the asseverations of the young men, that she was another and a fairer Helen. She had every opportunity of improving her mind; but as we naturally bestow our first care on the quality which we most value, she could never give her attention either to books or to oral instruction, and, at the age of fifteen or sixteen, could scarcely write her name legibly, or read a sentence without hesitation. Her personal charms were, however, powerful enough to captivate the heart of a thoughtless heir, very little older than herself. Her vanity rather than her love was gratified by the alliance; and when she found the assiduities of promiscuous suitors at an end, she found herself gradually sinking in the dead calm of insipidity. When love was no more, other passions sprung up with all the luxuriancy of rank weeds, in a soil where no salutary herb has been planted in the vernal season. Pride, that fruitful plant, which bears every kind of odious quality in abundance, took root in her heart and flourished, like the nettle or the hemlock on the banks of the stagnant pool.

Her husband was the first to feel its baneful effects. Though the match was greatly to her advantage, she persuaded herself that she might have done better; and that her good fortune was by no means adequate to the prize which her beauty and merit might have justly claimed. With this conviction, and without any habits or abilities which might lead her to seek amusement in books, she found no diversion so congenial to her heart as the tormenting a good natured, young, and agreeable husband, who, by marrying, had excluded her from the probability of a title. As a small compensation for the injury received, she assumed an absolute dominion over him, his fortune, and his family. He durst not differ in opinion from her; for on the slightest opposition her eyes dart fire, her cheeks glow with indignation, and her tongue utters every bitter word

which rage and malice can dictate. The comfort of every meal is poisoned by a quarrel; and an angry vociferation is reechoed from the parlour to the kitchen, from the cellar to the garret, by night and by day, except in the awful and ominous pause of a

sullen silence.

The poor husband, who, with every amiable disposition, possessed also the virtue of patience, bore the evil as long as human nature could bear it; but as years advanced and her fury increased, he sought a refuge at the tavern, and in the composing juice of the grape. Excess and vexation soon laid him in the only secure asylum from the stings and arrows of an outrageous temper, the silent tomb.

The children, after suffering every species of persecution which an angry though foolishly fond mother could inflict, no sooner arrived at maturity than they began to look for happiness in an escape from home, where neither peace nor ease could find a place. The daughters married meanly, unworthily, and wretchedly, contented to take refuge from the rage of a furious mother in the arms of footmen and hair dressers. The sons ran away, and became vagrant and wretched debauchees; till, in mere despair, one of them entered as a soldier in the East India service, and the other put an end to his own existence.

The mother, after shedding a few natural tears, and wiping them soon, began to feel her pride and passion amply gratified in an absolute dominion over an estate, a mansionhouse, and a tribe of servants, whose dependant situation made them bear her fury with little resistance. But she enjoyed her reign but a short time; for as her mind was incapable of resting on itself for support, she sought relief from the bottle of cordial; and, heated one day with a large draught, and a violent passion with one of the maids, she burst a blood vessel, and expired

in a scolding fit, her tongue still quivering after her heart had ceased its pulsation.

I believe the originals of such a picture as this are much less common in the present age than they were in the last century. Ladies were then secluded from the world till marriage, and as they were very superficially educated in every thing but potting and preserving, it is no wonder if they became termagants or viragos. They had no right ideas of themselves or the world around, and yielded, without opposition, to those violent emotions, which arise, perhaps, in every mind when it is totally uncultivated.

Culture of the understanding is, indeed, one of the best methods of subduing the heart to softness, and redeeming it from that savage state in which it too often comes from the hands of nature. The more our reason is strengthened, the better she is enabled to keep her seat on the throne, and to govern those passions which were appointed to be her subjects; but which too often rebel, and succeed in their unnatural revolt. But, besides the effect of mental culture, in calling forth and increasing the powers of the reasoning faculty, it seems to possess an influence in humanizing the feelings and meliorating the native disposition. Music, painting, and poetry, teach the mind to select the agreeable parts of those objects which surround us, and by habituating it to a pure and permanent delight gradually superinduce an habitual good humour. It is of infinite importance to happiness to accustom the mind, from infancy, to turn from deformed and painful scenes, and to contemplate whatever can be found of moral and natural beauty. The spirits, under this benign management, contract a milkiness, and learn to flow all cheerily in their smooth and yielding channels; while, on the contrary, if the young mind is teased, fretted, and neglected, the passages

of the spirits become rugged, abrupt, exasperated, and the whole nervous system seems to acquire an excessive irritability. The ill treatment of children has not only made them wretched at the time, but wretched for life; tearing the fine contexture of their nerves, and roughening, by example, and by some secret and internal influence, the very constitution of their tempers.

So much of the happiness of private life, and the virtues of mothers and daughters in particular, depends on the government of the temper, that the temper ought to be a principal object of regard in a well conducted education. The suffering of children to tyrannize, without control, over servants and inferiors is, I am convinced, the ruin of many an amiable disposition. The virtues of humanity, benevolence, humility, cannot be too early enforced; at the same time care should be taken that an infant of two or three years old should never be beaten or spoken to harshly for any offence which it can possibly commit. In short, let every method be used which reason, religion, prudence, and experience can suggest, to accomplish the purpose of sweetening the temper, and banishing the furies from society. May the endeavours be successful; and may we only read, that there have, indeed, been such animals as shrews and viragos, but that the breed is extinct in England, like the breed of wolves!

I have been much pleased with the lovely picture of Serena, in Mr. Hayley's instructive poem, the Triumphs of Temper; and I cannot conclude without earnestly entreating the ladies to view it as a lookingglass, by which they may learn to dress their minds in a manner which can never be out of fashion; but which will enable them to secure, as well as extend their conquests; and to charm, even when the lilies and roses are all withered. If the

poem should effect its very laudable purpose, the

Virtues, the Muses, and the Graces should unite to form a wreath for the poet's brow, and hail him as the restorer of a golden age. While every mother, wife, and daughter, aspires at the virtues of a Serena, let Alecto, Megæra, and Tisiphone, be confined in chains to the infernal regions, and forbidden ever more to arise and assume the shape of a British lady!

No. CXXIII.

On the moral Effects of a good Tragedy.

IT is with regret I observe that a taste for the noblest part of theatrical amusements, the representation of tragedy, is rather on the decline. It strongly marks the frivolity of an age, when the buskin is excluded for the sock, and the public attention too much engaged by dancers, singers, and harlequins, to admit the serious yet lively pleasures of the Tragic Muse.

There seems to me to be no method more effectual of softening the ferocity, and improving the minds of the lower classes of a great capital than the frequent exhibition of tragical pieces, on which the distress is carried to the highest extreme, and the moral at once self-evident, affecting, and instructive. The multitudes of those who cannot read, or, if they could, have neither time nor abilities for deriving much advantage from reading, are powerfully impressed, through the medium of the eyes and ears, with those important truths, which, while they illuminate the understanding, correct and mollify the heart. Benevolence, justice, heroism, and the wisdom of moderating the passions, are plainly pointed