THE PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS." sider it in reference to its motives, or to its effects on human happiness. He who has taught the world to make two ears of corn grow where but one grew before, has been justly ranked as a greater benefactor to mankind than all the warriors upon earth. For he has given comfort and life to those thousands and tens of thousands, whom the conqueror would devote to bloodshed, ravage, and death. The illustrious William Penn, and other lovers of humanity, justice, and public happiness, have taught misguided parents no longer to neglect their female progeny and their younger males for an exclusive attention to their eldest sons. Few human pleasures can exceed the comfortable reflection, that by this single measure many daughters, fair and well beloved, are rescued from prostitution, in common or in legal forms, or from the prisons and hypocrisy of nunneries, and that many younger sons, gifted with precious talents and inestimable virtues, are saved from dependence and want, and civil prostitution, by this single wise and virtuous thought of the lovers of mankind. Compared with this, what are the honours of the turf, or the triumphs of the gaming-table? Yet those two gratifications rank high in the catalogue of fashionable pleasures, and are often, with their accompaniments, made complete substitutes for all others. In scenes like these, well may the poet say, mitting endeavours to abolish the commerce, and by a parental care of the rising generation of the op pressed Africans. A single, undaunt ed, and generous spirit, the great and dy progress of the penal code of unthe good Howard arrested the bloothinking Christendom, and carried the tender mercies of that perfect religion into the miserable prisons of exhausted poverty and of convicted guilt, teaching the confined debtor to hope for new opportunities of establishment in life, shackled criminal that the long-lost and the opportunity of an availing repentance might restore him to the bosom of his country, and to the favered shades of Benezet and Howvour of his Almighty Creator. Reard! how many fleeting, empty, fashionable joys does it require to equal the comfort of the last sensations of your parting intellect, when your conscious souls were transferred to the scene beyond the tomb, there to enjoy the rich treasures you had laid up by your unwearied labours in the cause of Justice, and of Mercy, and of Man! rest in the pursuit of happiness, And here for a moment let us tifications of the busy, the gay, the Let us reflect upon the ordinary gravoluptuous, the luxurious, the fashionable, and the ambitious. Let us consider, with a view to both worlds, whether many of their joys are not delusive, some productive of pain and sorrow, and whether the ennui or the sufferings those joys so often "The heart, mistrusting, asks if this induce would not be lessened or re be joy," Amidst the horrors of modern wars, the precious, the glorious examples of public spirit, reaching sometimes beyond the nation which gave birth to its wise and virtuous possessor, and affecting the whole human family, are neither rare nor singular. An entire denomination of christians have distinguished themselves by commuting hereditary slavery for temporary service, by softening the miseries attendant on the accustomed trade, by unre moyed, and often converted into truer and greater happiness, by a tifications in which the mind, the more copious mixture of those graheart, and the conscience of man and his living spirit in that whicla can sweetly partake in this world, is to come. For the Literary Magazine. DIAPER. DIAPER is the name given to a linen-cloth with a rhomboidal figure or pattern which is used to make napkins and night-caps. Whence the word? I suspect it to have been originally written D'Ypres; that the art of manufacturing it was brought hither from Flanders; and that the article was named from its native place. Many kinds of stuff are called from the towns which they were first made. Thus, at Leeds, are sold amens (originally Amiens); at Halifax, denima (originally De Nismes); at Manchester, calicoes (originally Calicuts or Cal cuttas); at Norwich, mecklenburgs; and in Spital-fields, mantuas and paduasoys. Worsted-yarn is so called from a town in Norfolk, where the Flemish wool-combers first settled; and porcelain has its vulgar name from China. For the Literary Magazine. THE ADVERSARIA, Or Winter Evening Amusements. NO. XVII. THE situation of those political weathercocks who are ready to be agitated by every gale, and are too timid to move in a calm, is very happily compared by Shakespeare to the tide when swelled to its height. Northumberland, 'tis with my mind ning lying by to catch the time and 'vantage, as Shakespeare has exhi bited in the character of Northumberland. They have the disposition to rebel, but they want the resolution to act. Ambition bids them draw the sword of carnage and desolation, but fear