alacrity in the sorrows of man? who can so charmingly dispel the gloomy prospects of the world? in a word, who but a woman can add pleasure to discourse, and spirit to enterprise?' Every one may perceive that, like an honest counsel, I admit all pleas against me; but at the same time, that I value these pleas at nothing. My former enumeration of conjugal misfortunes and disagreements is sufficiently copious; and, I believe, answers the whole stock of philogamists. I do not, in imitation of the pope, damn all those who disbelieve my infallibility; but I pronounce ruin, confusion, scolding nights, turbulent days, and grievous gnashing of teeth, on them, ad infinitum.

"A widow I look upon as the most tremendous wild beast in creation. Her appetite is but whetted by transient enjoyment: her passion is a continual fire; and, like the miser's, increases by acquirement.

A widow will never deal out her affections

without some artful views.

She has been a deep student in the heart of man; and, aided by that knowledge, will turn her poor weathercock at pleasure. She will wind about his soul, she will entwine her hypocrisy with the very fibres of his being, and then lead him where she will, nor dares he resist though the artifice is evident. She has already practised the wiles of love: she can easily practise them over again; and veil the deceit she proposes, with the finest gloss of sensibility. She can employ the varnish of false simplicity, and place it in such a light as to lend it the lustre and shade of the real object: she can repeat vows many times repeated before, and utter expressions of affection calculated for the unfortunate admirer's downfal. Having this definition and intimate analysis of a widow before their eyes, it is to be expected that bachelors will avoid that species with

particular care: considering them as roaring lions, seeking whom they may devour; and looking on a widow with the same horror with which they contemplate a bottomless pit, an attorney's bill, a loaded pistol, a mad dog, an earthquake, Dover cliff, a powdering-tub, Vesuvius, a quack-doctor's pill, or any other pestilent phenomenon in creation.

Again: let the person who presumes to attaint the life of a bachelor, consider my laborious and excellent treatise cum grano salis, and it is odds that he closes the book with a heartfelt love and sincere attachment to such. I assure the critics, I have been at an extravagant trouble in collecting the quotations introduced every where in this learned discourse; which I wish, and desire, and hope, to set before posterity as a model of elegant style, unaffected erudition, amiable intent, admirable sentiment, and uncommon structure. With a prayer that no frolicsome widow, libertine

youth, profligate husband, or card-playing wife, may accost, rally, or inwardly charm, a bachelor with impunity, I end this lucubration; and, fully assured that it will be so, I do at this moment ring the bell for Nicodemus my boy, and order him to accelerate my pipe, coffee, and mulberry night-cap."

OLIVER CROMWELL.

"THE impartiality of an historian is what aggrandizes his merit. The invective of party, and virulence of private persons, must not be admitted in that narrative which professes to be candid, and bears the seal of unbiassed truth. If a man capable of exalted ideas and unwearied trials of fortitude, with a desire of benefiting his country, deserves praise, such a man was Cromwell. The prevailing licentiousness of the time required a curb; and though -literature dwindled in the fiery ebullitions

of puritanism, yet was not Cromwell the cause. Even that very puritanism, for a time, was better than the loose works of the most abasing voluptuousness. Severity of maxim is seldom recorded to another age; but the pernicious pleasurable poison of Dorset, Etherege, Rochester, &c. bears the same taint it received at first to all posterity.

"In a state of luxury, the ruder breasts which defend our coasts are softened, the nerve of enterprise relaxed, and the scintillations of emulation damped and overcome. None can deny that England was situated so at the time when Oliver's glorious ambition fired the nation with an equal zeal for freedom, and detestation for profligacy. Even in that time, a Blake conquered under his banners.-The sentiments of Oliver were the sentiments of one anxious for the public safety, not for his own exaltation. When the crown was within his reach, he declined it when the