deed the most attractive personage. The wife resigns, or ought to resign, always her claims to general attention; and to concentre and confine her regards, and wishes, and objects, to her chosen companion, and domestic claims and scenes. She has quitted the public stage; she seeks no more the general gaze; she has become part of a distinct and separated proprietary. But the unmarried lady remains still the candidate for every honourable notice, and injures no one by receiving it. Those of the male sex who are in the same condition, are at as full liberty to pay her their proper attentions as she is to receive them. Being in this position as to society at large, she is always interesting wherever she goes; and, if she preserve her good temper, her steady conduct, and her modest reputation undiminished, and cultivate her amiable, her intellectual, and her truly feminine qualities, she cannot go anywhere, in any station of life, without being an object of interest and pleasurable feeling, to all those of her own circle with whom she may choose to be acquainted.

It is only by displaying undue solicitude for changing her condition, or disappointment at the change not occurring, or a peevishness which is imputed to such feelings, or unbecoming attempts to obtain or extort notice, that she lessens her natural attractiveness.

It is for us all, never to regret or covet what we do not or cannot obtain; and never to repine that others have what we do not possess. It is for us all to use and value, and cultivate the happinesses which we are possessing, and not to sigh or crave for those which do not come to us.

It is for us all, to be at all times grateful to our kindest Provider, for the daily comforts with which he is supplying us; and to resign every thing else to his will and regulation, and patiently and magnanimously to await his direction of our state and fortunes. Then every one of us would be enjoying a greater felicity from our ordinary life, than we can experience on any other plan.

He arranges and administers life on this principle.-He requires us to believe in his invisible government and guidance of it; to be always content with his dispositions and distribution of it; and to be assured, that if we thus leave it to him, he will, from time to time, place us in that condition, and in those circumstances which will be really best and happiest for us. Let the single of both sexes think, feel, and

act firmly and perseveringly on these principles, and they will find that life, in every one of its states and positions, is like a fine garden, full of rich, though varied, flowers and fruits, in all its compartments.*

LETTER XI.

System of Nature as to the successive states of Human Life-The Util ities of these several Stages, and especially of a young period of Life -Happiness attainable at every Season.

In our seasons we have the grateful succession of the spring, the summer, and the autumn. In our vegetation, the new leaf, the beauteous flower, and the nutritious fruit. These correspond with contemporaneous atmospherical changes of our system, and are followed by that peculiar destitution and apparent death of nature, which frosty and chilling winter brings on. The insect and reptile world exhibit congenial analogies. The vernal temperature recalls or hatches their tribes into life and feeling, in a creeping state. They have their summer day of playful gayety, varying in its duration, and enjoy existence in a winged form; their autumn is their time of depositing their oval brood; and from that they depart into death or insensibility. These four states of all that have vital being, growth, maturity, decline, and death, and these annual successions of aerial agencies which are so much associated with the life, pro

* I cannot doubt from my own experience, that happiness accompanies both the single and the married states; I have been now in the latter forty years, and no one can be happier than I have been in it; but I had left my parent roof, and been living in chambers in the Temple, and therefore much alone, for eight years before I married. This was a complete trial of the single state, and in this I have also to say that I was perfectly happy, though in a different way. I did not marry because I was deficient in happiness, but because the lady deeply interested me; and becoming so attached, my comfort then was associated with her, and having by that time before me the fair means and probability of an adequate maintenance by regular diligence, on a moderate and careful scale, I changed one mode of happiness for another; to that increase of it which always arises from reciprocal regard; if what is already happy can be more happy, by being differently happy.

duce, and suspension of vegetative nature, have been made" the characteristics of our terrestrial system. In the human race an analogous series of changes and states takes place, with such striking moral and intellectual results, as to excite our admiration at the kindness of our Creator, for having formed his human nature on a plan of such sagacious benevolence. By this he has appointed, that every human being should have a season of childhood, another of youth, a third of full maturity, with its parental produce, and a following period of decline and death, to pass into another mode of existence elsewhere.

