which nothing, indeed, but virtue could be learned; but a species of virtue unaccommodated to the occasions of life, and though conversant about the highest perfection of our being, yet unshaped to our practical duties, and the real wants and emergencies of common situations. I was early taught to reason wrong on life; to build expectations that were never to be realized, and to affect a character unsolid in itself, and unsocial in its tendency. As far, therefore, as habits could influence me, I was directly out of the path of true philosophy, which is excellent only as it embraces objects of practical utility; is illustrative of man's nature, and of real life; and is addressed to the wants and purposes of humanity. He, whom I regarded as mankind's epitome, was in truth a chapter of digressions; unhappily I mistook the exception for the general rule: such was the father of Eugenio. I am no advocate for too wide a spirit of accommodation; but that is, indeed, an important lesson which early teaches us to separate speculation from practice; to found no expectations of life on visionary forms of virtue; and to forbear straining our habits and our actions to a rule of ideal perfection, lest the man of real worth be lost in the hero. "I have given you, my only love, the clearest account I can, in my present broken state of mind, of that philosophy which seems to be your envy. It may impose, when contemplated by others; but I am acquainted with its weakness. I know its weakness sufficiently, my dearest Amelia, not to trust it in your presence any more. Since it is thy melancholy resolution to think no more of our marriage; since the serenity of your mind, I will not say the felicity, depends upon your adherence to your first vows; since you claim me as the protector against yourself; I will execute your wishes to the utmost of my power, by withdrawing myself for ever from those dear eyes, and renouncing for ever the unspeakable delight of hearing thy lips declare how much you love your poor Eugenio. "After the confession I have made you of my mental imbecility, you will no longer envy me the advantages of this useless philosophy. The little cultivation it has received, has been only since I retreated to this tranquil spot, and conversed with my trees and my flowers. The tissue of disappointments which make up the history of my life had so blunted my hopes and anxieties, that before my eyes met thine, I was lost to all the ordinary cares and interests of life, and considered nothing with any concern but the regards of an awful futurity, which has ever been present to my thoughts. Still, however, as it has since been fatally proved, I was sufficiently open to the passion of love; nor was it possible for any state of mind to be more favourable to its attacks than that in which I first saw thee, my Amelia, 66 Passions, I have said before, are for the most part only to be conquered by counter-passions; and my mind, in that dear unhappy hour in which we first met, was in that state of nerveless apathy which afforded no opposing tendencies to resist the emotions to which I felt myself yielding. The progress of my passion was like the march of an enemy through an unfortified country; every thing gave way without a blow, and the proud yoke of the new master was supinely received. Such have been my habits, such the state of my passions, and such the force of my philosophy. Does Amelia envy Eugenio now? Then talk not to me of such resources, but dwell rather on the pensive consolation I shall feel in addressing to the Almighty my prayers for thy peace, and in thinking over those moments when we met together in these groves from which I now write, and concerted our connubial plans of happiness; moments buried in the grave of time, or that have taken the wings of eternity, and await us in the regions far above this scene of sorrows. "But, alas! what real consolations are these? It is easy for the mind to which grief is a stranger, to talk of pleasing regrets and the pleasures of melancholy; but trust me, there are none of these holiday feelings in genuine sadness. Often, indeed, when our melancholy impressions have left us, still the habit of repining and the parade of grief will remain, which being perfectly consistent with pleasurable sensations, have induced refined or affected tempers to confound sentiments which are exclusive of each other, in the cant and contradictory phrase of a pleasing melancholy. There is no such trifling as this in the sorrow I feel for thy loss, my dearest Amelia. You are, indeed, right in your notions of love, it must have all or nothing, and what once was love can never become friendship. As hope is swallowed up in faith, so friendship is lost in love; love can only respire in that air, and beyond those limits, in which friendship cannot exist. We must, we must part, dearest and best of women, never more to exchange looks, or smiles, or vows in this world. Forgive the pusillanimity of my mind, my dearest love: I did intend to write with more apparent tranquillity, to spare your gentle spirits more, and not to swell your sorrows with my own; and yet I could not bear that you should suppose me tranquil, or capable of diverting my thoughts from thee by the poor resources of a cold philosophy. Amelia and Eugenio must be coupled together in my prayers, or I shall want animation for the exercise even of devotion. God preserve thee, my sweetest angel, and repay thee thy sufferings and sacrifices on earth with unperishing rewards in heaven !" No. 81. SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 30. Quatuor robustos filios, quinque filias, tantam domum, tantasclientelas Appius regebat, et senex et cæcus. CICERO. Over four sturdy sons, five daughters, so great a house, and so great a number of dependants, did Appius, though old and blind, preserve his authority unshaken. How very few among us old fellows could return the same answer with Leontinus Gorgias, the master of Isocrates, when somebody impertinently asked him, how he could be pleased with living so long? "Nihil habeo, inquit, quod incusem senectutem." "I have no blame," says he, "to throw upon old-age." The charges which most of us have to bring against it are numerous and serious indeed. It not only deprives us of our youthful capacities of pleasure, but is pregnant with a thousand calamities of its own. Surely that must be a sorrowful state of humanity, in which disease and pain are not the greatest evils. I appeal to those bosoms where time has not blunted the sensibilities, and where the faculties are not so thawed by age, as to have utterly lost their tone, if the sensations they experience when they feel their natural power and personal consequence departing out of their hands, and that they live in a manner by sufferance amidst the disregards, if not the contumelies, of those whom they could once overawe, are not much less supportable than the physical afflictions to which they must submit. Woeful waste of existence! miserable refuse of life! severest mockery of human pride! are there no succours, no grace, no solace under thy vexations and oppressions? has life no resources, no compensations, after the heyday of the blood is over? It shall be my business to-day to inquire. But before I begin to display my remedies, I shall adopt the method used by some physicians to raise the credit of their skill, by laying before my readers, in a little poem, the full extent of the calamity I am about to cure. SEE, crown'd with cypress, joyless wreath, With poring eyes that seek the ground, And the sweet sense of music fled; Fled too the sweets of converse kind, And the rich intercourse of mind; The fault'ring tongue, the tale thrice told; These but in part-for, ah! behind Suspicion dark, and sullen Fear; |