the icy chilliness of his fears and forebodings, the uncertainty of the future embittering all present enjoyment, and interpreting even the tokens of hope as the easy unconcern of indifference and insensibility! What upon earth, I ask, then, is to be his course; or which way is he to proceed to have these distracting doubts removed, his joy or his condemnation signed or sealed? Put the question to her father, and it is long odds but he answer, the best way is to tie up your parchments in a neat parcel, convince me of your worth (in money), and then talk about the matter-make it a prudent affair of pounds and pence. But what says the young lady? She will certainly feel, and probably express, her disgustful abhorrence of such a cold-blooded and usurious proceeding; her most approved parchment would be a copy of tender verses; her irresistible rent-roll, perhaps, a long drawn sigh; her best estate, the possession of the heart. How will you decide? I will give my own experience in these matters.

It was my misfortune to be born rich and modest, remnants of the fall of man; two things, which I venture to say, never fail, when united to make a man the most miserable of his race, to expose him to the scoff of a merciless and unthinking world. A poor and modest man may pass, his poverty assorts with his diffidence; it is a habit which fits him. But a man entitled to carry weight, the best of all weight, a heavy purse, to be unpresuming and retiring! A parson drinking too much punch at a christening, cannot create one half of the infidel merriment that such an object excites. I lost my parents by death before I knew how to estimate the greatness of the loss, and I was left to the care of a maiden aunt. Ah, aunt Rebecca! you, of all my kindred, will at least be impressed on my memory. I think I sometimes see in other faces, some resemblance to thine, something like thy twinkling grey eye, sharp nose, and compressed lips; other forms remind me of thy thin, worn, and extenuated figure, the promptness and decision of thy action and motion. But who can ever come up to thee, who can ever typify one shade of thy merit as a most consummate, artful, and successful match-maker? Thou at once delight and terror of thy friends, thou sometimes scourge, sometimes ministering angel of thy acquaintance!

The first and most subtle and refined method of making proposals, is through the interposition of a friend. My aunt lived upon a handsome annuity, and her whole soul was devoted to making her friends happy, but happy only in one way. Her remedy for all the ills of life, happening to single people, was to get married. Had she been a philosopher, this would have been the starting point of her theories, the basis of all her hypotheses. What a strange unclassified animal, as I have said, is a maiden aunt! She felt the miseries, not of her peculiar life, but of human nature; the solitude of her condition sometimes preyed upon her; she felt no uneasiness, no depression, but what she immediately traced it to her single and unprotected loneliness. Then it was she renewed her vows and wishes to minister consolation and relief, to abate that sorrow and discomfort which she dreaded that others should ever know, as she knew them,

by bitter experience. I was her near relation, and for whom should she care if not for me? If her benevolence, founded on principle, led her to an universal wish to remedy or prevent the wretchedness of others, what must have been the intensity of her anxiety on this. account for me? I shall never forget, Heaven grant I may forgive, her affection!

I had been educated in a private manner. My aunt dreaded the turbulence and immorality of public schools-the dissipations of a college life absolutely terrified her. "Pretty husbands," said she, "these collegians must make." The extremity of her condemnation could not go beyond this censure. I remember on one occasion visiting her; it was just before I came of age. Marriage, I solemnly declare, had never entered my thoughts, at least my own marriage never had, but it was a subject which had often engaged my aunt's meditation for me; she cared for one, as she afterwards pathetically exclaimed, who cared not for himself. She had, in fact, gone the length of saving me all trouble of choice, and had selected from her own acquaintance, what she thought a suitable match for me; and to this point her undivided energy, the whole force of her diplomatic agency, was then directed. I had known Fanny Rfrom boyhood; we had seen, however, but little of each other, and I viewed her only in the light of a distant, and perhaps an agreeable, acquaintance.

I had, however, grown older, and my aunt thought it time seriously to think, if ever I were to think of marriage. With my aunt, a young man of one-and-twenty, without a fixed resolution of immediately marrying, was lost and undone. No pen or tongue can describe her deep-laid plots to bring us together; her vigilant care in observing us when together, how earnestly and eloquently she praised her to me; then the list of her virtues and accomplishments. Above all, she hoped the poor girl had not thought too much of me; she thought her more pale and sedate than usual; she trusted she had prudence, and would control her affection; but she had always been of an open and undisguised temper. These, and a thousand suitable artifices, were, as I afterwards found, played on the other party. I never, for my own part, dreamed to what these sentimental conversations of my aunt tended. I dreamed not of her deeply laid designs; I always found myself placed, I knew not how or why, next Fanny at cards; my aunt always with a sly and sinister expression to others of the party, contrived that we should walk together; there was always a great draft of air, and danger of cold, where I sat, if I sat not next to her; we sang duets, and my aunt was happy and prospering.

