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cleanliness, this befouling kind of enjoyment entirely excluded from society. I will never believe our noses were put on our faces to be loaded with this clogging material-this scented nostril-powder. If I were appointed general dictator for a week in society, I would cure this nose-defamation. I would have a man in an anti-chamber, ready with a large pocket-handkerchief, who, on hearing the sniff attendant on the pinch being taken, should immediately advance and offer his pocket-handkerchief:---this would perhaps be quite an understandable hint. But I return from this digression.

Versed as you were in love stories, and romantic associations, perhaps you had formed very sumptuous ideas of your future wife. Yes, I can easily fancy your anticipations here: she was to be beautiful as Ovid's Corinna; her eyes were to gleam unutterable devotion; her cheeks were to have all the roseate witchery the poets prate of; her lips were to be of the Grecian curl, and droop in a silent delicate eloquence; and her person---could you yourself explain the one you dared anticipate? I am sure I can't. On account of these imagined perfections, you were a long time disappointed. To be sure, you often cast an interesting glance in the ball-room; you sometimes pressed a hand of alabaster with very creditable pathos, and once or twice a servant maid overheard you talking to Miss alone in the refreshment room; but the next morning dispelled the misty dreams of the preceding evening: you never suffered your conscience to be uneasy for a few sentimental, twelve o'clock perjuries. For were you not aware

"Nulla fides inerit; perjuria ridet amantûm
Jupiter, et ventos irrita ferre jubet ?"

TIBULLUS.

At length, when the lingering fervor of romantic youth subsided into a calmer state, you no longer expected a Venus de Medicis, but looked out for one who condescended to the general appearances of humanity. After a few months' anxious employment, you meet one, that opens every tender feeling of the heart, and all at once attracts you to love her. She is beautiful, but not perfect; you have begun to consider the qualities of the mind as well as the person, and fortunately, you discover sufficient congeniality in her's, to promise to render the union with her a source of blessedness. I shall not attempt to discover the spot where you first gave her pretty hand that eloquent pressure, which she as eloquently, though scarcely perceptibly, returned. How many preceding conversations you held with your eyes, how you first mentioned, viva voce, the inspiration that quite overcame you, or in what manner you penned your first love-letter. For charity's sake, I'll suppose that you performed all these enchanting offices with the required witchery; therefore, I shall conclude my paper, by entering into your anticipations, &c. &c. while in the full tide of the lover's servitude.

"Beatus ille qui," woos a pretty maid; "Amen!" cries every man that is a man.---O, you happy lover! let me ask you, with becoming deference, if your heart is not enlarged by giving it all away? If your soul is not refined by burying it in love? Are not your

hopes more delightfully soaring, your fancies more entrancingly framed, and your whole disposition softened, enriched, and cultivated, since you have commenced anticipating a wife ?---The moral certainty of your future unison with the object of your heart's admiration, does not debar you from numberless anticipated delights. Now is the time for solitude to be society; for moonlit walks, umbrageous bowers, sentimental waterfalls, midnight sea-shores, and mountainascensions---why? because you are constantly engaged in a maze of fluctuating thoughts, that render you "never less alone than when alone:" What a charming morn that will be when your marriage takes place !---Yes, the weather will join in the general congratulations which will thicken on you, by being decked in its brightest garment of diffusive sunshine: there will not be a cloudy speck in the azure sweep of heaven---the wanton breezes will murmur compliments round the carriage as you proceed to church, and the very stones will seem to rattle a chorus of joy beneath the bickering wheels. How will your heart tremble just as you arrive at the church door?---How will you dart your eloquent eyes on the beauteous bride, as she rests her stainless arm on your obedient supporting one? I trust in the flutter of the moment, you will not entangle the lady's garment; it would make you look a little simple, though you might certainly be forgiven, I think, for this delinquency. Often have you pictured the wedding scene!--The mantling blushes, the pensive beauty, the conscious solemnity, the coy but delectable attitude of your Rosetta, begirt with loveliness; have these not often employed your thoughts? but, I am a little premature. You have anticipated, I am sure, all the delicious engagements preceding your entry in the carnage. I must do, as Hume has done lately, walk backward by coming forward.

