most certain way to happiness. Quietly to withdraw from the crowd, and leave the gay and ambitious to divide the honours and pleasures of the world, without being a rival or competitor in any of these advantages, must leave a person in perfect and unenvied repose.

Without any apology, I am going to talk to myself; and what follows may be properly called a digression. Let me lose the remembrance of this busy world, and hear no more of its distracting tumults! Ye vain grandeurs of the earth! ye perishing riches and fantastic pleasures! what are your proudest boasts? Can you yield undecaying delights, joys becoming the dignity of reason, and the capacities of an immortal mind? Ask the happy spirits above, at what price they value their enjoyments? ask them, if the whole creation should purchase one moment's interval of their bliss? No;one beam of celestial light obscures the glory, and casts a reproach on all the beauty this world can boast.

This is talking in buskins you will think. And, indeed, I may resign crowns and sceptres, and give up the grandeurs of the world, with as much imaginary triumph, as a hero might fight battles, and conquer armies, in a dream. ›

In the height of this romantic insult, I am, Madam, Your most obliged humble servant.

LETTER II.

Madam,

I AM certainly dead and buried, according to your notions of life; interred in the silence and obscurity of a country retreat, far from the dear town and all its joys, which, in your gay apprehensions, cannot properly be called living. But for me, (who ask nothing but ease and liberty, in order to be happy,) I am willing to inform you, I am in a state of existence, and capable of the entertainment your wit would have given me, if you had been so obliging as to have filled the blank paper you sent. Nothing could be more nicely malicious;

nor is it possible for you to imagine how the sight of so much clean paper tormented me. How many sparkling things could you have writ, and not exhausted your stock, nor got the vapours by over-studying yourself!— But I hope you will make me some reparation by the length of your next. I will not insist on your writing sense or reason, if that will be any privilege to you.But though nonsense from you would be a great novelty, it would cost you so much pains to write it, that I am afraid you would send me a shorter epistle than last. I am, Madam, Your most obedient, &c.

your

LETTER III.

Madam,

I HAVE neglected writing so long, that I am almost ashamed to own I am still alive. I ought to have died in pure civility; which would have been the only sufficient excuse for my silence. But really, Madam, it costs me more pains to indite an epistle to you than it would to write a book to some sort of readers; and I cannot help wishing I had more wit, or you a great deal less.

Your prohibition of Lilliput paper will drive me to great extremities; and, what I most fear, will often prove a severe exercise to the patience of my gentle reader. I am reduced to the necessity of talking of this world or the next. For the next, you are so happy at present, that you may not be always disposed to think of so solemn a subject; and for this, I am entirely igMy conversation is confined to whispering trees, and murmuring brooks; and I cannot give you the least intelligence of what passes among mortals.

norant.

My fate, Madam, is just the reverse of yours. You had a great many things in your head, but wanted paper: I have clean paper enough, but nothing at all in my head: it is a vacuum, a dismal emptiness; and unless I fill the blank paper, with the curious flourish of a true lover's knot, I must subscribe, Madam,

Your most obliged humble servant.

LETTER IV.

Madam,

THE Sylvan scenes never appeared more beautiful, (not even in Mr Pope's pastorals,) than in those soft lines you inclosed. I hope you will find all the joys that peace and innocence can give in your charming retreat. Your description has led my imagination through a thousand enchanting scenes. I wish you may long enjoy those fine walks you are contriving; not that I wish you may see many returning springs as the fair damsels before the deluge; when an insulting beauty might take fifty years deliberation to answer a billetdoux, and act the tyrant five hundred years in the full pride of her charms. But you shew no ambition at all of this nature; and I am persuaded it is no manner of mortification to you, that your conquests are limited to a shorter date.

I am going, Madam, to put you in mind again that you are mortal. I fancy you open my letters with as much gravity as you would a funeral sermon, and read them with the same seriousness. But you seem pleased with these subjects; and amidst the brightest advantages of youth and fortune, are a reasonable creature, as well as a fine lady. These sort of reflections from me are not the vapours; I am pretty free from the spleen, as you know all half-witted people are. But in the gayest disposition, death would have a dismal view, and wear ten thousand horrors, if an immortality beyond it did not brighten the scene.

