bered to your wife, from whom you are divorced: Nature formed him in ftrait lines, habit has stiffened him into an unrelenting rigidity, and no familiarity can bend him out of the upright. The uneducated fquire of ruftic manners forms a contraft to this character, but he is altogether as great an intruder upon times and feafons, and his total want of form operates to the annoyance of fociety as effectually, as the other's excefs. There cannot be in human nature à more terrible thing than vulgar familiarity; a low-bred fellow, who affects to put himself at his ease amongst his fuperiors and be pleafant company to them, is a nuifance to society; there is nothing fo ill understood by the world in general as familiarity; if it was not for the terror, which men have of the very troublefome confequences of condefcenfion to their inferiors, there would not be a hundredth part of that pride and holding-back amongst the higher ranks, of which the low are so apt to complain. How few men do we meet with, who when the heart is open and the channel free, know how to keep their courfe within the buoys and marks, that true good-manners have fet up for all men to fteer by! Jokes out of feafon, unpleasant truths touched upon incautiously, plump questions (as they are called) put without any preface or VOL. IV. refine

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refinement, manual careffes compounded of hugs and flaps and squeezes, more resembling the gambols of a bear than the actions of a gentleman, are sure to follow upon the overflowing ebullitions of a vulgar familiarity broke loose from all reftraints. It is a painful neceffity men of fenfibility are under, when they find themfelves compelled to draw back from the eager advances of an honeft heart, only because the fhock of it's good-humour is too violent to be endured; it is very wounding to a focial nature to check feftivity in any degree, but there is nothing finks the fpirits fo effectually as boisterous mirth, nobody fo apt to overact his character as a jolly fellow, and stunned with the vociferation of his own tongue to forget that every other man is filent and fuffering: In fhort it is a very difficult thing to be properly happy and well pleafed with the company we are in, and none but men of good education, great difcernment and nice feelings know how to be familiar. These rural gentry are great dealers in long ftories of their own uninterefting atchievements, they require of you to attend to the narrative of their paltry fquabbles and bickerings with their neighbours; they are extremely eloquent upon the laws against poachers, upon turnpike roads and new enclosures, and all thefe topicks they

will thruft in by the neck and fhoulders to the exclufion of all others.

Plain-fpeaking, if we confider it fimply as a mark of truth and honefty, is doubtless a very meritorious quality, but experience teaches that it is too frequently under bad management, and obtruded on fociety out of time and feafon in fuch a manner as to be highly inconvenient and offenfive. People are not always in a fit humour to be told of their faults, and these plainfpeaking friends fometimes perform their office fo clumfily, that we are inclined to suspect they are more interested to bring us to present shame than future reformation: It is a common obfervation with them, when things turn out amiss, to put us in mind how they diffuaded us from fuch and fuch an undertaking, that they forefaw what would happen, and that the event is neither more nor less than they expected and predicted. These retorts, caft in our teeth in the very moment of vexation, are what few tempers, when galled with difappointment, can patiently put up with; they may poffibly be the pure result of zeal and fincerity, but they are so void of contrivance and there is fo little delicacy in the timing of them, that it is a very rare cafe indeed, when they happen to be well understood and kindly taken.

The fame want of fenfibility towards human infirmities, that will not fpare us in the moments of vexation, will make no allowances for the mind's debility in the hours of grief and sorrow: If a friend of this fort furprises us in the weaknefs of the foul, when death perhaps has robbed us of fome beloved object, it is not to contribute a tear, but to read us a lecture, that he comes; when the heart is agonifed, the temper is irritable, and as a moralifer of this fort is almoft fure to find his admonitions take the contrary effe&t from what he intended, he is apt to mistake an eccafional impatience in us for a natural one, and leaves us with the impreffion that we are men, who are ill prepared against the common viciffitudes of life, and endowed with a very fmall fhare of fortitude and refignation; this early mifconception of our character in the courfe of time leads him to another, for he no fooner finds us recovered to a proper temper of mind, than he calls to mind our former impatience and comparing it with our present tranquillity concludes upon appearances, that we are men of light and trivial natures, fubject indeed to fits and starts of paffion, but incapable of retention, and as he has then a fine fubject for difplaying his powers of plain-fpeaking, he reminds us of our former inattention to his good

advice and takes credit for having told us over and over again that we ought not to give way to violent forrow, and that we could not change the courfe of things by our complaining of them. Thus for want of calculating times and feafons he begins to think despifingly of us, and we in spite of all his fincerity grow tired of him. and dread his company.

Before I quit this fubject I must also have a word with the valetudinarians, and I wish from my heart I could cure them of their complaints,that fpecies I mean which comes under my notice as an Obferver, without intruding upon the more important province of the physician. Now as this island of our's is most happily supplied with a large and learned body of professors under every medical defcription and character, whether operative or deliberative, and all these stand ready at the call and devoted to the service of the fick or maimed, whether it be on foot, on horfeback or on wheels to refort to them in their diftreffes, it cannot be for want of help that the valetudinarian fates his cafe to all companies fo promifcuoufly, Let the whole family of death be arrayed on one fide, and the whole army of phyfic, regulars and irregulars, be drawn out on the other, and I will yenture to say that for every poffible difeafe in the ranks of the befieger,

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