pleasure leads that way, pleafure is my object, and marriage is my lot: I am determined therefore to marry, only because I love pleafure.

Well! now that I have given up all other women for a wife, I am refolved to take pleasure enough in the poffeffion of her; I must be cautious therefore that nobody elfe takes the fame pleasure too; for otherwife how have I bettered myself? I might as well have remained upon the common. 1 fhould be a fool indeed to pay fuch a price for a purchase, and let in my neighbours for a fhare; therefore I am determined to keep her to myfelf, for pleasure is my only object, and this I take it is a fort of pleasure, that does not confift in participation.

The next queftion is, how I must contrive to keep her to myfelf, -Not by force; not by locking her up; there is no pleasure in that notion; compulfion is out of the cafe; inclination therefore is the next thing; I must make it her own choice to be faithful: it seems then to be incumbent upon me to make a wife choice, to look well before I fix upon a wife, and to ufe her well when I have fixed. I will be very kind to her, because I will not deftroy my own pleasure; and I will be very careful of the temptations I expofe her to, for the fame reason. She fhall not lead the life of your fine town ladies; I have a charming place in the country; I will pass most of my time in the country; there fhe will be fafe, and I fhall be happy. I love pleasure, and therefore I will have little to do with that curft intriguing town of London; I am determined to make my houfe in the country as pieafant as it is poffible.

But if I give up the gaieties of a town life, and the club, and the gaming-table, and the girls, for a wife and the country, I will have the fports of the country in perfection; I will keep the best pack of hounds in England, and hunt every day in the week.-But hold a moment there! what will become of my wife all the while I am following the hounds? Will the follow nobody; will nobody follow her? A pretty figure I fhall make, to be chacing a tag and come home with the horns! At least I fhall not rifque the experiment; I fhall not like to leave her at home, and I cannot take her with me, for that would fpoil my pleasure; and I hate a horse-dog woman; I will keep no whipper-in in petticoats. I perceive therefore I must give up the hounds, for I am determined nothing fhall ftand in the way of my pleafure.

Why then, I must find out fome amufements that my wife can partake in ; we must ride about the park in fine weather; we must vifit the grounds, and the gardens, and plan out improvements, and make plantations; it will be rare employment for the poor people-That is a thought that never ftr ck me before; methinks there must be a great deal of pleasure in fetting the poor to work- hall like a farm for the fame reafon; and my wife will take pleafure in a dairy; he fhall have the most elegant dairy in England; and I will build a confervatory, and the fhall have fuch plants and fuch flowers!-I have a notion I fhall take pleasure in them-myfelf-And then there is a thousand things to do within-doors; it is a fine old manfion, that is the truth of it: I will give it an entire repair; it wants new furniture; that will be very pleafant work for my wife: I perceive I

could

could not afford to keep hounds and do this into the bargain. But this will give me the moft pleasure all to nothing, and then my wife will partake of it- And we will have mufic and books-I recollect that I have got an excellent library-There is another pleasure I had never thought of And then no doubt we fhall have children, and they are very pleafant company, when they can talk and understand what is faid to them; and now I begin to reflect, I find there are a vaft many pleasures in the life I have chalked out, and what a fool fhould I be to throw away my money at the gaming-table, or my health at any table, or my affections upon harlots, or my time upon hounds and horfes, or employ either money, health, affections, or time, in any other pleafures or purfuits, than these, which I now perceive will lead me to folid happiness in this life, and fecure a good chance for what may befal me hereafter.'

The OBSERVER's concluding Number (93).

Being now arrived at the conclufion of my third volume, and having hitherto given my readers very little interruption in my own perfon, I hope I may be permitted to make one fhort valedictory addrefs to thefe departing adventurers, in whofe fuccefs I am naturally fo much interested.