Without this prospect it would not be worth the while to begin a generous friendship. When we have seen a few more setting suns, (for rising suns some people never see,) when a few more flying hours are past, with life to resign the most exalted of human satisfactions, would heighten all the horrors of the grave.

I might, with less trouble, recommend some good book to your perusal, and keep this divinity for my own

use.

You will be overjoyed that I am come to a con

clusion; and am, Madam,

Yours, &c.

LETTER V.

Madam,

YOUR reflections on's death have something in them so just and agreeable, that I am recompensed for his loss, whatever damage the rest of the world suffers by it.

It pleases me to find you so often returning to a subject that most people take so much pains to avoid. If immortality is the pride and happiness of human nature, why should it not be mentioned with the same gaiety with which we talk of other agreeable things? The other world is at least a greater novelty than this; nor is it such a glorious round of action, to eat, to drink, and sleep, that people should have an aversion to think, if not to try, what variety of enjoyments a future life will give them. But to forget this, is the design of all the thoughtless amusements the wit of man can invent.What Monsieur Pascal says is perfectly just.

L'origine de toutes les occupations tumultuaires des hommes, et de tout ce qu'on appelle divertissements ou passe-téms, n'est en effet que d'y laisser passer le tems sans le sentir, ou le plutot sans le sentir soi-meme, et d'eviter en perdant cette partie de la vie le degout interrieur. L' ame est jettée dans le corps pour y faire un cejour de peu de durée. Elle sait que ce n'est qu'un passage a un voyage eternel, et qu'elle n'a que le peu de tems que dure la vie pour s'y preparer. Mais ce peu l'incommode si fort, et l' embarasse si etrangement, qu'elle ne songe qu'a perdre. Ce lui est une peine insupportable a vivre et de penser a soi. Ainsi tout son soin est de s'oublier soimeme, et de laisser couler le tems si court et si precieux sans reflexion, en s'occupant des choses qui l'empechent d'y penser.*

*This is the ground of all the tumultuary business, of all the trifling diversions amongst men, in which our general aim is, to make the time pass off our hands without feeling it, or rather without feeling ourselves, and by getting rid of this small portion of life, to avoid

L

I will stop here, or you will certainly think I am going to transcribe the whole book, to save you the trouble of throwing away your money on a moral essay: and perhaps, Madam, you may not be in so grave a humour as when you wrote last; for all human things are changeable, and have sometimes good, and sometimes evil dispositions; and in what circumstance this will find you, is an uncertainty to, Madam,

Your most obedient and most humble servant,

も

Madam,

LETTER VI.

You will find, to your grief, I have not hired the carrier to lose the large paper you sent me; but I have certainly more compassion for you than to fill it. One would think you intended I should write a Western Journal, and give you a full and true relation of all the ghosts and apparitions that are seen in the county of ; for these are the only remarkable events which happen here. These are the regions of sleep and repose, not of action. For my own part, I neither hope nor fear, contrive nor design any thing, that relates to this mortal life; but am as much at rest as the people that are sleeping in their sepulchres. I am in some doubt whether I belong to the society of the living or the dead, and am ready to ask myself,

Is this existence real or a dream?

I cannot persuade myself to wish you any thing but just what you are, a mere earthly creature. It would be too great a disadvantage to find you in a rank of be

inward disgust. The soul is sent into the body to be the sojourner of a few days. She knows that this is but a stop, till she may embark for eternity; and that a small space is allowed her to prepare for the voyage. And yet this moment which remains, does so strangely oppress and perplex her, that she only studies how to lose it. She feels an intolerable burden, in being obliged to live with herself, and think of herself: and, therefore, her principal care is to forget herself, and to let this short and precious moment pass away without reflection, by amusing herself with things which prevent the notice of its speed.