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tisfaction she had once enjoyed in a fituation of the fame kind.

As we are all credulous in our own favour, and willing to imagine fome latent fatisfaction in any thing which we have not experienced, I will confess to you, without restraint, that I had suffered my head to be filled with expectations of fome nameless pleasure in a rural life, and that I hoped for the happy hour that should fet me free from noife, and flutter, and ceremony, difmifs me to the peaceful shade, and lull me in content and tranquillity. To folace myself under the misery of delay, I sometimes heard a studious lady of my acquaintance read paftorals, I was delighted with scarce any talk but of leaving the town, and never went to bed without dreaming of groves, and meadows, and frisking lambs.

At length I had all my clothes in a trunk, and faw the coach at the door; I fprung in with ecftacy, quarrelled with my maid for being too long in taking leave of the other fervants, and rejoiced as the ground grew lefs which lay between me and the completion of my wishes. A few days brought me to a large old houfe, encompassed on three fides with woody hills, and looking from the front on a gentle river, the fight of which renewed all my expectations of pleasure, and gave me fome regret for having lived fo long without the enjoyment which thefe delightful scenes were now to afford me. My aunt came out to receive me, but in a dress so far removed from the present fashion, that I could scarcely look upon her without laughter, which would have been no kind requital for the trouble which she had taken to make herself fine against my

arrival,

arrival. The night and the next morning were driven along with enquiries about our family; my aunt then explained our pedigree, and told me: ftories of my great grandfather's bravery in the civil wars, nor was it lefs than three days before: I could perfuade her to leave me to myself..

At laft economy prevailed, fhe went in the ufual manner about her own affairs, and I was at liberty to range in the wilderness, and fit by the cafcade. The novelty of the objects about me: pleafed me for a while, but after a few days they were new no longer, and I foon began to per ceive that the country was not my element; that fhades, and flowers, and lawns, and waters, had very foon exhausted all their power of pleasing,, and that I had not in myfelf any fund of fatiffaction with which I could supply the lofs, of my cuftomary amusements.

I unhappily told my aunt, in the first warmth of our embraces, that I had leave to stay with her ten weeks. Six only are yet gone, and how fhall I live through the remaining four? 1 go out and return; I pluck a flower, and throw it away; I catch an infect, and when I have exa→ mined its colours, fet it at liberty; I fling a pebble into the water, and fee one circle fpread after another. When it chances to rain, I walk in the great hall, and watch the minute-hand upon the dial, or play with a litter of kittens, which the cat happens to have brought in a lucky time.

My aunt is afraid I fhall grow melancholy, and therefore encourages the neighbouring gentry to vifit us. They came at firft with great eagernefs to fee the fine lady from London, but when.

We

we met, we had no common topick on which we could converfe; they had no curiofity after plays, operas, or musick: and I find as little fatisfaction from their accounts of the quarrels or alliances of families, whofe names, when once I can escape, I shall never hear. The women have now seen me, know how my gown is made, and are satisfied; the men are generally afraid of me, and fay little because they think themselves not at liberty to talk rudely.

Thus am I condemned to folitude; the day moves flowly forward, and I fee the dawn with uneafiness, because I confider that night is at a great distance. I have tried to fleep by a brook, but find its murmurs ineffectual; fo that I am forced to be awake at least twelve hours, without vifits, without cards, without laughter, and without flattery. I walk because I am difgufted with fitting ftill, and fit down because I am weary with walking. I have no motive to action, nor any object of love, or hate, or fear, or inclination. I cannot dress with fpirit, for I have neither rival nor admirer. I cannot dance without a partner, nor be kind, or cruel, without a lover.

Such is the life of Euphelia, and fuch it is likely to continue for a month to come. I have not yet declared against existence, nor called upon the deftinies to cut my thread; but I have fincerely refolved not to condemn myfelf to fuch another fummer, nor too haftily to flatter myfelf with happiness. Yet I have heard, Mr. Rambler, of those who never thought themselves fo much at ease as in folitude, and cannot but fufpect it to be fome way or other my own fault, that, without great pain, either of mind or body,

I am

I am thus weary of myself: that the current of youth ftagnates, and that I am languifhing in a dead calm, for want of fome external impulse. I shall therefore think you a benefactor to our fex, if you will teach me the art of living alone; for I am confident that a thousand and a thoufand and a thousand ladies, who affect to talk with ecftacies of the pleafures of the country, are in reality, like me, longing for the winter, and wifhing to be delivered from themselves by company and diverfion.

I am, SIR, Yours,

EUPHELIA,

NUMB. 43. TUESDAY, August 14, 1750.

Flumine perpetuo torrens folet acrius ire,

Sed tamen hæc brevis eft, illa perennis aqua.

OVID.

In courfe impetuous foon the torrent dries,
The brook a conftant peaceful stream fupples. F. LEWIS.

T is obferved by those who have written on the conftitution of the human body, and the original of those diseases by which it is afflicted, that every man comes into the world morbid, that there is no temperature fo exactly regulated but that fome humour is fatally predominant, and that we are generally impregnated, in our first entrance upon life, with the feeds of that malady, which, in time, fhall bring us to the grave.

This remark has been extended by others to the intellectual faculties. Some, that imagine themfelves to have looked with more than common penetration

penetration into human nature, have endeavoured to persuade us that each man is born with a mind formed peculiarly for certain purposes, and with defires unalterably determined to particular objects, from which the attention cannot be long diverted, and which alone, as they are well or ill pursued, muft produce the praise or blame, the happiness or mifery, of his future life.

This pofition has not, indeed, been hitherto proved with strength proportionate to the affurance with which it has been advanced, and, perhaps, will never gain much prevalence by a close examination.,

If the doctrine of innate ideas be itself difputable, there feems to be little hope of eftablithing an opinion, which supposes that even complications of ideas have been given us at our birth, and that we are made by nature ambitious, or covetous, before we know the meaning of either power or money.

Yet as every step in the progreffion of existence changes our pofition with refpect to the things about us, fo as to lay us open to new affaults and particular dangers, and fubjects us to inconveniencies from which any other fituation is exempt; as a publick or a private life, youth and age, wealth and poverty, have all fome evil clofely adherent, which cannot wholly be escaped but by quitting the state to which it is annexed, and submitting to the incumbrances of fome other condition; fo it cannot be denied that every difference in the structure of the mind has its advantages and its wants; and that failures and defects being infeparable from humanity, however the powers of understanding be extended or contracted, there

will

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