These laws are attached to all who are permitted to pass through the regular course of human life; though its Giver has reserved to himself the resistless right of calling each of us away, at whatever part of it he shall think proper, without completing the full progression of these successive conditions.

These changes in us have the analogy with the rest of the organized and ethereal kingdoms of nature above remarked. But they are obviously a very artificial system of living being, and have been, as to our race, purposely selected and appointed to it; for neither of them was unavoidable. There was no necessity for our being so many years a babe, and so many more in each of the succeeding conditions.

We might have sprung up at once into full-formed beings, as Adam was at his creation; and as the Theban fable imagines that body of men to have done, who emerged instantaneously from the dragon's teeth, which Cadmus was fancied to have sown.*

But the great object with us has been, to make moral and intelligent beings of that peculiar kind which we have thus far attained to be; and we may therefore assume that the successive ages and states through which we grow into maturity, and decline into dissolution and departure, ha been chosen and attached to human nature, from such fore

* * Ovid describes this fable with his usual ease and picturesqueness. "He opened the furrow with the plough, he urged and scattered the teeth in the ground; soon, passing belief, the clods began to move, and the point of a spear was seen coming above the earth; presently, heads covered with a nodding painted crest emerged; shoulders followed; breasts and arms laden with spears arose, and a crop of men with shields grew fully up."-Ov. Met. lib. 3, v. 104-110.

seen and operating instrumentality in facilitating this great result.

That each state, till our decline, is a series of acquisition and progression, none can dispute. In all of us, our powers of body and mind, our ideas and knowledge, our experience and judgment, our skilful use of what capacities we have, our bodily activities and our manual dexterities, incontestably increase before decline, or before final decay comes on. Even as this advances, the intellectual process is in most, if not in all, continued with beneficial enlargement of our anterior attainments.

In each of the subsequent periods we can do what we were not competent to perform in an earlier condition. We are more efficient, both as moral and as intelligent beings, in our maturity, than at either of our previous ages.

The appointed plan has therefore accomplished its assigned results; and all obtain the benefits from it which were meant to accompany it, though with that diversity which appears in every human individual.

It was an admirable idea to begin our earthly existence as a filial babe; for in this state our moral feelings evolve in the most pleasing manner. The first emotions are those of love. If the sucking infant is conscious of any sensibilities, and its sweet smile soon announces that it is so, they must be those of affectionate gratification. How exquisitely happy does it show itself to be on its mother's neck! Its moving and moulding fingers; its murmur of placid delight; the eye of its pleased soul, looking thankfulness, or at least expressive of it, indicate not only its own enjoyment as it feeds, but also that the feeling of love is in action within it, though it has not then learned to distinguish it from its happiness. But as its emotions become more marked, it is sufficiently obvious that gratitude and affection, and soon (obedient duty and acquiescing will, are the moral sensibilities first awakened, or rather produced within it.*

At this period also commence our modesty, our diffidence;

The Hebrew prophets display to us the Deity himself alluding, as his final intentions towards the Jewish nation, to the maternal and mental feelings which he has so beautifully caused.

Can a woman forget her sucking child,

That she should not have compassion
On the son of her womb?

our sense of the need of social kindness; our thankfulness on receiving it; our pleasure from it; and as the result of these, that germination of our benevolent sympathies, for which our Creator has formed and prepared us; but which, like the seed of the vegetable, require to be excited and fostered into vital being. We desire to be assisted by others, and we like to help them when we can in return. The little child is as officious to oblige, as he is gratified by being obliged. He is often importunate to return the favours he receives, by little efforts in his own way to do the giver what he thinks a service, or means to be a kindness. But it cannot be necessary to pursue the subject farther. It is sufficient to have thus intimated the fact, that by the succession of infancy, youth, and manhood, a gradual train of moral feelings is brought into existence and into operation, in that series which most secures the best moral formation which we can receive. Those of childhood are succeeded by the additional ones which the position and circumstances of our youth bring out. A new class arises as we advance into manhood, yet still maintaining a pleasing connexion with Yea-they may forgetYet WILL I not forget thee.