taste and judgment as well as in morals. For the general voice of the experienced has in all ages declared, That the truest happiness is to be found at home.' Let the individuals therefore whom 'multitude of years should have taught wisdom,' seriously consider whether, by marrying those who might pass for their children, they can reasonably hope either to receive or to communicate the felicity which marriage was intended to produce. Can those expect to be happy, who for the sake of wealth, of titles, of splendour and of show, sacrifice youth and beauty-all the refinements of delicacy-all that a mind not vitiated by the fashionable vices of the day would think worthy of retention-nay, even conscience itself?-Impossible! In this case despair would be rational! It must never be forgotten, that the means employed in every undertaking should be adapted to promote it. If no regard be paid co this maxim, there can be no probability of success. But if, on the other hand, the undertaking be lawful in itself, and it be prosecuted by suitable means, there is ground to believe that if all be not realized that was ardently sought, something will certainly be gained. Let the young seriously examine before they enter into the marriage state, whether their motives and their views be such as to warrant the hope of felicity. Or, in other words, whether they act with the circumspection that common prudence would dictate in things of much less importance. If this be not the case, the means and the end are at variance: happiness cannot be reasonably expected: and let those remember who are actuated by the purest motives, and who feel the strongest attachment, that to expatiate in chimerical prospects of felicity is to insure the anguish of disappointment, and lose the power of enjoying whatever may be possessed. Let not youth, therefore, imagine that with all the advantages of nature and education, marriage will be a constant reciprocation of delights over which externals will have little influence, and which time will rather change than destroy.' The present state is not such as will encourage the hope of unmingled joys. Every source of terrestrial happiness is more or less defective, and may be productive of pain when pleasure was expected. But let not the advocates for celibacy hence conclude that the conjugal life is more loaded with calamity than their own for as Johnson remarks: They that will not connect their interests with another, lest they should be unhappy by their partner's fault; dream away their time without friendship, without fondness, and are driven to rid themselves of the day, for which they have no use, by childish amusements, or vitious delights. They act as beings under the constant sense of some known inferiority, that fills their minds with rancour, and their tongues with censure. They are peevish at home, and malevolent abroad; and, as the outlaws of human nature, make it their business and their pleasure to disturb that society which debars them from its privileges. To live without feeling or exciting sympathy, to be fortunate without adding to the felicity of others, or afflicted without tasting the balm of pity, is a state more gloomy than solitude: it is not retreat, but exclusion from mankind. Marriage has many pains, but celibacy has no pleasures.' THE GUIDE, &c. LETTER I. True bliss, if man may reach it, is compos'd Those hearts should be reclaim'd, renew'd, upright. COWPER. OF F all the tasks enjoined by duty or imposed by friendship, few, Melissa, are more difficult to perform, or when performed, more likely to prove unsuccessful, than that of giving advice. Advice, which the sincerest friends are sometimes compelled by the purest motives of benevolence to communicate unasked, is seldom B |