The overwhelming, the damning truth at last burst upon me! I was about to return to the care of the good Dr. O -"Will you "not," said my aunt, "explain your intentions, or say something more precise with regard to Fanny R- before you go?" "To "what do you refer?" said I; her answer almost annihilated me: the sudden terrors of a thunder storm among the Andes, of a snow

drift in the Highlands, a sirocco in the desert, of flood, of fire, never could furnish an image of my astonishment and despair. I burst from her with an exclamation which left no doubt on her mind of my unalterable decision. I never saw Fanny Ragain. This was nearly the last performance of my aunt in her profession. Shall I ever forget her incoherent ravings of the injury I had wrought to the feelings of an innocent girl? what did I mean by all my attentions? what sense of manliness or honor would be left me in thus exposing her to slight or contempt? In vain, I felt myself untouched by her pathos: love abhors the artifices of maiden aunts. My ingratitude hastened her death: from others she could have borne the injury, but from me!-I hope she will be forgiven the heavy and injurious sins of match-making, where "none are married, or given in "marriage;" but what can ever efface from my mind the impressive emotions of grief and indignation which I suffered? and perhaps Fanny R can as innocently say the same.

I was now left free to choose: I was not, however, without a kind adviser in my tutor; and experience added to my caution. Dr. O used sometimes, when we were alone, to inculcate the necessity of a prudential care in these matters. Alluding to the irrevocable nature of such engagements, he more than once turned to a text, which he read with appropriate solemnity and emphasis, and which impressed my mind in a very peculiar manner. "And I find more "bitter than death, the woman whose heart is snares and mets, and "her hands as bands; whoso pleaseth God shall escape from her." Plainly teaching us how vain it is to look to men or magistrates to aid our escape from these snares and bands, when once brought into play. My resolution was fixed not to employ, ror suffer to be employed, any middle-man or middle-woman in such an affair. It was not long before I found my heart irrevocably engaged to one of the loveliest compounds of body and soul, of mind and matter, which I ever knew. Waves of years have rolled over, but not obliterated the impression of her loveliness. I can recal her form and manner; would I had the power of recalling all my agreeable past emotions, with the same fidelity and freshness: this power would indeed be a heaven on earth! I had reason to believe I was not indifferent to her. I determined to make an avowal of my affection. I sought and enjoyed a hundred opportunities, but never could I summon courage and eloquence at the same time. I once endeavoured to shut my eyes and dive into the matter-all utterance forsook me-I groaned and travailled, and while struggling to express my emotion, the gay and worthless S entered, laughed in my face, and they were married in a month.

Why should I detail my misfortunes the horrors of my disappointment and blighted hopes, but to draw some useful moral. My friends very often, out of real kindness, would touch upon the subject and offer advice. My nature, gentle and unruffled upon all other occasions would sometimes assume a new and repulsive character I grew fierce, energetic, and unkind: the image of my aunt arose distinctly before me: I both dreaded and scorned

interference; and the bitterness of the past would often inflame me into what my friends, unconscious of the real occasion, thought an unaccountable and frenzied degree of heat and asperity. I once more, however, resolved to make an attempt; and not daring to trust my own powers of tongue, I resolved to calm and moderate my passion into the form of a very gentle and neatly expressed letter. Confusion !---I then wanted passion; nothing could excuse my frigid indifference. I talked of love like a merchant: my heart, really warm and sincere, found no adequate representative: I was treated with scorn---rejected.

