"SIR,-In a literary performance by a juvenile author, I feared to find intermixed much of the common trash of periodical papers-stories of love adventures "founded on facts," luckless pairs, happy marriages, and jumbles of jealousy and sentimental affection;-I am, sir, happily disappointed, and hope you will continue, without any mixture of stuff about love, which young men ought to know nothing of, Your constant reader, thus to amuse, "GERTRUDE GRUM." "Mr. GRIFFIN. SIR,-This comes to let you know that though I can't write nor read, our Peter writes this for me, and I hear all your papers read in our kitchen. I don't understand none of them, not I; but I see there's nothing at all about love, or about maid-servants making their fortunes by marriage. O! Mr. Griffin, if you be he they says you be, you know the person that I love best. He is to be sure the prettiest behaved, sweetest young gentleman, and his name begins with a-no, but I won't tell you what his name begins with neither, but could not you just give him a hint about his loving humble servant, as he calls me, “ MARITORNES. "P.S. Peter can read, and write, and cypher too." I have taken some liberties with my last correspondent in adjusting the orthography of her letter, so as to adapt it to common comprehension; if there is any other alteration, she must look for its cause in the P.S., where Peter (totally, I believe, with a view to his own aggrandizement, and without the privity and consent of his fair employer) declares his skill in cyphering, which he has practised with such success as to render the decyphering a matter of no small difficulty. I shall not add any comment to the preceding letters, but leave them, like the gravitation and centrifugal force, which philosophers talk of, to counteract each other's tendency, and conclude my paper, as I began it, with a tale; which, though perhaps it may be very old, enjoys a double advantage, which tales seldom do, of being extremely short and extremely apropos. A painter of great skill and eminence, who wished to have his work as free from blemishes, and as correctly beautiful as a picture could be made, hung it up one morning in the public market-place, with a request that every one would take the trouble to mark what he thought the faulty part of the performance. Coming in the evening to carry home his picture, he was surprised and mortified to find every part of it covered with faults. Not a muscle of the body, or a feature of the face, but bore some sign of disapprobation. Resolving, however, to see whether his piece was entirely destitute of beauties, he hung it up next morning in the same place, desiring that every one would be so kind as to set some mark on what he thought the excellences of the picture. Coming as before in the evening to carry it away, it was not a little consolation to him to find those very parts that had before exhibited the strongest signs of dislike, now marked with the utmost encomium; to find, that if he had before had reason to lament having excited universal disgust, he might now be proportionably proud of having conciliated universal admiration. B. No. 19. MONDAY, MARCH 19, 1787. Οἷον δὲ τρέφει ἔρνος ἀνὴρ ἐριθηλὲς ἐλαίης Βόθρε τ' εξέςρεψε, και ἐξετάνυσσ ̓ ἐπὶ γαίῃ ̇ HOMER's Iliad. As the young olive in some sylvan scene, Crowned by fresh fountains with eternal green, And plays and dances to the gentle air; When lo! a whirlwind from high heaven invades A lovely ruin, now defaced and dead. POPE. It is an observation founded on a general survey of mankind, and which I am afraid a closer inspection would not controvert, that one half of the world knows not how the other exists. This, however, might in part be attributed to the insufficiency of human nature, were it not a melancholy truth that their negligence in this point is equal to their ignorance, Nursed in the lap of luxury, the son of fortune, whose budding hopes have never been nipped by the blast of adversity, turns his eyes with contemptuous disgust from the cheerless scenes of penury and distress, to the dazzling glare, which, under pretence of lulling sorrow, stares reflection out of countenance, and convicts reason of cynicism by the specious appearance of indulging harmless gaiety. The listless apathist, becalmed in his own insensibility, looks with a vacant eye on the terrors of conflicting passion; or, as the utmost exertion of his pity, endeavours to allay the storm of a weak but generous mind, with the dictatorial precepts of a closeted philosopher. H Those of the above description I warn to proceed no farther in this paper. To the feeling, and in this community I should hope the major, part of my readers, the authenticity of the following story will carry with it a sufficient apology. The father of Frederic having from an early pique secluded himself from mankind, devoted an ample fortune to his family, his stables, and his cellar, in the extremity of Somersetshire. He was naturally of a morose, saturnine temper, which a considerable quantity of port, regularly discussed after dinner for a continuance of thirty years, had not a little contributed to heighten. The usual companion of his leisure hours was the parish attorney, a supple knave, who, as occasion served, could rail at the times, praise the wine, take snuff, or ring for t'other bottle. Argument, it is natural to suppose, would not have beguiled many hours with such a duumvirate; but the squire was too distrustful of any thing human to be circumvented in the common way; and his Achates too much a master of arts to attempt it. By a feint therefore at first of opposition, and at every convenient opportunity of conviction, he frequently flattered this petty tyrant more agreeably, and sometimes allured him to his own opinion. The subject of his eldest son's education was long on the tapis; the squire being too much of a misanthrope to relish the idea of a public school, and the lawyer too jealous of the boy's growing influence not to wish so powerful an obstacle removed. At length, however, by a more than usual exertion of artifice, he wheedled the old gentleman out of his prejudices, and at ten years of age Frederic was sent to Eton. Even at this early period the natural warmth of his disposition had begun to display itself. Open, candid, and generous, his heart was the constant companion of his hand, and his tongue the artless index of his mind. As his ideas expanded, his virtues seemed to have acquired a larger scope; and the unsuspecting generosity, which had before induced him heedlessly to deposit his joys and griefs with every stranger, to have been matured into a warm philanthropic benevolence for human nature, and a romantic attachment to the few who were the more immediate objects of his affections. Exposed alike to the attacks of all generous passions, the impetuous sallies of his temper were as easily suppressed as excited. Jealous in the extreme of obligations, and keenly sensitive in any point which appealed to his honor or compassion, he was always a stranger to the calm serenity of a virtuous mind; and ultimately overwhelmed by those feelings which are so often the pleasing curse of a luxuriant imagination. To these qualifications of the heart, Frederic added the endowments of an elegant fancy; often indeed too impatient of the necessary restrictions of art, but naturally corrected by so pure a taste, as to enable him to discern, with admirable perspicuity, the limits of true and false beauty; and those of his classical compositions which peculiarly struck his ideas, united that vivid, energetic glow of thought, which true genius alone can conceive, to a simple chastity of expression which only correct judgment can define. As an agreeable polish to so much intrinsic merit, his countenance was lively and animated, his figure genteel, and his manners engaging. In human, as in inanimate nature, similar qualities |