Ever since you were assured, that your attentions were not altogether disagreeable (to say more, would be presumptuous even for the successful lover), what an existence has your's been! How different has been the tide of feeling---how wakeful your beautypicturing imagination ?---When have you wandered along the silent meadows, turned your eye enamoured on the far-blooming landscape, nor thought of one who is the cynosure of all your hopes ?---Your love has been influential on all that is in you, and all that surrounds us. You have felt that the world contains at least one living heart that beats, and will beat till death shall arrest its motion, in a neverchanging unison with your own. Thus the self-loving principle has daily waned away into an absorbing, overswaying tenderness, which has gradually enlarged, till it mingles in all your wishes and actions: But time goes on; each month of your engagement is a lovelier one than the last; your Rosetta's beauty does not lessen; no, she has (or you contrive to fancy so, and that's all the same in effect) greatly improved in her mien since you first beheld her; those bright-gleaming eyes nestled under their sleeping lids show sweeter expression than ever---those glowing cheeks are more delicately formed, and that dear little curl which you so often long to touch, and once were seriously quarrelled with for touching, how bewitchingly it trem

bles on her fair-drooping brow!---As you discover more charms in her person and in her mind (I hope she is not a blue!) your anticipations increase. When you see her approaching you to hang on your arm, and enjoy the breezy evening's ramble, do you not think to yourself, and this angel will be always mine !---But stop, she is by your side. Does she not look overpoweringly beautiful in that light summer dress?

The sun is serenely pillowing himself on his couch of clouds, the crimson streaks shoot along the surrounding horizon, the mid-sky is invitingly blue, and there you are, side by side, with Rosetta. Though encased with smoke at this moment, I have a delicious landscape in my eye (no punning here, mind, reader), but I have not time to say more, than that the grass is softly mellowed by the departing sunbeams, that the hawthorn bushes breathe refreshing fragrance, and that every step you take seems approaching some further happiness. Curiosity was always a great failing of mine-I wonder what you are conversing about? when did your last letter arrive? if Rosetta received your album safe, and your "Elegy to a departed Moonbeam?" how her mother's cold is, that you may call to enquire after it? or when you are to drive her over to your old uncle's in the country? Something after this sort, I vow, is now passing between you: or, perhaps, as your voices fall, and she turns away her head, you are on more important matters, the marriage day-far be it from me to settle that momentous time!

"George, don't you think we have walked far enough? it must "be getting late." You look up astonished, and discover that the sun has been set some time, that there is rather a chilliness in the air, the stars are up, but as there is no moon it is passably dark: you start off almost running, thinking she will catch cold, "So it is, we "must return." You walk back in silent speed, and, as you approach her door, when you are to say "good night," your heart commences a thrilling palpitation; never mind, you are to meet again to-morrow evening!" At 12, George," says Rosetta, holding up her finger with playful seriousness. You do not speak with your tongue, but what does your eyes say?"Can I forget it?"

Assuredly you will not fail to run against several people or posts as you return thoughtfully to your home, so immured will you be in your soft reflections. Already you have anticipated the marriage day, the honeymoon has winged joyously away, and you are seated in your study, or else in your back parlor, your Rosetta is near you, a little George is prattling on her knee; in short, you have been married fifteen months! Heaven knows what you will anticipate then! I know what I am anticipating, something I shall not realize --stop, there's the postman at the door, a letter from my cousin in Wales. I wonder what news it contains! Reader, if you will excuse me, I'll turn my face to the fire and read it.

London, Feb. 12, 1827.

DEMOCRITUS.

P. S. Just before I unseal my letter, I will add, that the subject of this paper is by no means exhausted. Probably, at a future day, I may resume it.

London.

SONNET.

Mark ye yon rosebud, drooping in the shade,
Ere time unfolds its beauties to the day,
Like to that flow'r, life's flatt'ring visions fade,
And hope illusive smiles but to betray;
How anguish'd memory weeps o'er what it loves,
Once redolent of bliss without alloy,
Breathing soft music on the seraph mov'd,
Mingling its notes with sweets that never cloy.
Pure beams of loveliness, such may not now
O'er widow'd hearts diffuse a brighter sun;
When ruin sits enthron'd, whose with'ring brow
Destroys each beauteous form it gazes on;
Thus flows the stream of age-its bubbles bear
Death's solemn requiem to the sons of care.

