habiliments; because every inch of decent costume involves the inch of possible consideration.-Neglect these observances!and, the secret is out: he droops into, or in common estimate, approaches to, the inhabitant of an almshouse.

The proprietor of ten thousand acres, in a ring fence; or of five hundred thousand pounds, hedged in by the funds, may dress as shabbily as he pleases, without wounding, or alarming his consequence, as long as it remains a fact well known, that the acres are not merely representatives of debtors; hostages for the security of payment on a foreclose; and while it also remains a fact, not known, but, believed, that the era of a national bankruptcy is placed at an immeasurable distance, from the year one thousand eight hundred and twenty three.

FORTUNE-TELLING.

WERE it not that the subject, on which I am desirous of saying a few words, becomes serious by its occasional, or rather by its general, consequences, it might be allowed to pass away as too insignificant for animadversion, or even for a thought. It would, apart from its results, occupy no other place in our attention, than does a vapour, a shadow, and, what it really is, a tale that is told. But it is a tale, which, having for its experiment, and its action, the properties of the human mind, is observed to conduct the former with wonderful success, and to manifest such commanding power in its impulse of the latter, as nothing, short of experience, could have led us to conceive possible.-I am alluding to the practice of fortune telling.

It is a remark by Doctor Johnson, that perhaps, there exists not any person entirely free from superstition. That a masculine and lofty understanding did not

protect him from its baneful operation, has been illustrated by various touches of his own pen, by certain habits of his life, and by the record of his biographers. I remember, on my first reading of this suggestion, to have readily acquiesced in its propriety, and to have considered it a maxim; perhaps I continued so to receive it after some future examination: I do so no longer I apprehend that many will be found, who are uninfected with "superstitious vanities:" and further, I would intimate, that an exemption from this malignant principle will be evinced more commonly among people of ordinary understanding, and in the middle stations of life, than with those of higher talent and more distinguished situation. This may appear, at first hearing, an unwarranted, a mistaken and paradoxical opinion be it so. I will not in this place, wander from my direct subject, by going into the disquisition which would elucidate and support it. After all, much might depend on the definition of the principle-I don't remember to have received, or to have formed one, which quite satisfied me.

To return to my proper topic-fortune telling. I am persuaded that by the vi

cious exercise of this vain pretension, the circumstances of life, are, among many, interfered with; and, by a sad infirmity and thraldom of the mind, actually determined, as far as the compliance, the will, the effort of the person implicated, may contribute to their disposal. It becomes indeed a thing of course, that they, who are, in the first instance, so mistaken, so puerile, as to consult the oracle, are also prepared, by their submission, for the influence and consequence of its responses. What a strange infatuation! what a lamentable suspense of the reasoning faculty! what a criminal confederacy with the presumption and fraud of the deceiver, the trickster, the juggler, who mocks the client to the face: and derides the folly which retires pleased, or chagrined, by the. mummery which has passed; animated with the prospect of a smiling futurity, or, "full of rumination sad!" But, be it noted, that, where the lady, who has shewed her palm, is of that order which intimates to the wizard that she can afford to buy a good fortune, the veil of secresy may be raised; the peep may be taken with confidence and safety. One might reasonably expect, that who

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ever is aware of that single fact; whoever considers that an agreeable response from the oracle depends upon the ability and liberal inclination of the purchaser, would surely denude the mystery, and escape the snare. No such thing-female curiosity awaits with eagerness the sentence of the swarthy hag, the real or counterfeit gipsy, squatted at the mouth of her tent, by her faggot, and her tea kettle; and having heard the eventful prediction, the applicant retires, persuaded that much is in it, and prepared to verify and accomplish it, by watching every future opportunity of doing so.-Tis true that our fortune teller sometimes assumes the guise of respectable exterior: and may be found, though with ridicule of the age in which we live, amidst the better stations and conditions of society. But, whether the impostor ranks in this order of life, or appears in the undisguised costume of a squalid and vagabond gipsy, she knows, as all the rest of the world does, that a young lady's subject of fretful curiosity, of watching, and of dreaming, is, uniformly and perpetually, love and marriage. On these she wishes that the stars may be consulted, her nativity cast, and her destinies pronounced. On