I have employed much time and care in rearing up thefe Effays to what I conceived maturity, and qualifying them, as far as I was able, to shift for themfelves, in a world where they are to inherit no popularity from their author, nor to look for any favour but what they can earn for themfelves. To any, who fhall question them who they are, and whence they come, they may truly anfwer-We are all one man's fons w we are indeed Obfervers, but no Spies. If this hall not fuffice, and they must needs give a further account of themfelves, they will have to fay, that he who fent them into the world, fent them as an offering of his good-will to mankind; that he trufts they 1 have been fo trained as not to hurt the feelings or offend the principles of any man, who fhall admit them into his company; and that for their errors (which he cannot doubt are many), he hopes they will be found errors of the understanding, not of the heart: they are the firft-fruits of hi leifure and retirement; and as the mind of a man in that fituation will naturally bring the paft fcenes of active life under its examination and review, it will furely be confidered as a pardonable zeal for being yet ferviceable to mankind, if he gives his expe. rience and obfervations to the world, when he has no further expectations from it on the fcore of fame or fortune. These are the real motives for the publication of thete Papers, and this the Author's true state of mind: to ferve the caufe of morality and religion is his first ambition; to point out fome ufeful leffons for amending the education and manners of young people of either fex, and to mark the evil habits and unfocial humours of men, with a view to their reformation, are the general objects of his undertaking. He has formed his mind to be contented with the consciousness of these honeft endeavours, and with a very moderate fhare of fuccefs: he has ample reafon notwithstanding to be more than fatisfied with the reception thefe Papers have already had in their probationary excurLion; and it is not from any difguft, taken up in a vain conceit of his own merits, that he has more than once obferved upon the frauds

and

and follies of popularity, or that he now repeats his opinion, that it is the worft guide a public man can follow, who wishes not to go out of the track of honefty; for at the fame time that he has feen men force their way in the world by effrontery, and heard others applauded for their talents, whofe only recommendation has been their ingenuity in wicked nefs, he can recollect very few indeed, who have fucceeded, either in fame or fortune, under the difadvantages of modesty and merit.

To fuch readers, as fhall have taken up thefe Efays with a candid difpofition to be pleafed, he will not fcruple to exprefs a hope that they have not been altogether difappointed; for though he has been unaffifted in compofing them, he has endeavoured to open a variety of refources, fenfible that he had many different palates to provide for. The fubject of politics, however, will never be one of these refources; a fubject which he has neither the will nor the сараcity to meddle with. There is yet another topic, which he has been no lefs ftudious to avoid, which is perfonality; and though, he profeffes to give occafional delineations of living manners, and not to make men in his clofet (as fome Effayifts have done), he does not mean to point at individuals; for as this is a practice which he has ever rigidly abstained from when he mixed in the world, he should hold himself without the excufe, even of temptation, if he was now to take it up, when he has withdrawn himself from the world.

In the Effays (which he has prefumed to call Literary, because he cannot ftrike upon any appofite title of an humbler fort) he has ftudied to render himself intelligible to readers of all defcriptions, and the deep-read fcholar will not faftidiously pronounce them fhallow, only because he can fathom them with eafe; for that would be to wrong both himself and their Author, who, if there is any vanity in a pedantic margin of references, certainly refifted that vanity, and as certainly had it at his choice to have loaded his page with as great a parade of authorities, as any of his brother-writers upon claffical fubjects have oftentatioufly difplayed. But if any learned critic, now or hereafter, fhall find occafion to charge thefe Effays on the fcore of falfe authority or actual error, their Author will molt thankfully meet the investigation; and the fair Reviewer fhall find that he has either candour to adopt correction, or materials enough in reserve to maintain every warrantable affertion.

The Moralift and the Divine, it is hoped, will here find nothing to except againft; it is not likely fuch an offence fhould be committed by one, who has refted all his hope in that Revelation, on which his faith is founded; whom nothing could ever divert from his aim of turning even the gayeft fubjects to moral purposes, and who reprobates the jeft, which provokes à laugh at the expence of a blush.

The Effays of a critical fort are no lefs addreffed to the moral objects of compofition, than to thofe which they have more profeffedly in view they are not undertaken for the invidious purpose of developing errors, and ftripping the laurels of departed poets, but fimply for the ufes of the living. The fpecimens already given, and thofe which are intended to follow in the further profecution of the work, are propofed as difquifitions of inftruction rather than of fubtleREV. Sept. 1786.

P

ty;

ty; and if they shall be found more particularly to apply to dramatic compofitions, it is because their Author looks up to the ftage, as the great arbiter of more important delights, than those only which concern the taste and talents of the nation; it is because he fees with ferious regret the buffoonery and low abuse of humour to which it is finking, and apprehends for the confequences fuch an influx of folly may lead to. It will be readily granted there are but two modes of combating this abafement of the drama with any probability of fuccefs: one of these modes is, by an expofition of fome one or other of the productions in queftion, which are fuppofed to contribute to its degradation; the other is, by inviting the attention of the Public to an examination of better models, in which the standard works of our early dramatists abound. If the latter mode therefore fhould be adopted in thefe Effays, and the former altogether omitted, none of their readers will regret the preference that has been given upon fuch an alternative.