W. C. SELWY.

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THE PHILOSOPHY OF PROPOSALS OF MARRIAGE.

Mr. Inspector. You who are a very grave and well-read person, may remember that there were certain subjects in nature and life, which excited both wonder and humility in that wise monarch of old, whose prowess the Queen of Sheba journeyed personally to contemplate. The way of an eagle in the air, and the way of a ship in the midst of the sea, probably impressed his mind with a more lively sense of the brevity of his own information; they were undoubtedly objects of greater mystery and depth than they would have been, had he enjoyed the scientific beauties of Selby's Ornithology, and known the use and construction of the mariner's compass, and Hadley's quadrant. There are some things, however, in life, which I, who am not, nor pretend to be, any way allied in wisdom to Solomon, can never contemplate unimpressed by the most active curiosity and wonder.

One of these subjects of astonishment to me, is the nature and character of maiden aunts. A genuine maiden aunt, is unlike any other natural object that I know of-terrestrial--aquatic or amphibious. Her habits and manners, differ altogether from others of her sex and race.---A contradiction to Providence---a lusus naturæ. Her life is a long interminable warfare; at peace, neither with sentiment nor action; requiring respect, yet showing none; self-confident in virtue; intolerant to infirmity. She sits enshrined in fancied security, and lives in society as in a wilderness; solitary, unattached, angry, and alone. I know something of your maiden aunts, as I shall presently state; and the most singular part of the phenomenon is this, there is no man living, but has one of the species in his family, at the least.

After this, as a subject of enquiry and sad reflection, there is another mystery which I, who albeit have ever been of a thoughtful and meditative turn, have never been able to account for or explain.

Why should the subject of marriage, the gravest, most solemn, and irremediable act of our lives, be treated, as it always is, with so much levity, and, to me, horrifying laughter and mirth? If we happen in society sometimes to be at all rational and contemplative, to a degree which is thought to produce dullness and depression, it is only necessary for some blaspheming witling to turn the subject to the unredeemable bonds, the implacable fetters, of marriage-he has only to discourse of offers rejected or accepted, to create smiles, to produce general vivacity and gaiety.

Nay, more: even the horrors of matrimonial infelicities are thought suitable objects of laughter and derision. If a man is known to live on, what is pleasantly called, bad terms with his wife, and both to have their passions mutually exasperated, until at last the neighbours and watchmen interfere, and magisterial authority is necessary to prevent bloodshed and petty treason, this truly is a subject for young men's wit, and old maid's laughter, for jests and jocularity! To a man of reflection, like myself, nothing which ever appears in the newspapers is one half so petrifying as some of these accounts of wedded rage and hostility. And these inserted for the express purpose, of pleasantry and mirth. A woman scraping her infant to death with an oyster shell; a man falling from the fifth story, impaled on the spikes of the iron railings below; smashings, slashings, ulcers, pestilence and plague, are pleasing imaginations, positively oriental luxuries, compared with such accounts.

Yet there

are fiends who can listen and smile. I once ceased to love a young lady, because I saw her smile at the black eye of a gentleman, when the scandal was, that it had not been given him out of his own house. What, said I to myself, have I to expect?

The

The whole subject, from first to last, requires amendment and philosophical investigation. The affair of marriage is more undefined, more laxly considered, than the meanest and most trumpery affair of life. I never knew any living soul who could explain to me, or make clear to my apprehension, even in a very loose manner, what, in fact, constitutes an offer of marriage; much less, which must be considered as the most effectual and approved method of making one. awful fact remains, that you may stand committed when you least expect it, you may undo every thing, lavish every care and kindness in vain, destroy every ray of hope, merely through awkwardness and indecision in the form of introducing the business. Which, then, I ask, is the best, which the surest and least liable to failure, of all the allowed methods of making proposals of marriage? A more momentous or spirit-stirring question, after the immortality of the soul and the effects of vaccination are disposed of, there is not.

There is, to me, who am now in the autumn of life, no sight more impressive and affecting than that of a young man of honor and generous feeling enamoured of a lovely and accomplished girl, but uncertain if his affection be at all mutual or returned. There is something irresistibly touching in his anxieties. Who does not sympathize with his cares, the alternate excitations of his sensitive spirit,

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