ved wife, she abated nothing of the pleasures to which she had devoted herself, but added very considerably thereunto, by receiving and returning many useless and unprofitable visits, until the fatal time on which she was seized by this malignant evil, which is, indeed, the forerunner of her death; and then she was out of temper with every body who came near her. Husband, children, and servants, all shared in her anger. Letitia's beauty was esteemed more than eastern pearls: she vainly imagined that the diamond lost its brilliance, when her eye deigned to glance upon it; the damask rose its liveliness, when compared to her lively cheek, and the coral she supposed to yield to her all its perfections, and own itself outdone, when her mellifluous and pleasant lips were unmasked: but poignant pain and frequent sickness, greatly impairing her adored beauty, surprisingly added to her affliction. So long as her strength would admit, she was wont to try her features in the looking-glass oftener than once a day; but how the faithful mirror was charged with falsehood, and bore the weight of her indignation, is not worth your while to hear, nor mine to relate.

O, Sir, said I, methinks that on all our lookingglasses, this motto, "Memento Mori," ought to be written, and a Death's head fixed on the top of every frame; for even beauties, who delight to gaze upon looking-glasses, meet with no reprieve from Death.

That son of Melpomene, who so judiciously hath drawn the portraiture of the Grave, represents beauty as not one whit more grateful to the

worms than deformity, and as certainly their feast. If you please, Sir, I will recite the passage to you as it is not very long:

Beauty! thou pretty plaything! dear deceit !
That steals so softly o'er the stripling heart,
And gives it a new pulse unknown before!
The grave discredits thee: thy charms expung'd,
Thy roses faded, and thy lillies soil'd

What hast thou now to boast of Will thy lovers
Flock round thee now to gaze and do thee homage?
Methinks I see thee with thy head low laid,
Whilst surfeited upon thy damask cheek,
The high-fed worms in lazy volumes roll'd,
Riot unscar'd. For this was all thy caution!
For this thy painful labours at the glass

T'improve these charms, and keep them in repair,
For which the spoiler thanks thee not! Foul feeder !
Coarse fare, and carrion, please thee full as well,
And leave as keen a relish on the sense.

BLAIR.

According to the doctrine of this solemn bard, sir, every timet hatt he beautiful lady tries her graces in the glass, she should reflect how the worms will one day burrow in her cheeks, and her eyes become the nauseous habitation of loathsome insects; that she will then be on a level with the meanest beggar who ranges the streets of the metropolis, and yield no higher relish, though fed with turtle, to the worms, than the miscreant who keeps life in his body by mouldy bread, and the garbage of the kitchen, scarcely procured by lowly cringes, and the most fervent entreaties.

Ay, said Veratio, Mr. Blair may sing in that solemn strain, till he break the strings of his lyre, before the beaux and belles of our day are likely to mind what he says; for to this day it hath been.

at the peril of any servant or attendant whatsoever, to tell Letitia that her looks are altered; nor hath her physician and surgeon ever dared to tell her that her disease is incurable. Full of pain indeed is the unhappy lady; but she languishes out her time in murmuring and repining at the sad dispensation, and envying the happiness of others.

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My guide finishing here, I thought in my dream, that her physician entered the chamber, and feeling the lady's pulse, she asked him if he thought there were any hopes of her recovery. The doctor replied, "I am afraid, madam, there is not. Then she fell into a fit of visible discontent, and sinfully uttered many things against the ways of the Almighty; and continued to the last charging him with inequality.

The time of her departure being come, I saw terrible sights: her life being spent in gaity and madness, her latter end was without honour, for no sooner was the unhappy soul drove forth from the once-delicate body, now the vanquished prey of relentless DEATH, than she was seized by the cruel messengers of destruction, and forciby dragged to appear at the equitable bar of a pride-resisting God; from whence, as a just reward of her unholy life, she was sent, bound hand and foot, to be "cast into utter darkness, where the worm dieth not, and where the fire is not quenched;" there she wept, she wailed, and gnashed her teeth. There she found many of her former companions: but, alas! their wonted mirth was departed, and horrid despair sat lowering on every countenance; while the convulsive bowels of ever-dismal hell rolled her

impetuous billows upon them, and every single sense drank in the unutterable torment.

The miserable end of Letitia thus surveyed, I cried out, O God! who hath hardened himself against thee, and hath prospered! If a self-adoring Pharaoh say, "Who is the Lord, that I should obey him?" thou hast a Red Sea, in which he and his hosts shall be drowned. If a haughty Nebuchadnezar say in his heart, "This is great Babylon, which I have built for the house of my kingdom, and for the glory of my majesty," the heart of a beast shall be given to him, and he shall eat grass like the oxen in the field. And if a God forgetting lady should spend her life in the pursuit of transitory pleasures, the sequel shall prove that she has been dead to God, while she lived to herself.

er.

Then turning to my guide, I said, I perceive, sir, that DEATH is no respecter of persons, knoweth no distinctions, can neither be bribed nor moved by entreaty, much less can be resisted by powNo, no, replied Veratio, DEATH cannot be entreated, is an utter enemy to mercy, and a perfect stranger to distinctions: the majestick prince and the rustick peasant, the noble earl and his servile groom, the amiable lady and the scorched cook-maid, are equally the same to his indiscriminate shaft; all distinctions vanish in the grave, that common receptacle of rich and poor, noble and ignoble, beauteous and unseemly, old and young, the lordly prelate and famished curate,--all ranks and degrees of men meet here on à common level; in this respect, one end happeneth to all men. People of distinction too often desire no

other heaven besides the vain and fantastick pleasures of life, little considering, that, ere long, they must bid adieu to sublunary enjoyments, and the most high God hath fixed it as an invariable maxim, that the desire after, must precede the enjoyment of heaven; hence, no desire after the future enjoyment of God being possessed in this life, it is not rationally to be expected, that they can enter into the celestial felicity at their death.

These earthly gods, continued Veratio, are much dissatisfied, if they receive not a great degree of homage from their inferiours in life; but, believe me, nothing is more common than for them at death to stand trembling under the force of selfconviction, before the judgment-seat of the King of kings, who hath declared himself to be no respecter of persons.

Then, said I, woe is me for my fellow-creatures! into what destruction has sin involved them! How few, alas! are they who know the things which make their eternal peace, before they are forever hid from their eyes! Unhappy, most emphatically unhappy, indeed, are they, whose ́only heaven consists of glittering dust, and whose bliss is composed of the empty honours and wretched pleasures of this seducing and bewitching world. Let honours in the highest degree be imposed upon me, and let me enjoy all that men call happiness,--what will it profit, if my soul must be banished, forever banished, from the amiable presence of my God? Can these, Veratio, ever be deemed an ample compensation for the loss of God, in his divine excellencies and glorious subsistencies? A