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plea. Nay, it is not difficult to comprehend the gratifications of the professed miser. Nothing is so ridiculous as to pronounce such a man, because his enjoyments differ from our own, to be miserable, in that acceptation of the word which implies unhappiness. His mode of life being his own free election, is a proof of its being the best adapted to his own peculiar notions of pleasure, for no man voluntarily prefers wretchedness. Avarice has been designated the vice of old age ; may it not sometimes be considered its consolation also? When the senses have failed, when the affections are dried up, when there is no longer any intellectual interest in the world and its affairs, is it not natural, that like drowning men, we should grapple at straws; that we should clutch whatever will still furnish us an excitement, and attach us to that busy scene from which we should otherwise sink down into the benumbing torpor of ennui, superannuation, and fatuity? A miser has always an interest in existence he proposes to himself a certain object, and day by day has the consolation of reflecting that he has made new progress towards its attainment. An old man was lately living in the city, and perhaps still vegetates, who declared that he wished for protracted years, because it had always beentheparamont ambitionofhis soul to warrant this inscription upon his tomb-stone-"Here lies John White, who died worth four hundred thousand consols." Ignoble, sordid, base, as this ambition was, it cheered him on in the loneliness and decrepitude of his eightieth year, and is, perhaps, still ministering a stimulant to the activity of his narrow mind. Nor is it a trifling advantage to such men, who being generally worth nothing but money, would, if left to their intrinsic claims, be abandoned to solitude and contempt, that their reputation for wealth procures them friends, flatterers, associates, who watch over them with more than the tenderness of consanguinity, condole with their sufferings, sympathise with them in their successes, submit to their caprices, humour their foibles, and

pamper them with presents. Call them, if you will, parasites, plunderers, legacy hunters: still their good offices are not the less accepta ble. If the object of their manœuvres see through their motives, it is a grateful homage to his wealth, an admission of his superiority, а sacrifice to the deity whom he himself adores. If he do not, he affords one more proof, that the great happiness of life consists in being pleasantly deceived. Alas! there are many besides the miser, who would wring their own hearts, if the window of Momus enabled them to discover that of their friends.

But while the money spinner is endeavouring to sweeten the dregs of life, he is unconsciously embittering death. Unable to take his coin with him, not even the obolus for Charon, he is only hoarding up a property of which he is to be robbed ; for whether he is to be taken from his wealth, or his wealth from him, the result is equally tormenting. Post-obits and reversions, however he may have gained by them after the death of others, will bring him in nothing after his own; so that he will have the mortification of reflecting, that he has been accumlating money, and eking out his life, only to aggravate the pangs of parting from both. Submitting this" trim reckoning" to the consideration of the aforesaid citizen of Clapham Common or Stamford Hill, I would suggest that his four thousand six hundred pounds may not be so all-sufficing an evidence of the beneficial employment of last year, as the jingling of the sovereigns in his pocket may have led him to conclude.

And your ladyship?-may I enter upon record that you are well satisfied with the employment of the eight or nine thousand hours of the last year?" I have at least passed them, Sir, in a manner perfectly becoming my rank and station. I have been at every fashionable party of any notoriety; my own routs have been brilfiantly attended: my pearls have been all new set by Rudell and Bridge; my opera-box has been changed for one in a better situation; it is uni

versally admitted that I dress more tastefully, as well as expensively, than Lady Georgiana Goggle; I have become so far perfect in Ecarte, that though I play more, I lose less, and adverting to this unquestionable proof of improvement, it cannot be said that I have altogether lost my time." Certainly not, madam, you have only thrown it away. I acquit you of its occasional and accidental, in order to convict you of its constant and premeditated misapplication.

