who used to say, that he had the resolution to make resolutions, but not the resolution to keep them. The surer way is to divert our minds from vicious habits, by a due consideration of the pleasures and advantages attendant upon virtue; resolutions are rude fetters voluntarily put on the inclinations, but which cannot hold or secure them long; they are painful and irksome to us, and we gladly receive the emboldened vice that will loosen them. To be good, we must be pleased in our endeavours to become so, and the work will then be easy and successful.

Having had occasion to speak of the conduct and of the manners of men in life, I shall present my readers with the following song upon the subject, written in the Moon, and called

life's arithMETIC.

That the world it goes round by arithmetic's rules,

Is a matter of just observation;

When there's plenty of blockheads, and cyphers, and fools,

In the table of life's NUMERATION.

Thus, as soon as, heigh ho! we set out on the scale,

We begin to outlive our condition;

Then vices, and follies, and fashions prevail,

Just to add up a sum of ADDITION.

Then with dice, and with beautiful women and tall,
And with horses of figure and action;

We shall find to our cost, without teaching at all,
That we soon know the rule of SUBTRACTION.

Now married, we've plenty of business to do,
For a wife makes a great alteration;
With her dresses and pins, and her pin-money too,
And then there's your MULTIPLICATION.

But though various the pleasures we taste in a wife,
Yet conjugal joys are a vision :

For no sooner the parties are settled for life,

Than they work a sum in DIVISION.

There's one rule that will serve us wherever we go,
That has stood from the day of creation;
It is, to practice what's right, as far as we know,
And the proof-it is self approbation.

It was remarked by a wit of the present time, at a public table, of one of the company who happened to say little or nothing for a considerable time, That the gentleman had got a vacancy. Such a vacancy appears, at present, in the gossip of the day. Heaven and earth, sea and air, and the whole animal creation, have been ransacked to afford novel entertainment. Balloons, diving bells, swimming ladies, Mamelukes, and Newfoundland dogs; what is to succeed I cannot myself determine, so various and changeable are the pursuits of the two foolish nations, France and England. Perhaps, being near Christmas time, the ladies may like a game at hunt the slipper, with Cinderella, in Drury-lane; though the poor dog has not yet made his farewell speech, numerous are the puns and witticisms still made upon the harmless quadruped. Amongst others, the manager was asked, a few days ago, if Carlo gave orders? the answer was, No, sir, he would not part with a bone, I assure you. I deem it however unfair to quiz the honest animal; he is by far the most natural performer I have noticed since the days of Garrick, and I hope that his theatrical

career will not end with the performance of a particular part, as that of many a very great performer has done, but that he may have a constant engagement, and that some of the dramatists of the present day may write for him; the analogies of taste and genius will be then preserved.

Well suited are their doggrel rhymes,
To these wretched doggrel times.

The new performer might have, perhaps, a part in the musical entertainment of Cinderella, now in preparation, and might be made to hunt the slipper to great advantage, though I conceive there is little doubt of the success of the piece, and that from the subject it may possibly put the proprietors on a better footing. Numerous, too, are the enquiries upon this subject, How is Miss D- to be represented, is she to enter O. P. in a dust cart, with the rich cinders round her lovely waist, or is she to have a neat and elegant coal scuttle in one hand, and a shovel and broom in the other? The last would certainly be the best adapted costume for the character, and the sing song slut cannot fail to please.

Good heavens! what is this that I observe? the seats of one of the temples of taste and genius, where wit and humour constantly preside, scarcely half filled. Whither are its accustomed visitors engaged? Is it to see the four-footed rag merchant, that they abandon an entertainment replete with true and genuine amusement? return to it again; it is yourselves who

are the greatest losers after all, for you will forfeit the respect you owe to yourselves, and another and a better age will criminate you, as we pretend to criminate the supine and senseless multitude who allowed a Chatterton to perish. Bartolozzi, the great, the sublime, the unequalled Bartolozzi has left you, and every inimitable sketch of his, is a stain upon the national character that will never rub out. Do Do you mean to allow the man who has encouraged the cause of virtue, the cause of loyalty, the cause of humanity to want, because your taste is changed? Know, that the true taste for talent, for genius, for wit can never change; it must approve as long as the world exists; the connoisseur in painting knows the touch of the master, and still cries out in rapture, this is a Reuben, this is a Carracci. It is only the vain pretenders to taste who mistake the copy for the original, and who are pleased with the daub of the sign painter. Merit may want a dinner, character it will always have; the country may have wealth, character it may not always have from that venal source.

It is impossible to imagine a cause for the neglect of merit and genius in a country where so much boast is made of liberality, and certainly the English may justly be called a kind hearted people. Yet there is so much spirit of trade and traffic among them, that the fine arts, and the belles lettres are held in a sort of tacit contempt: poets and painters are considered as no very useful members of the community by those who cannot estimate the advantages of enlightening

and refining the understanding of the vulgar, and whose primum mobile is money. Money atchieves every thing in England; yet the liberal arts have had their gradation to excellence, as well as their degradation in that country, and, perhaps, when this speculating, vaporous, and fantastic age shall have passed away, with its phantasmagoria of genius, that good sense inay be revived which can discover talent, and foster genius wherever it finds it.

The Man in the Moon has opportunities of observing a great deal, and being independent of any views, but the general happiness of his fellow creatures, he thus boldly asserts the cause of merit; he loves a man of genius, and will never relax in his endeavours to engage a portion of mankind, at least, in the support of its claims. It is the design of the Man in the Moon to give, in a future Number, some tributes to the merits of living persons in the different walks of life who have aided, by their talents, the great purposes of ameliorating the condition of mankind, who have improved the general mind of society, and whose influences have directed their actions in a greater or less degree to good.

Z.