lives are squared to this melancholy rule, and who are constrained to act in such dull scenes to the end of the drama.

It is curious to observe the different ways which different men use of shunning themselves, and the society of their own thoughts. I have known a person consume an hour in looking over a game at chess, without understanding the moves; and a neighbour of mine, being confined the other morning to his chamber by a slight cold, was found by a visitor far advanced in his fourth rubber with three dummies. A young man of fashion will travel you fifty miles in five hours, and kill a horse or two, rather than endure his own company half an hour longer; and I remember a contemporary of mine at college, who would always reserve the choosing of a coat, or the trial of a new pair of boots, for a rainy morning, when there was the greatest danger of his being left to himself. I observe, that nobody cares to walk or ride, except he can find company; so that few of my countrymen can yet go alone. Dull company, or any company, is better than our own; and the barking of a cur by our side is very useful in breaking the tranquil currency of thought, and producing that agreeable confusion of mind, that " désordre de pensées," of which the French philosopher, quoted at the beginning of this paper, was so fond.

It

How different in the frame of his mind from the young men of the present day, was Eugenio; whose greatest pleasure was the cultivation of his own thoughts, and the free indulgence of meditation! was on the lessons of his own mind that he grafted that fine judgement in human actions and affairs, from which I reaped such profit and amusement about twenty years ago. But Eugenio is gone; and though I should live to a greater age than the oldest

of the Olive-branches, I never shall forget the sweetness of his countenance, and the manliness of his deportment. I have still a pleasure in recollecting the person of Eugenio: his figure was tall and graceful; but his shoulders were a little rounded, and his head drooped a little between them; the effect, perhaps, of sorrow and meditation; for, during our acquaintance together, he was under the constant pressure of bitter disappointments. In his limbs there was the finest moulding, and a certain finish about them, such as we remark in a high-bred racer: his complexion was a ruddy brown; his forehead ample; and his temple was relieved with two or three eloquent veins, where the blood rose like the mercury in a barometer, and betrayed every emotion of his mind. There was a tenderness mixed with vivacity in his eyes, that was felt and confessed by all who conversed with him: his air was open, frank, and noble; his manners easy and unconscious; his assiduities delicate and interesting.

I never shall forget an evening walk I once had with Eugenio, when I was on a visit at his father's house in Shropshire: it was in a little vista, formed in a wood, about half a mile from the house. As soon as we had entered it, he took me by the hand, and addressed me thus "As it was here I first began to know myself, I propose here also to bring you more acquainted with your friend than you have hitherto been. To know myself, and to subdue myself, is the great lesson I have learned from my commerce with the genius of this place. It was here that I felt the force of that fine comment on the precept of Delphos, which Socrates makes to the vainglorious Alcibiades, that, as the eye sees its image in the pupil of another, so the soul of man, to know itself, must look into the divine soul of wisdom and

knowledge, and contemplate the whole Deity therein.' There is no part of this ground that has not been witness to some victory I have obtained over myself. At the foot of that spotted beech, I laid down my resentment towards a scandalous neighbour of ours: near that festoon of honeysuckle, I determined to lose my right, rather than enter into a lawsuit with one of my kindred: leaning against the branch of that elm which has grown into the one that is next to it, I determined to refuse an estate offered me by a rich old gentleman, in exclusion of his nearest relation: where that hornbeam and that oak mix their foliage together, I resolved to guard the secret of a friend, though it should cost me my peace and my feelings: and where you see that weeping birch, and that little rivulet that runs murmuring by it (here he heaved a profound sigh), I determined, though with many-many struggles, to shun for ever the presence of Amelia, on hearing that a person to whom she had promised herself, and who had long been supposed dead in a distant country, was returning." At these words, his head sunk upon his bosom, and his whole frame underwent a violent agitation; he stood fixed in a melancholy reverie for some moments; and as I put my hand upon his, a warm tear dropped upon it,-the last, I believe, he ever shed upon this occasion.

I little suspected, at that time, how much this last sacrifice would cost Eugenio: he sunk into a settled melancholy; and every day I could trace fresh inroads on the graces of his person, and the integrity of his understanding. About a month before his departure, his despondency was visibly abated, and his spirits grew more tranquil and composed; his mind too recovered its former strength; but there was an abstraction in his looks and deportment,

which indicated that his peace was built upon the prospect of a future life, and not a reconciliation with the present. He never after spoke to me of his love, or desired my company in his evening walks to the wood; but fell, by swift degrees, into a hectic fever, which ended in a consumption; and Eugenio died in my arms.

About an hour before his departure, he put to my hands a little packet, which I afterwards found to contain many passages of his life, and some letters to his dear Amelia; which, in the course of my papers, I shall give to the public, to serve as an example to the gay youths of the present day, and those dull merry fellows to whom solitude is penance, and reflection is loss of time. Ever since the death of my poor friend Eugenio, I have loved to indulge the melancholy recollection of him in solitary moonlight walks, and have ever entertained a particular fancy for natural vistas. I revere, me-` thinks, St. Austin the more, because his conversion happened in a grove; and my contempt for Xerxes is lessened, when I consider, that, in passing through Achaia, he would not permit a grove that was dedicated to Jupiter to be violated, but ordered his army to regard it as sacred.

But for these meditations and reckonings with one's self, little that is decent or honourable would ripen into action; life would be the anarchy of humours, and glory the grave of virtue. I am no friend to the Platonic system of ravings and reveries; but sometimes to cultivate the soul, and dilate its capacities by silent thought and reflection, is to turn our rest and indolence to account, and fit ourselves for the seasons of labour and exertion. A habit of serious thinking arms us at every point, and plants securities round our virtue in the moment of greatest

danger, when our minds are careless and unbent, and most accessible to passion and vice.

I shall conclude my paper of to-day with an agreeable little poem, though I cannot tell the reader how I came by it. I can only tell him it is not my own: it was among some loose papers, and caught my eye yesterday as they lay on my table. I introduce it, as being applicable to my present purpose.

"Says BODY to MIND, 'Tis amazing to see,

We're so nearly related, yet ne'er can agree;
But lead a most wrangling strange sort of a life,
As great plagues to each other as husband and wife.
The fault, sir, is yours, who, with flagrant oppression,
Incroach ev'ry day on my lawful possession.

The best room in my house you have seiz'd, for your own,
And turn'd the whole tenement quite upside down;
Whilst you hourly bring in a disorderly crew

Of vagabond rogues, who have nothing to do
But to run in and out, hurry-scurry,
and keep
Such a horrible uproar, I can't get to sleep.
My kitchen sometimes is as empty as sound:
I call for my servants---not one to be found;
They all are sent out on your ladyship's errand---
To fetch some more riotous guests in, I warrant.
In short, things are growing, I find, worse and worse;
I'm determin'd to force you to alter your course.
Poor MIND, who heard all with extreme moderation,
Thought it now time to speak, and make her accusation:-
'Tis I who, methinks, have most cause to complain,
For I'm crampt and confin'd like a slave in a chain :
I did but step out, on some weighty affairs,
To visit last night my good friends in the stars,
When, before I was got half as nigh as the moon,
You dispatch'd Spleen and Vapours to hurry me down;
Vi et armis they seiz'd me, in midst of my flight,
And shut me in caverns as dark as the night.
"Twas no more, reply'd BODY, than what you deserv'd:
While you rambled abroad, I at home was half starv'd;
And unless I had closely confin'd you in hold,
You had left me to perish with hunger and cold.