Clap on the extinguisher, pull up the blinds, Its natural daylight. If a foe have kenned, HOV COMPLAINT. OW seldom, Friend! a good great man inherits Honor or wealth, with all his worth and pains! It sounds like stories from the land of spirits, If any man obtain that which he merits, Or any merit that which he obtains. REPROOF. For shame, dear Friend! renounce this canting strain! What would'st thou have a good great man obtain ? Or throne of corses which his sword hath slain ?- And calm thoughts, regular as infant's breath;- night Himself, his Maker, and the angel Death. 1809. ship, on the one hand, and from the passion that too often usurps its name, on the other— Lucius (Eliza's brother, who had just joined the trio, in a whisper to the Friend). But is not Love the union of both? So. Fri. (aside to Lucius). He never loved who thinks Eliz. Brother, we don't want you. There! Mrs. H. cannot arrange the flower-vase without you. Thank you, Mrs. Hartman. Luc. I'll have my revenge! I know what I will say! Eliz. Off! off! Now, dear sir,-Love, you were saying Fri. Hush! Preaching, you mean, Eliza. Eliz. (impatiently). Pshaw! Fri. Well, then, I was saying that love, truly such, is itself not the most common thing in the world and mutual love still less so. But that enduring personal attachment, so beautifully delineated by Erin's sweet melodist, and still more touchingly, perhaps, in the well-known ballad, "John Anderson, my Jo, John," in addition to a depth and constancy of character of no every-day occurrence, supposes a peculiar sensibility and tenderness of nature; a constitutional communicativeness and utterancy of heart and soul; a delight in the detail of sympathy, in the outward and visible signs of the sacrament within-to count, as it were, the pulses of the life of love. But above all, it supposes a soul which, even in the pride and summer-tide of life —even in the lustihood of health and strength, had felt oftenest and prized highest, that which age cannot take away, and which, in all our lovings, is the EPITAPH. STOP, Christian Passer-by-Stop, child of God, He asked, and hoped, through Christ. Do thou the same! 9th November, 1833. Eliz. What a soothing what an elevating thought! Kath. If it be not only a mere fancy. 66 Fri. At all events, these qualities which I have enumerated, are rarely found united in a single individual. How much more rare must it be that two such individuals should meet together in this wide world under circumstances that admit of their union as Husband and Wife! A person may be highly estimable on the whole, nay, amiable as neighbor, friend, housemate-in short, in all the concentric circles of attachment, save only the last and inmost; and yet from how many causes be estranged from the highest perfection in this! Pride, coldness, or fastidiousness of nature, worldly cares, an anxious or ambitious disposition, a passion for display, a sullen temper,-one or the other, too often proves the dead fly in the compost of spices," and any one is enough to unfit it for the precious balm of unction. For some mighty good sort of people, too, there is not seldom a sort of saturnine, or, if you will, ursine vanity, that keeps itself alive by sucking the paws of its own self-importance. And as this high sense, or rather sensation of their own value is, for the most part, grounded on negative qualities, so they have no better means of preserving the same than by negatives— that is, by doing or saying anything, that might be put down for fond, silly, or nonsensical; or (to use their own phrase) by never forgetting themselves, which some of their acquaintance are uncharitable enough to think the most worthless object they could be employed in remembering. Eliz. (in answer to a whisper from Katharine). Save To a hair! He must have sate for it himself. me from such folks! But they are out of the question. Fri. True! but the same effect is produced in thousands by the too general insensibility to a very important truth; this, namely, that the misery of human life is made up of large masses, each separated from the other by certain intervals. One year, the death of a child; years after, a failure in trade after another longer or shorter interval, a daughter may have married unhappily ;-in all but the singularly unfortunate, the integral parts that compose the sum total of the unhappiness of a man's life, are easily counted, and distinctly remembered. The happiness of life, on the contrary, is made up of minute fractions-the little, soon-forgotten charities of a kiss, a smile, a kind look, a heartfelt compliment in the disguise of playful raillery, and the countless other infinitesimals of pleasurable thought and genial feeling. Kath. Well, Sir; you have said quite enough to make me despair of finding a "John Anderson, my Jo, John," with whom to totter down the hill of life. Fri. Not so! Good men are not, I trust, so much scarcer than good women, but that what another would find in you, you may hope to find in another. But well, however, may that boon be the possession of which would be more than an adequate reward for the rarest virtue. rare, Eliz. Surely he, who has described it so well, must have possessed it? Fri. If he were worthy to have possessed it, and had believingly anticipated and not found it, how |