restrains it in the coward scabbard. The very eloquent address of Rolla, which Mr. Sheridan has inbears so strong a resemblance to the serted in his translation of Pizarro, following lines by Cowper, that we Cannot but suppose they were in his mind's eye. How happily might they be addressed by an Englishman of the present day, to one of the miserable slaves of a foreign usurper! "We love The king who loves the laws, respects his bounds, And reigns content within them: him 1 we serve And with delight, who leaves us free. We love the MAN; the PALTRY PAGEANT you; We the chief patron of the common. wealth; You the regardless author of its woes. Our love is principle, and has its root As with the tide swelled up unto its And licks the foot that treads it in the dust. Piety communicates a divine lustre to the female mind: wit and beauty, like the flowers of the field, may flou rish and charm for a season; but let it be remembered, that, like the fragrant blossoms that bloom in the air, those gifts are frail and fading; age will nip the bloom of beauty; sickness and misfortune will stop the current of wit and humour: in that gloomy time which must arrive, piety will support the drooping soul 6 THE ADVERSARIA. like a refreshing dew upon the nius, are such as require rather parched earth. No person can be perfectly agree able without a portion of wit and vivacity: but that perspicacity which is employed in discovering and exposing the foibles of others, parti cularly of those with whom we live in habits of intimacy, is but another name for treachery and ill-nature; and vivacity, unaccompanied by tenderness and delicacy, is, like the picture of a gaudy landscape, eminent only for its brilliant colouring. We turn away from it in disgust, when our eyes are attracted by the labours of another artist, whose tints, if less vivid, are more delicate, though he has employed his skill only in pourtraying Poverty at the door of Contentment, or Innocence reposing on a bank of flowers. If we consider the various pur suits in which men are engaged, state how the most active are employed, and sum up their different merits, this conclusion may be made that, take them in general, they are seldom so much, and never so nobly and innocently employed, as the man who passes his time in literary ease, and who is by the world called idle. Trade debases the mind. Its only recommendation is, that it furnishes the means of subsistence. Men are always discontented, and one who has spent all his days in literature may, through ignorance, wish, at a late period of existence, that he had followed some business but no man, who has seen what business is, and abandons it for literature, will, at any time of life, desire to return to it. Poetry is a blossom of very delicate growth; it requires the maturing influence of vernal suns, and every encouragement of culture and attention, to bring it to its natural perfection. The pursuits of the mathematician, or the mechanical ge strength and insensibility of mind, than that exquisite and fine-wrought marks the temperament of the true susceptibility, which poet; and it is for this reason, that invariably while men of science have not unfrequently arisen from the hut of poverty and labour, very few legitimate children of the muse have ever emerged from the shades of hereditary obscurity. It is painful to reflect how many in the narrow house, who, had he a bard lies nameless and forgotten, been born to competence and leisure, might have usurped the laurels from the most distinguished personages in the temple of Fame. The very consciousness of merit itself often acts in direct opposition to a stimulus ful indignation at supposititious neto exertion, by exciting that mournglect, which urges a sullen concealment of talents, and drives its postent which preys on the vitals, and sessor to that misanthropic disconsoon produces untimely mortality. often actuated beings, who attracted A sentiment like this has, no doubt, notice, perhaps, while, they lived, only by their singularity, and who were forgotten almost ere their paheads; beings who lived but to rent earth had closed over their mourn and to languish for what they whose exalted endowments were were never destined to enjoy, and buried with them in their graves, by the want of a little of that superfluity which serves to pamper the debased appetites of the enervated sons of luxury and sloth. - the respect which is paid to it by ses. yet their true intention is to steal they inform; whilst they dazzle the dark: thus do they fascinate the fancy, while they soften the heart and improve the understanding. They are not merely meteors that sparkle for a moment, and are then hid in obscurity; nor flowers, fragrant and fair, that are born to blush for a moment, and then languish and decay: but they may be compared to the sturdy oak, whose leaves delight the eye, whose trunk is useful, and whose branches afford shelter to the wearied traveller, or from whose lofty