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best state, to that belle nature which works of taste (and a person of fashion is a work of taste) in every department require. It is the same in morals as in demeanour; a real man of fashion has a certain retenue, a degree of moderation in every thing, and will not be more wicked or dissipated than there is occasion for; you must therefore signify to that young man who sat near me at Lord Grubwell's, who swore immoderately, was rude to the chaplain, and told us some things of himself for which he ought to have been hanged, that he will not have the honour of going to the devil in the very best company.'

Were I to turn preacher,' answered the colonel, 'I would not read your homily. It might be as you say in former times; but in my late excursion to your city, I cannot say I could discover, even in the first company, the high polish you talk of. There was Nature, indeed, such as one may suppose her in places which I have long since forgotten; but as for her beauty or grace, I could perceive but little of it. The world has been often called a theatre; now the theatre of your fashionable world seems to me to have lost the best part of its audience; it is all either the yawn of the side boxes, or the roar of the upper gallery. There is no pit (as I remember the pit); none of that mixture of good-breeding, discernment, taste, and feeling, which constitutes an audience, such as a first-rate performer would wish to act his part to. For the simile of the theatre will still hold in this further particular, that a man, to be perfectly well-bred, must have a certain respect and value for his audience, otherwise his exertions will generally be either coarse or feeble. Though indeed a perfectly well-bred man will feel that respect even for himself; and were he in a room alone,' said Caustic (taking an involuntary step or two, till he got oppo

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site to a mirror that hangs at the upper end of his parlour,) would blush to find himself in a mean or ungraceful attitude, or to indulge a thought gross, illiberal, or ungentlemanlike.' 'You smile,' said Miss Caustic to me; but I have often told my brother, that he is a very Oroondates on that score; and your Edinburgh people may be very well bred, without coming up to his standard.' Nay, but,' said I, 'were I even to give Edinburgh up, it would not affect my position. Edinburgh is but a copy of a larger metropolis; and in every copy the defect I mentioned is apt to take place; and of all qualities I know, this of fashion and good breeding is the most. delicate, the most evanescent, if I may be allowed so pedantic a phrase. 'Tis like the flavour of certain liquors, which it is hardly possible to preserve in the removal of them.' 'Oh! now I understand you,' said Caustic, smiling in his turn; like Harrowgate water for example, which I am told has spirit at the spring; but when brought hither, I find it, under favour, to have nothing but stink and ill taste remaining.'

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No. 34. SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 24, 1785.

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THAT we often make the misery, as well as happiness we do not find,' is a truth which moralists have frequently remarked, and which can hardly be too often repeated. 'Tis one of those specific maxims which apply to every character, and to every situation, and which therefore, in different modes of

expression, almost every wise man has endeavoured to enforce and illustrate. Without going so far as the Stoics would have us, we may venture to assert, that there is scarce any state of calamity in which a firm and a virtuous mind will not create to itself consolation and relief; nor any absolute degree of prosperity and success in which a naturally discontented spirit will not find cause of disappointment and disgust.

But in such extremes of situation it is the lot of few to be placed. Of the bulk of mankind the life is passed amidst scenes of no very eventful sort, amidst ordinary engagements and ordinary cares. But of these, perhaps, still more than of the others, the good or evil is in a great measure regulated by the temper and disposition of him to whom they fall out; like metals in coin, it is not alone their intrinsic nature, but also that impression which they receive from us, that creates their value. It must be material, therefore, in the art of happiness, to possess the power of stamping satisfaction on the enjoyments which Providence has put into our hands.

I have been led into these reflections from meeting lately with two old acquaintances, from whom I had, by various accidents, been a long while separated, but whose dispositions our early intimacy had perfectly unfolded to me, and the circumstances of whose lives I have since had occasion to learn.

When at school, Clitander was the pride of his parents and the boast of our master. There was no acquirement to which his genius was not equal; and though he was sometimes deficient in application, yet whenever he chose he outshone every competitor.

Eudocius was a lad of very inferior talents. He was frequently the object of Clitander's ridicule, but he bore it with an indifference that very soon disarmed his adversary; and his constant obligingness

and good humour made all his class-fellows his friends.

Clitander was born the heir of a very large estate, which coming to the possession of at a very early age, he set out on his travels, and continued abroad for a considerable number of years. In the accomplishments of the man, he was equally successful as he had been in the attainments of the boy, and attracted particular notice in the different places of his residence on the continent, as a young man from whom the highest expectations might reasonably be formed. But it was remarked by some intelligent observers, that he rather acquired than relished those accomplishments, and learned to judge more than to admire whatever was beautiful in nature, or excellent in art. At times he seemed, like other youthful possessors of ample fortunes, disposed to enjoy the means of pleasure which his situation enabled him to command. At other times, he talked with indifference or contempt both of those pleasures themselves, and of the companions with whom they had been shared. He remained longer abroad than is customary, as his friends said, to make himself master of whatever might be useful to his country or ornamental to himself; but in fact, he remained where he was, as I have heard himself confess, from an indifference about whither he should go; because, as he frankly said, he thought he should find the same fools at Rome as at Paris, at Naples as at Rome. In going through Hungary, he visited the quicksilver mines, where the miserable workmen, pent up for life, hear of the light of the sun, as of the beauties of another world. One of those, as Clitander and his party came up to him, was leaning on his mattock, under one of those dismal lamps that unfold the horrors of the place, eating the morsel of brown bread that is allowed them. What wretched fare!

said one of the company. replied Clitander.

But he seems to enjoy it!

When he returned to England, he was surrounded by the young and the gay, who allured him to pleasure; and by more respectable characters, who invited him to business and ambition. With both societies he often mixed, but could scarcely be said to associate; to both he lent himself, as it were, for the time; but became the property of neither, and seemed equally dissatisfied with both.

When I saw him lately he was at his paternal seat, one of the finest places in one of the finest parts of the country. To my admiration of its improvements he assented with the coolness of a spectator who had often looked on them; yet I found that he had planned most of them himself. In the neighbourhood I found him respected but not popular; and even when I was told stories of his beneficence, of which there were many, they were told as deeds in which he was to be imitated rather than beloved. His hospitality was uncommonly extensive; but his neighbour partook of it rather as a duty than a pleasure. And though at table he said more witty and more lively things than all his guests put together, yet every body remarked how dull the dinner

had been.

At his house I found Eudocius, who flew to embrace me, and to tell me his history since we parted. He told it rather more in detail than was necessary; but I thanked him for his minuteness, because it had the air of believing me interested in the tale. Eudocius was now almost as rich as Clitander; but his fortune was of his own acquisition. In the line of commerce, to which he had been bred, he had been highly successful. Industry, the most untainted uprightness, and that sort of claim which a happy dis

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