defultory manner. The advice of friends is at first neceffary to point out the kind of books, and the times, the modes, and the degrees of ftudy. Superficial and ill-directed reading tends to infpire the most odious of all vanity, and to occafion a behaviour truly ridiculous. Sempronia has ftudied all the Magazines for these ten years paft, and has now and then obtained the honour of contributing a little piece to fome of her admired mifcellanies. This diftinction, as he thinks it, has greatly elevated her in her own opinion. She deems it fufficient to emancipate her from the ufual decorums of external forms. She talks with an overbearing confidence, which, if he were not excused because she is a profeffed wit, would be intolerable rudenefs. Her attention to the mufes has excluded the graces from any share of her notice. If you call upon her in the morning, you find her with flipfhod shoes, no apron, matted hair, a dirty face, a cap awry, and fingers begrimed with ink. If you afk her in what the is exercifing her genius, the informs you fhe is writing a Pindaric ode on (pring, and is looking in Byfhe's Art of Poetry for a rhyme to trees. It must be fent immediately, the fays, or it will not be inserted this month. She hopes, therefore, that the may be excufed in declining company. Her vifitor has reafon to rejoice at the difmiffion; for the fight of her, as Swift lefs delicately fays of Cælia, will operate as an emetic, and the smell as a poison. Corinna happened to fall upon fome of the works of our modern fceptics. She could not understand them perfectly; but the difcovered enough to be affured that fcepticifm was fuppofed to be a mark of fuperior fenfe, of a freedom from those narrow prejudices which enthral the vulgar mind. She cannot therefore talk on common affairs; but when fhe gets into company with enlightened people, the expatiates on the happiness of poffeffing a philofophical turn, and pities the poor narrow fouls who go to church and perform all their duties, as they call them, with mechanical regularity, juft like their great grandmothers. Voltaire, Rouffeau, Bolingbroke, and Hume, are her oracles. She is dreaded by her own fex, and indeed voluntarily gives up their fociety. But the the men the thinks more entertaining, more converfible, and lefs fhackled with prejudices. She imagines herfelf particularly attended to by them; and indeed there are fome humourists who listen to her conversation, in order to lay up ftore for ridicule. All who are judges, condemn and diflike her for entering into ftudies which have a natural tendency to darken the understanding and to corrupt the heart, and which are peculiarly odious in those who were formed to increase the comforts of life, and not to cut them off by diffufing the gloomy notions of the fceptic. It was the misfortune of Fulvia to live next door to a circulating library. In every moment of liftleffnefs the maid was dispatched for a handful of novels, no matter by whom they were written, or what they were in themselves, provided they were fentimental. By an uninterrupted courfe of fuch reading, fhe had acquired a tafte for anecdotes, private history, and all that relates to the effects of love, which, fhe was led to think, formed the great business of human life. Her heart had been a thousand times melted, and pierced, and fmitten, and wounded, and was at laft fo mollified, that fhe felt the tendereft fentiments for every man with little dif tinction. She could not pass a few moments in a private interview with a male acquaintance, without being confcious of tender fentiments for him. She often doubted whether fhe ought, upon the whole, to rejoice or lament that she was endowed with fuch extreme fenfibility. But to be fure, so it was, her poor heart was fo full of love, that every one who approached might have a fhare unafked. Her voice was faint and tremulous; her refinements were elegant to a degree inconceivable. She was hardly fit for this low orb. She was always miferable, except when pouring out her fentiments in letters to fome beloved Eudoxus. She was, in fhort, too tender, too fufceptible, too pure, too elevated, to live in this world; and fo every body, faid, till, in evil hour, the ran away with a corporal quartered in the town, and has never been heard of fince. Lefbia, when very young, wrote a few rhymes, which, as her age was confidered, were much applauded by her friends. Flushed with praife, the confidered herself as a fecond a fecond Sappho, and has ever fince been devoted to the mufe. Her reading was chiefly confined to the poet's corner in newspapers, and her productions have rivalled her models. She compofes ænigmas, acroftics, rebuffes, and fongs, for thofe little red pocket-books which are annually published for the ladies, and fhe has had the honour of gaining the reward for expounding the Prize Riddle. Within the circle of her acquaintance she is much admired. If a wedding happens among any of them, the pays for her bride-cake with an epithalamium; and the keeps in her drawers, like haberdashers wares in a fhop, odes, elegies, and epigrams, adapted to every occafion. Of all fubjects, politics feem