slow, is not the less certain; and when the first repugnance of habit is removed, the progress to corruption is easy and direct. Other vices attack us more openly, and alarm at once all the vigour and caution of our minds; sometimes take us by assault; sometimes are repulsed in the onset; but the practice of gaming undermines and reduces us by slow and subtle degrees; and, while our conscience reposes in a flattering security, robs it of that timidity of feeling, and sensibility of honour, which constitute its principal safety.

Thus the progress of gaming is so much the more successfully fatal, as it enters into our habits with little opposition from our principles, takes full possession of our souls by imperceptible degrees, and delays its attack upon the sacred citadel of virtue, till it has effected a desertion of all those delicacies of sentiment, which form a noble defence about it. It is on the same account that the most disgusting influence of this sordid practice is remarked in female minds, which lose their fairest distinctions and privileges, when they lose the blushing honours of modesty, delicacy, and peace. It is here that the habit shows itself in its pride of deformity, and appears in the most afflicting shapes of wretchedness and ruin. A female mind deprived of its sensibili ties, is one of the most desolate scenes in the world; and a man bereft of his reason is hardly a more abject and sorrowful spectacle. These ruinous consequences of gaming, my correspondent assures me, have already begun to display themselves in the character and deportment of the gentler sex: already the sweetest qualities of womanhood are perishing under its blast; and, having nearly completed its havoc on the blossoms and the foliage, it

must soon reach to the very root and principle of society itself.

To behold a fine eye, that was made to swell with the tender feelings of conscious love, to exalt, to correct, to animate, to transport its object, lend all its ardours and its ecstasies to the icy appetite of avarice; and to contemplate a hand and arm, that nature had cast in her happiest mould, like the tendril of the vine, to act as the graceful bond of union and affection, busied in the beggarly office of conducting a Faro bank; is a sad perversion of nature's decrees, and an outrage upon all that is decorous or lovely in the female character. But it were ridiculous to complain only of the solecisms of behaviour and deformities of appearance produced in the female world by this unblushing vice, as if these were its worst effects. It has a destroying appetite, that swallows up all the regards and charities of the mind, and leaves in it no principle of activity, but covetousness and desperation. To the female gamester, virtue, and probity, and faith, as never coming into use, are of little value, and no where so cheaply purchased as in these unprincipled resorts; so that, as I am told, every practised seducer, who can be gratified with less than the costly sacrifice of innocence, seeks his objects at the gaming-table, where he finds a very few attractions will carry him a great way in a course of easy victories.

In the whole compass of language no terms are so misapplied, as those which are expressive of happiness; and happiness itself is a word which all of us are prompt in explaining, but which none of us in fact understand. Thus, what is denominated the gay world, consists in reality of the gravest and dullest part of mankind; and he who loves to see the hu

man face overspread with genuine joy, will certainly not find his account in the regions of high life, and the crowded haunts of fashion. Where every hope of a woman's heart is rivetted on her neighbour's purse, and every feeling is engaged for her own; where the rapture of one is the ruin of another; where gain is without credit, and loss without consolation; there can be little room or occasion for the relaxations of harmless mirth, and the sportiveness of innocent pleasure. That vacancy of mind, that excursiveness of fancy, and that rambling of thought, in which true mirth and jollity delight, is not surely to be found in those courts of avarice, where all our sensibilities are absorbed by the appetite of gain, and a groveling solicitude about the issue of a card or a number.

About fourteen years ago, Sophia was the envy of her own sex, and the idol of curs. She was then in the prime of her age, and beautiful was that prime : but her beauty was her least praise; for her heart had all the luxury of feeling, and her understanding all the graces of improvement. A winning unconsciousness of her own charms, an innocent playfulness of manner, and a kind-hearted attention to her inferiors, distinguished her among her companions, and made her the delight and ornament of every circle. But her ill-fortune would not suffer her to remain long in this sovereignty of innocence at her father's house in --shire: at the age of twentyone she was married to the member for the county; and, in the winter of 1777, began her career in town with such company as her equipage and condition entitled her to keep. A long time she held out against all the obligations of fashion and allurements of example: she had an in-bred abhorrence of gambling; and while she patiently sustained the impu

tation of meanness for refusing to contribute to the Faro bank, her unavowed charities were daily pouring balm into Misfortune's wounds; and some of those who upbraided her parsimony, had felt, in secret aids, the force of her generosity, when distresses, which they had well deserved, were on the point of overwhelming them.

But virtue that stands alone, and discountenanced, is unequally opposed to the constant influence of importunity and example; and Sophia wanted those aids of counsel and encouragement which a tender and rational husband might well have afforded her. I marked the first inroads that were made on the delicacy of her sentiments, and the untouched bloom of her mind. I saw the gaiety of her spirits cankered and corroded; and I saw all her sensibilities gradually decaying, like the sapless germs of a withering rose-tree.

It was among a notorious set of female gamblers, at a house kept by a baron's lady, that her transformation was completed; where a conspiracy was formed to win from her some valuable jewels, which her father had presented her with on the day of her marriage; and where her husband was wretch enough to share in the plunder. This had the effect of rendering her desperate. From that time she has continued to sink deeper and deeper into all the infamy of a hardened gamester; and her virtue and her probity are gone, together with her family jewels. Her face too, which once was illuminated with unchequered delight, and replete with innocent graces, is now contracted to a cross expression of discontent and malice; and her beauty, instead of being left to the gradual wear of time, that seldom obliterates every trace, is prematurely and radically ruined, by the unsparing influence of sordid passions

and corroding anxieties. The heroine of this short tale is at this moment well known in what are called the gay circles of life, though the portrait I have drawn will be recognised only by a few; by those, alas! who have gazed, as I have gazed, on the gilded morning of her life, and have seen, as I have seen, that morning shrouded in a sudden gloom, pregnant with blight and with mildew.

My correspondent has forwarded this letter to me, which he received a few days ago from a contemplative friend, who desired that it might be communicated to the old gentleman employed in schooling the town, under the title of the LOOKER-ON.

"The other day I paid a visit to a medical person who lives at a short distance from town, and who has under his care a small number of lunatic patients. As I am curious to see my species under every variety of aspect, I readily accepted the offer he made me, of introducing me to some of his unhappy lodgers. He accordingly carried me into all their apartments, and surprised me with such sights of human woe, as sunk all the pride of my nature, and humbled the man within me. I shall dwell only on one spectacle, which interested me and afflicted me above the rest, and forced me upon reflecting how much we are the creatures of habit, and how soon, by a degenerate course of action, we may depart from ourselves, and entomb every trace and vestige of original worth.

"In a little room, at the top of the house, on the foot of a mattress, sat a woman whose age seemed to be about forty: she had a long night-gown that was tied about her neck, and reached to her feet; and her hair, which was mostly grey, was combed back