If the ladies of wit and talents do not take offence at fome of thefe Effays, it will be a teft of the truth of their pretenfions, when they difcern that the raillery, pointed only at affectation and falfe character, has no concern with them. There is nothing in which this nation has more right to pride itfelf, than the genius of its women; they have only to add a little more attention to their domestic virtues, and their fame will fly over the face of the globe. If I had ever known a good match broken off on the part of the man, because a young lady had too much modefty and difcretion, or was too ftrictly educated in the duties of a good wife, I hope I underftand myself too well to obtrude my old-fashioned maxims upon them. They might be as witty as they pleased, if I thought it was for their good; but if a racer, that has too great a fhare of heels, muft lie by because it cannot be matched, fo muft every young spinfter, if her wits are too nimble. If I could once difcover that men chuse their wives, as they do their friends, for their manly atchievements and convivial talents, for their being jolly fellows over a bottle, or topping a five-barred gate in a fox-chace, I fhould then be able to account for the many Amazonian figures I encounter in flouched hats, great-coats and half-boots, and I would not prefume to fet my face against the fashion.

The first Numbers of the prefent collection, to the amount of forty, have already been published; but being worked off at a country prefs, I find myfelf under the painful neceflity of difcontinuing the edition. I have availed my felf of this opportunity, not only by correcting the imperfections of the first publication, but by rendering this as unexceptionable (in the external at least) as I poffibly could. I should have been wanting to the Public and myself, if the flattering encouragement I have already received had not prompted me to proceed with the work; and if my alacrity in the further profecution of it fhall meet any check, it must arife only from thofe caufes, which no human diligence can controul.

Vos tamen O noftri ne feftinâte libelli!

Si poft fata venit gloria, non propero."

ART.

ART. IX. The Natural Hiftory of many curious and uncommon Zon phytes, collected from various Parts of the Globe, by the late JoHN ELLIS, Efq. F. R. S. &c. fyftematically arranged and defcribed by the late DANIEL SOLANDER, M. D. F. R. S. With 62 * Plates, engraven by principal Artists. 4to. 11. 16s. Boards. White. 1786.

THAT

HAT the Reader may understand what he has to expect in this work, we will lay the Preface before him; with a little abridgment:

Mr. Ellis, having discovered that feveral fubjects, which had been arranged by natural hiftorians under the title of Marine vegetables, were in reality animal productions, published, in the year 1755, the refult of the refearches he had made in the investigation of that branch of knowledge, in a quarto work intitled "An Effay towards a Natural Hiftory of British and Irish Corallines." The approbation with which this work was received, gained the Author the patronage of many of the most refpectable characters of the age; and an innate defire to dive deeper into the hidden treafures of nature, induced him to make thofe inquiries, which produced feveral memoirs, which were read at different times before the Royal Society, and published in the Philofophical Tranfactions; particularly those "on the animal nature of Zoophytes, called Corallina," and "the Actinia Sociata, or Cluftered Animal Flower," in the 57th volume, which gained him the honour of Sir Godfrey Copley's medal, delivered to him by the Prefident, in November 1768, together with a compliment, in a speech from the chair, on the nature and utility of the difcoveries of the Author.

• Thus encouraged, Mr. Ellis became more anxious in the purfuit, of his favourite ftudy; and being then the King's agent for the province of West Florida, and agent for the island of Dominica; and in correfpondence and intimacy with the learned Dr. Linnæus, and the most celebrated natural historians of the age; he was enabled to collect information from the moft diftant countries, which he purfued with unremitting ardour; and with the affiftance of his friends, Dr. Fothergill, and Dr. Solander, he intended to have laid before the Public a complete history of Zoophytes. In this, however, he was unfortunately disappointed; his declining health preventing him from proceeding farther than the completion of these plates, which were all engraven under his immediate infpection.

For the arrangement of the defcriptions, we are indebted to Dr. Solander; whofe premature death prevented this, and other valuable works, from appearing in fo complete a manner as they would other wife have done.

These are the circumftances under which the following sheets are now published, at the request of Sir Joseph Banks, Bart. P. R. S. who has thought the work not unworthy of his attention, and permitted it to be dedicated to him; and it is prefumed, that, even in its prefent ftate, it will meet with a favourable reception, fince it throws many new lights upon a fubject hitherto but flightly investigated.

* 63 appear in the volume.

P 2

† See Rev. Vol. XII. P. 217.
• Mr.