the leaft adapted to the female character. Women are entirely excluded from legislative influence; and, it is well known, that public affairs are seldom treated with temper, either in writing or converfation. But the female politician is by no means uncommon. Cornelia derives all her learning, of which the thinks the poffeffes an ample share, from the miscellaneous volumes of a Say and a Woodfall. She has herfelf fometimes ventured to communicate a paragraph or two, and has been delighted, even to rapture, with the thought, that a plan or conjecture of hers has been wafted throughout the empire by fo rapid a conveyance. On common fubjects fhe is mild and reasonable; but while the gentlemen are talking politics, the fubmits with great reluctance to the rule of decorum, which requires that the fhould pay attention to the ladies. Her colour comes and goes for a long time, till at last fhe can bear it no longer, and bursts out with a blaze of eloquence, fcarcely rivalled in the moft famous schools of oratory, thofe of Athens or of Billingfgate. A treaty of marriage was on foot fome time ago; but after the preliminaries were all fettled, and a day for the ratification of the articles fixed, a rupture enfued on the adjustment of the balance of power, and hoftilities have not yet ceased, nor is a coalition of the parties likely to take place. In these few inftances, and in those many which obfervation of the world will fupply, there feems to have been an original fund of parts, and a love of books, which, properly directed, would have led to great improvements. But vague industry and unguided emulation, ftimulated to perfift in a wrong path by the partial praises of friends and relations, have precipitated even the amiably difpofed into unfupported vanity, and caused them to diftinguish themselves without acquiring honour. To be affected in any way is, at all times, in all places, and in all degrees, to be difagreeable. But af fectation of learning, in a woman with very little merit, draws upon itself the contempt and hatred of both fexes. They who excel most in either fex, are found by experience to be moft candid and modeft; to affume leaft, and to join in converfation with others, without difplaying the fenfe of their fuperiority. Indeed it often happens, that there is an amiable humility in true genius and learning, which compels the poffeffor of them to think diffidently of his own character, amid the united praises of all around. Let her then, who poffeffes the bright jewel of learning, take care to fet it in a plain manner, and its luftre will become more confpicuous. In the embellishment of the perfon, a fufficient degree of care is ufually taken that nothing unbecoming fhall have a place in it. A regard is commonly paid to age, rank, and every circumftance which can point out the line of propriety. But in adorning the mind, it is ufual to attend to little elfe but the dictates of inclination. Yet there is certainly a kind of fexual difference in the minds of the fexes, which admits and requires a different fpecies of intellectual accomplishment. Oeconomy is faid, indeed, to be the peculiar province of women; yet, furely, as rational beings, their reafon may properly receive the higheft poffible cultivation. Nor fhould their attainments occafion contempt or neglect, unless they are fullied by obtruding arrogance, by a maf culine boldnefs, a critical severity, and an ill-timed and injudicious oftentation. No. No. LXXXVII. ON THE FOLLY AND WICK EDNESS OF NEGLECTING A FAMILY AND T HOUGH it be true, as it has been affertmay ed, that one age is not better than another, yet it is obvious to remark that the modes, if not the degrees, o vice, have varied at different periods; and that, of modes equally criminal in themselves, fome are particularly deftructive. Whatever have been the manners of preceding times, in our own country, I believe it will be readily allowed, that the middle ranks were never univerfally infected with the love of a diffipating life, till the prefent age. Domeftic industry and economy, or the qualities diftinguished by the homely titles of thriftinels and good housewifery, were always, till the prefent century, deemed honourable. They are now, however, difcarded in difgrace; and in their place have fucceeded a paffionate love of fhow without fubftance, a never-ceafing attention to drefs, and an infatiable hunger and thirst after diverfions public and private. Whoever confiders the natural effect of exceffive indulgence, in relaxing and weakening the tone of the mind, will immediately perceive how pernicious it muft be to human nature in general, and to each particular fociety. There can remain neither inclination, nor ability for exertion, when the ftrings which fhould give elafticity are loofe or broken; and without exertion what is man? Behold what he is in the womanish court of an oriental tyrant. Sunk in floth, and proftrate in meanness, poor human nature, in fuch a fituation, fcarcely equals, in fpirit or ingenuity, the monkey and baboon. But I mean not to enlarge on diffipation in general, but to confider its effects in the limited circle of private fainilies; |