Now of all these methods, which was the best, where were the real grounds of failure and mortification? I was favored by all, perhaps beloved by all; yet I retired, discomfited and defeated, self-abased and unhappy. I have but a brief remark to offer, concerning that race, who, like my aunt, by the dignity and extent of their practice, are entitled to the appellation of match-makers. I do not refer to that petty and inconsiderable love of meddling, which is at once the disgrace and curse of idleness and ignorance, of vulgarity and common-place; but that fixed and settled passion of interference, sufficient to be extensively destructive, and to bestow a character on its owner. How, in the name of impudence, and Joseph Hume, dare any one to meddle upon such occasions, in such matters? What fiend prompts them to urge their own weakness, to the sorrow and destruction of others? Let them consider; first, the awful, the eternal responsibility attending all such dealings; secondly, the certainty of being the standard mark, at which all parties will certainly direct the bolts of their occasional indignation and spleen; lastly, they are never thanked, as they are never entitled to thanks in any Their trade is unnatural and useless, a violation of friendship, the occupation of fools, the thankless drudgery of busy idleness and vacuity.

case.

But the plain point to come at, after all, is this-being in love, which is the wisest course of declaring your passion? There is the rub, that is truly germain to the matter. Answer that point satisfactorily, and you confer more benefit on society, contribute more to the universal content and happiness of your fellow men, than if you were the inventor of the philosopher's stone, or the most admirable and mollifying species of shaving soap; I would sooner have the merit of settling this question, than that of discovering the longitude. What the devil, I ask, is navigation, or poetry, or the corn laws, compared with it? I have given the matter every consideration, and pronounce at once for oral tradition. No other method, I venture to assert, is deserving the attention of a rational and immortal being, of a being whose greatest distinction from brutes is the possession of the power verbally to communicate and declare his true and honorable love. You will hear boys and simpletons talk of the eye-the language of the eye-love has eyes, is the hereditary delight of Noodledom. The sigh--the gentle pressure, all very well in their places---preludios. I do not mean to gainsay them, but will all or any of these ever bring

the matter to issue, or set the mind at rest; will they ever bring up the question---ring or no ring? This is the theme for men, leave eyes and sighs, squints and squeezes, to the callow brood, the imberbes pueri, which being translated, means bread and butter boys.

It must be admitted, prima facie, that all men have not equal possessions of impudence or eloquence: some possess a happy union of both. There are many who are resolute in turning their natural and primitive vein of assurance to good account, to transmute their brass into gold, think no more of making an offer and being rejected, than of attending a horse fair; I put these out of the argument, but supposing a man to hold but a mean share of rhetoric, still, I say, speak to the question; ten words spoken, is better than ten quires written. You may falter, but you tell the truth, if not the whole of the truth, your meaning is not mistaken, you are not absolutely undone by a wrong punctuation, not positively ruined by a misplaced metonymy: you may feel abased you can say so little; better that, than be condemned for ever for having written too much; your very silence is sometimes eloquence. Get over the first two sentences, and you are happy; your triumph is certain, such a moment can never be forgotten, it is irretractable, it is sealed on the spot!

How any young lady can give countenance to a mean-spirited rascal, who is so lost to nature as to sit at his writing-desk and declare, what he infamously miscalls his passion, is to me a mystery. An animal who can coolly make a rough and interlined copy of his ardent emotions, as a butcher writes off his bill, and then inscribe the same on hot-pressed post, sign, seal, and send such a document, is altogether undeserving of love---of love did I say?---undeserving of any thing but a parade at a cart's tail. Depend upon it, that selfsame copy has been served on half the neighbourhood, and been returned for future use. It is a barefaced insult to his race. what has he tongue? for what the distinguishing gifts of speech and language? I have now lived long, solitary, and watchful, in quiet contemplation of life and manners, and this opinion is the result. Would I had always reasoned thus; I should have declared earlier to my first love; I might not then have lost her, nor left her a prey to the heartless, the unimpassioned, the unfeeling S.

For

Having adopted my plan, said your speech with approbation, but unhappily see reason to repent, at what point can you retract with honor? Take the advice of an observant old man, never marry, even if you are at the church doors, if you have ground to doubt you shall be happy. Heaven and earth! what is it to be held the test of honor and integrity, to make shipwreck of the happiness of two immortal souls, until death, long desired, shall loose the bonds? The criterion of rectitude to confirm engagements certain of producing sorrow and despair? Marry for honor, and hate to destruction? Frantic lawyers may lay down crude and impossible notions of life: old women, of both sexes, may affirm it to be wiser to marry first and part afterwards; I say that both parties have, in reason and nature, a clear and intelligible right to withdraw their consent at any Are we to talk of injured feelings? what injury so deadly as

time.