Be not alarmed, young lady: it is unnecessary to subject you to the same interrogatory, for those down cast eyes and that half suppressed sigh sufficiently reveal that you are but ill satisfied with the appropriation of your time during the past year. It is the misfortune, and not the fault of our youthful females, that the artificial and perverted modes of society, as it is constituted in England, condemn them to a perpetual struggle with all the aspirations of nature;--that they are sentenced to a round of heartless dissipation, to be paraded and trotted up and down the matrimonial Smithfield, in the hope of striking the fancy of some booby or brutal lord and master; and that a failure in this great object of their existence, pitiable as it is, embitters the termination of every year with corroding anticipations of waning beauty, and all that silent fretting of the spirit, which gnaws the heart inwardly while it suppresses every external manifestation. Few objects are more distressing than to contem plate one of these garlanded victims, gradually withering like a rose upon its stalk, shedding the leaves of her beauty one by one, and at last falling to the earth in premature decay, or preserving a drooping existence with all her charms and brightness fading utterly away. These are the blooming virgins yearly sacrificed to the Minotaur of Luxury, which, probibiting all marriages in a certain class of life, that are not sanctioned by wealth, debases one sex by driving it to licentiousness, and dooms the other to become a pining prey to unrequited affections and disappointed hopes.

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Never have I been more painfully awakened than when in the dead silence of night, I have been startled by a peal of " TRIPLE BOB-MAJORS, which, in performing their foolish ceremony of ringing out the old year, send forth their inappropriate echoes into the universal darkness, and scare the repose of nature with their obstreperous mirth. It is an unhallowed and irreverent mode of solemnizing the twelvemonth's death. It is as if at the funeral of a deceased parent a rejoicing chime should suddenly burst like a peal of laughter from the belfry, instead of the sad-slow-deep toll of the single passing bell. These iron tongues should not be allowed to shout out their indecent merriment at a consummation fraught with so many inscrutable mysteries and appalling associations. What! are we cannibals so to rejoice that a portion of our best friends has been actually eaten up by the omnivorous maw of time? Are we saints and of the elect, so fully prepared for the blow of death, that we can carol at being brought three hundred and sixty-five days nearer the edge of his scythe? Perhaps it may be urged, that these noisy vibrations are rather meant to salute the present than the past year -to celebrate a birth, not a death; to welcome the coming rather than to speed the parting guest; and that upon the accession of a new year, as of a new king, their brazen and courtier-like loyalty finds more delight in the glory which is rising and full of promise, than in that which has just set, and can bestow no more. The ancients divided their annual homage with a less obsequious selfishness. Janus, who stood between the two years, gave his name indeed to the first month; but he was provided with a double face, that by gazing as steadfastly upon past as fu→ ture time, he might inculcate upon his worshippers the wisdom of being retrospective as well as provident. But Janus was an ancient and a god; had he been a modern and a man, he would have known better!

However it may have been par tially misapplied and wasted, the last

year may still, perhaps, have materially advanced the sum of human happiness and, as it is impossible to solve this point by an examination of individual evidence, we will decide it by a show of hands. All you who are as much or more discontented with your present lot, than you were twelve months ago, please to hold up your hand. Heavens! what an atmosphere of palms, gentle and simple, fair and furrowed, cosmeticised and unwashed; what a forest of digits, some sparkling with diamonds, some unadorned, and a whole multitude cinctured with the wedding ring!You, on the contrary, who feel yourselves happier than you were-hold up YOUR hands. Alack! what a pitiful minority! A few youths who left school at the last Christmas holidays; and an equal number of girls who, having dismissed their governesses, are to COME OUT this season. Young and sanguine dupes, enjoy your hap. piness while ye may; I am not serpent enough to whisper a syllable in your ear that might accelerate the loss of your too fleeting paradise.

MISS FOOTE.

THIS lady, whose history has of late become so unhappily notorious, was once ardently admired by Chandos Leigh, Esq. who 'tis said proffered her his hand, an offer which, unluckily perhaps for herself, Miss F. rejected. It was about this period that he composed the two following poems, which appear in a volume of his miscellaneous writings:

TO MISS FOOTE,

OF COVENT-GARDEN THEATRE.
Leggiadria singulare e pellegrina.
PETRARCH, SONNET 36.

The man whom feeling ever mov'd,
Must own thy gracefulness of mien;
By few unsought, by all approv'd,

What art thou but the Garden Queen? Her fabled gaieties are thine,

Her ringlets dancing in the wind; Whatever poets call divine

In Flora, is in thee combin'd. The Perdita whom Shakspeare's skill In sweet simplicity array'd, In thee may find her image still, Nature's own gentle, artless maid.

