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too proud to ask.'-Here the enraptured Leander could no longer keep silence, but breaking forth into transports of love and admiration, gave a turn to the conversation, which it is no otherwise interesting to relate, than as it proved the prelude to an union which speedily took place, and has made Leander and Adelisa the fondest and the worthiest couple in England.

From Adelisa's example I would willingly establish this conclusion, that the characters of young unmarried women, who are objects of admiration, are not to be decided upon by the appearances, which they are oftentimes tempted to assume upon the plea of self-defence: I would not be understood by this to recommend disguise in any shape, or to justify those who resort to artifice upon the pretended necessity of the measure; but I am thoroughly disposed to believe, that the triflings and dissemblings of the young and fair do not so often flow from the real levity of their natures, as they are thought to do: those, in particular, whose situation throws them into the vortex of the fashion, have much that might be said in palliation of appearances. Many coquettes besides Adelisa have become admirable wives and mothers, and how very many more might have approved themselves such, had they fallen into the hands of men of worth and good sense, is a conjecture which leads to the most melancholy reflections. There is so little honourable love in the men of high life before marriage, and so much infidelity after it, that the husband is almost in every instance the corrupter of his wife. A woman, as she is called, of the world, is in many people's notions a proscribed animal: a silly idea prevails that she is to lead a husband into certain ruin and disgrace; parents in general seem agreed in exerting all their influence and authority for keep

ing her out of their families: in place of whom they frequently obtrude upon their sons some raw and inexperienced thing, whom they figure to themselves as a creature of perfect innocence and simplicity, a wife who may be modelled to the wishes of her husband, whose manners are untainted by the vices of the age, and on whose purity, fidelity, and affection, he may repose his happiness for the rest of his days. Alas! how grossly they misjudge their own true interests in the case: how dangerous is the situation of these children of the nursery, at their first introduction into the world! Those only who are unacquainted with the deceitfulness of pleasure can be thoroughly intoxicated by it; it is the novelty which makes the danger; and surely it requires infinitely more judgement, stronger resolutions, and closer attentions, to steer the conduct of a young wife without experience, than would serve to detach the woman of the world from frivolities she is surfeited with, and, by fixing her to your interests, convert what you have thought a dissipated character into a domestic one.

The same remark applies to young men of private education: you keep them in absolute subjection till they marry, and then in a moment make them their own masters; from mere infancy you expect them to step at once into perfect manhood: the motives for the experiment may be virtuous, but the effects of it will be fatal.

I am now approaching to the conclusion of this my fourth volume,* and according to my present purpose, shall dismiss the Observers from any fur

*This refers to the arrangement of the volumes when first published.

ther duty: the reader and I are here to part. A few words, therefore, on such an occasion, I may be permitted to subjoin: I have done my best to merit his protection, and as I have been favourably heard whilst yet talking with him, I hope I shall not be unkindly remembered when I can speak no more: I have passed a life of many labours, and now being near its end, have little to boast but of an inherent good-will towards mankind, which disappointments, injuries, and age itself, have not been able to diminish. It has been the chief aim of all my attempts to reconcile and endear man to man: I love my country and contemporaries to a degree of enthusiasm that I am not sure is perfectly defensible, though to do them justice, each in their turns have taken some pains to cure me of my partiality. It is, however, one of these stubborn habits, which people are apt to excuse in themselves, by calling it a second nature. There is a certain amiable lady in the world, in whose interests I have the tenderest concern, and whose virtues I contemplate with paternal pride: to her I have always wished to dedicate these volumes; but when I consider that such a tribute cannot add an atom to her reputation, and that no form of words which I can invent for the occasion, would do justice to what passes in my heart, I drop the undertaking, and am silent,

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NUMBER CXIV.

THAT period of the Athenian history, which is included within the æra of Pisistratus and the death of Menander the comic poet, may be justly styled the literary age of Greece. I propose to dedicate some of these papers to a review of that period; but as the earlier ages of poetry, though in general obscure, yet afford much interesting matter of inquiry, it will be proper to take up the Athenian history from its origin, because it is so connected with the account I mean to give, that I cannot otherwise preserve that order and continuation in point of time, which perspicuity requires.

This account may properly be called a history of the human understanding within a period peculiarly favourable to the production of genius; and, though I cannot expect that my labour will in the end furnish any thing more than what every literary man has stored in his memory, or can resort to in his books, still it will have the merit of being a selection uninterrupted and unmixed with other events, that crowd and obscure it in the original relations, to which he must otherwise refer. The wars, both foreign and domestic, which the small communities of Greece were perpetually engaged in, occupy much the greater part of the historian's attention, and the reader, whose inquiries are directed to the subject I am about to treat of, must make his way, through many things, not very interesting to an elegant and inquisitive mind, before he can discover,

Quid Sophocles et Thespis et Eschylus utile ferrent.

Such will not envy me the labour of having turned over a heavy mass of scholiasts and grammarians,

in

or hesitate to prefer accepting the result of my quiries to the task of following the like track in pursuit of his own.

The Athenians were a most extraordinary people; eminent in arms and in arts: of their military achievements I do not profess to treat, and if the reader takes less delight in hearing of the ravages of war than of the progress of literature, he may, in the contemplation of these placid scenes, undisturbed by tumult and unstained with blood, experience some degree of that calm recreation of mind, which deludes life of its solicitude, and forms the temperate enjoyment of a contemplative man.

Ogyges is generally supposed to have been the founder of the Athenian monarchy, but in what era of the world we shall place this illustrious person, whether he was Noah or one of the Titans, grandson to Jupiter or contemporary with Moses, is an inquiry which the learned have agitated with much zeal and very little success. It is, however, agreed, that there was a grievous flood in his time, which deluged the province afterwards called Attica: but that happily for King Ogyges, being a person of gigantic stature, he survived the general calamity. A period of one hundred and eightynine years succeeded to this flood, in which this province remained so depopulated, that it is generally supposed no king reigned over it till the time of Cecrops, the founder of Athens, from him at first named Cecropia.

Cecrops made many prudent institutes for the benefit of his rising state during a long reign of fifty years, and, by establishing the rites of matrimony, abolished the promiscuous commerce of the sexes, in which they lived before his time; by these and other regulations, upon a general numbering of all his subjects, he found the male adults in his domi

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