and it is necessary to be well versed in history, that the various factions of this county may be understood. You cannot expect to be on good terms with families who are resolved to love nothing in common; and, in selecting your intimates, you are perhaps to consider which party you most favour in the barons wars. I have often lost the good opinion of my aunt's visitants by consounding the interests of York and Lancaster, and was once censured for sitting silent when William Rusus was called a tyrant. I have, however, now thrown

aside

aside all pretences to circumspection, for I find it impossible in less than seven years to learn all the requisite cautions. At London, if you know your company, and their parents, you are sase; but you are here suspected of alluding to the flips of greatgrandmothers, and of reviving contests which were decided in armour by the redoubted knights of ancient times. I hope therefore that you will not condemn my impatience, if I am weary of attending where nothing can be learned, and of quarrelling where there is nothing to contest, and that you will contribute to divert me while I stay here by some sacetious performance.

I am, S I R,

EUPHELIA.

Numb. 47. Tuesday, August 28, 1750.

Quanquam bis solatiis acquit/cam, debilitor 13 srangor eaietn ilia bumanisate qua me, ut hoc ipsum permitterem, induxit, non idea lamen <velim durier fieri: nee ignoro alias bujusmodi casut nibil ampliui •vocare quam damnum; toque febi magnos bomines W sapitntes i/ideri. Qui an magni sapientesque fint, nescio: bomines non

Junt. Huninis efi enim affiei dolore, /entire: refijiere tamen, i2?

solatia admittere; non/olatiis non egere. Plin.

These proceedings have afforded me some comfort in my distress; notwithstanding which, I am still dispirited, and unhinged by the same motives of humanity that induced me to grant such indulgences. However, I by no means wish to become less susceptible of tenderness. I know these kind of misfortunes would be estimated by other persons only as common losses, and from such sensations they would conceive themselves great and wise men. I shall not determine either their greatness or their wisdom; but I am certain they have no humanity. It is the part of a man to be affected with gries; to feel sorrow, at the same time that he is to resist it, and to admit of comfort. Earl of Orrery.

OF the passions with which the mind of man is agitated, it may be observed, that they naturally hasten towards their own extinction, by inciting and quickening the attainment of their objects. Thus sear urges our flight, and desire animates our progress ., and is there are some which perhaps may be indulged till they outgrow the good appropriated to their fatisfaction, as it is frequently observed of avarice and ambition, yet their immediate tendency is to some means of happiness really existing, and generally within the profpect. The miser always

imagines

imagines that there is a certain sum that will fill his heart to the brim; and every ambitious man, like king Pyrrhus, has an acquisition in his thoughts that is to terminate his labours, aster which he shall pass the rest of his lise in case or gaiety, in repofe or devotion.

Sorrow is perhaps the only affection of the breast that can be excepted from this general remark, and it theresore deserves the particular attention of thofe who have assumed the arduous province of preserving the balance of the mental constitution. The other passions are diseases indeed, but they necessarily direct us to their proper cure. A man at once seels the pain, and knows the medicine, to which he is carried with greater haste as the evil which requires it is more excruciating, and cures himself by unerring instinct, as the wounded stags of Crete are related by Ælian to have recourse to vulnerary herbs. But for sorrow there is no remedy.provided by na.» ture; it is often occasioned by accidents irreparable, and dwells upon objects that have lost or changed their existence; it requires what it cannot hope, that the laws of the universe should be repealed; that the dead should return, or the past should be recalled.

Sorrow is not that regret for negligence or error which may animate us to suture care or activity, or that repentance of crimes for which, however irrevocable, our Creator has promised to accept it as an atonement; the pain which arises from these causes has very falutary effects, and is every hour extenuating itself by the reparation of thofe miscarriages that produce it. Sorrow is properly that state of the 6 mind mind in which our desires are fixed upon the past* without looking forward to the suture, an incessant wish that something were otherwise than it has been, a. tormenting and harassing want of some enjoyment or possession which we have lost, and which no endeavours can possibly regain. Into such anguish many have sunk upon some sudden diminution of their fortune, an unexpected blast of their reputation, or the lofs of children or of friends. They have suffered all sensibility of pleasure to be destroyed by a single blow, have* given up for ever the hopes of substituting any other object in the room of that which they lament, resigned their lives to gloom and despondency, and worn themselves out in unavailing misery.

Yet so much is this passion the natural consequence of tenderness and endearment, that, however painsul and however useless, it is justly reproachsul not to seel it on some occasions; and so widely and constantly has it always prevailed, that the laws of some nations, and the customs of others, have limited a time for the external appearances of gries caused by the dissolution of clofe alliances, and the breach of domestick union.

It seems determined, by the general suffrage of mankind, that sorrow is to a certain point laudable, as the offspring of love, or at least pardonable as the effect of weakness; but that it ought not to be suf. sered to increase by indulgence, .but must give way, after a stated time, to social duties, and the common avocations of lise. It is at first unavoidable, and theresore must be allowed, whether with or without oar choice; it may asterwards be admitted as a

decent