TO THE SAME, ON HER PERFORM-
ANCE
OF STATIRA, IN THE
TRAGEDY OF ALEXANDER THE
GREAT.

Is she not more than mortals e'er can wish,-.-
Diana's soul cast in the flesh of Venus?
LEE'S ALEXANDER, Act. 4.

7.

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ODE FOR A NEW YEAR. I

From all my Acquaintance I meet,

One striking expression I hear: With a smile on their face they repeat, I wish you a happy New Year. What a tremor their voices impart,

What a damp on my spirits they cast: How sad, how astonish'd my heart, When I think on the Year that is past. I have finish'd an act on the stage, Through scenes without number I've been:

I know I am older in age,

But am I not older in sin?

To the grave what a number are gone, In the course of a short fleeting year; Perchance ere another is flown,

My name in the list may appear.

And am I prepar'd to depart,

From the race I am running below? What a terror prevails o'er my heart, When my conscience too plainly says NO.

F. PARKE.

Transatlantic Varieties.

Or Selections from
AMERICAN JOURNALS.

(Resumed from p. 351, vol. ii J

THE MAMMOTH.-We transcribe from the "Columbian Register," of

the 13 June, 1821, the following advertisement relative to the bones of this stupendous animal. How cleverly the advertiser has contrived to loop on a little bit of useful intelligence" in the form of a postscript!

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Bones of the Mammoth. May be seen at the store of Mr. E. Hoggins, jun., nearly opposite Mr. Belden's, in State-street, on Monday next, two real Bones of the Mammoth, found at Big Boon Lick, Boon county, Kentucky. One is a jaw-bone, together with the teeth, weighing between 30 and 35lbs. ; the other is a Hip-Bone, weight about 50lbs. Price of exhibition, to grown persons, 12 cents; to persons under 16 years, 6 cents.

"The subscriber having resided 23 years in Kentucky, Ohio, &c. (principally at Cincinnati,) has acquired a thorough geographical knowledge of the Western Country, and will with pleasure give any desired information to visitors who may be interested in that section of the Union.

"CHRISTOPHER CAREY. "P. S. For Sale as above, a quantity of the SPICE OF THE PRICKLY ASH; well known to be highly useful in cases of Rheumatism, Fever, and Ague, Disorders of the Blood and Stomach, &c.

"New-Haven, June 14, 1821."

CLIO.

TOLERATION." Open to all parties influenced by none.' This maxim has been hitherto confined theoretically to politics-but it is now perhaps for the first time, about to be applied to freligion near Savannah. On the 27th ult. the cornerstone of a church was laid near Cherokee Hill, eight miles from Savannah, which is to be open to all sects of Christians. It is to be called " THE CHURCH OF ALL DENOMINATIONS," This institution sprang from no particular order of Christians, and it is to be confined to none-but it owes its origin to the Society of FreeMasons. (Columbian Register, 23d June, 1821.)

CLIO.

GOLD. We were very much amused, last evening, by reading in the Post a very long, and pretty well told, story of digging in a cellar in Gold-street, for money, buried there by Capt. Kidd a hundred years ago. According to this story, a black man had been employed by some one who professed to be possessed of supernatural knowledge. The black man, properly equipped with various hocus-pocus apparatus, worked night after night, and had made a big hole in the cellar. The neighbours were disturbed; complaints were lodged at the Police Office; the ignorant, superstitious African was alarmed; and, being told by our Justices that if he ever attempted any thing of the kind again, the worst of all calamities would happen to him, the poor fellow was frightened almost to death, and will not again be found digging for Captain Kidd's treasure. CLIO.

"New-York Gazette,
25th April, 1822.

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"One of these giants, called Bohdo, who was immensely huge and powerful, spread terror through all the land. Before him trembled all the giants, both among the Bohemians and Franks. But Emma, the daughter of the king of the Riesen-gebirge [the giant mountains], would not yield to the suit he urged. Neither strength nor cunning availed, for she was in league with a powerful spirit. One day, Bohdo beheld his beloved hunting at a distance on the mountains; he saddled his courser, which sprang over the plains at the rate of a mile a minute, and swore by all the spirits of hell, to reach her this time or perish. He rushed on swift as the hawk flies, and had nearly overtaken

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