top, which defies the fury of the winds, he may calmly look around, and survey the variegated face of nature. It had been objected to poetry, that it is conducive to the corruption of manners. How his talents can be said to be corruptive, whose province it is to describe Nature as she really exists, I am at a loss to imagine. It is the business of the epic poet to narrate important events, and to confer on the hero the reward that is due to integrity in design and bravery in execution; and at the same time he exhibits in proper colours the folly of ambition, the baseness of treachery, and the guilt of rebellion. The didactic poet produces from the stores of a fertile mind the lessons of experience and the dictates of wisdom; he inculcates his maxims with the fervour of honesty, he enforces them by the force of reasoning, and decorates them with the alluring embellishments of harmony. Like the skilful anatomist, he probes the innermost recesses of the mind, and investigates the various inflections of the passions, as they are occasioned by the casual varieties of individual habit or general custom. He is alike regardless of the censure or applause of his own times, because he knows that human nature is invariable, and therefore that he who inculcates the abstract principles of rectitude must be eternally right. He produces a mirror, not less adapted to contemporary contemplation, than it is capable of reflecting thoughts and manners to remote posterity. The amatory poet, whilst he sings the rap tures of love, warns us against the miseries which are the inevitable consequences of vicious passion. It is his duty to show the superiority of that virtuous affection which springs from the heart, over those loose desires that arise solely from the impetuosity of depraved appetite. He who does not write thus, debases himself and degrades his profession. His name may be applauded for a time among the idle and the profligate, but the sober will shun him and the cheek of modesty be tinged with a blush when his lays are recited. But it would be tedious and unnecessary to describe the aim and province of the different classes of po ets. By their fertility of imagination, aptness of allusion, and brilliancy of description, they aid the researches of the philosopher, instil the tenderest emotions into the soul of the lover, and impel the hero to brave the hottest carnage of the field: they give morality to the grave, and furnish an inexhaustible fund of wit for the gay. Here my friend ceased, and I left him with renewed resolutions to be- ' come a poet*. Baltimore. 1. E. H. For the Literary Magazine. DESCRIPTION OF FANEUIL HALL. IN the year 1740, Peter Faneuil, Esq., an opulent merchant of Boston, made an offer to the town to build at his own expence a commodious market-house, near Dock-square, where provisions were then exposed for sale. The proposal was thankfully received, and the building immediately commenced. In the progress of the work the liberal donor was induced to make an addition of a large hall over the market-house, for public meetings, and for transacting the business of the town. The Part of this number is extracted from an unpublished volume. whole was completed in a most substantial and elegant manner, in September, 1742. In testimony of the town's gratitude to Peter Faneuil, and to perpetuate his memory, the hall over the market-place was named Faneuil Hall. In 1761, the inside wood work and roof of the building were consumed by fire. Measures were immediately taken for repairing the building, and the expence was defrayed by a lottery granted by the general court for that purpose. From this period the history of Faneuil Hall is intimately connected with that of our country; it was the threatre on which James Otis, Quincy, Bowdoin, the Adams's, Hancock, and other patriots, exerted their talents, to impress on a people, jealous of their rights, the necessity of vigilance against foreign encroachments and domestic duplicity, and became the centre where resolutions were formed and measures were adopted, which quickly spread round the wide circle of the state and continent; and terminated in the establishment of American independence. Though the hall was sufficient for a number of years for the transaction of the ordinary business of the town, yet on every interesting occa sion, when great numbers of the inhabitants assembled, it became necessary to adjourn to some larg er building; and the old south church being capacious and conveniently situated, the proprietors of that house willingly allowed the town the use of it, on all occasions of great political importance; but on the increase of population, and the frequent occurrence of questions of a local nature, which called together great numbers of citizens, the proprietors of the places of public worship became unwilling to admit such large numbers to the free use of their buildings. The selectmen therefore in May, 1805, offered a plan for the enlargement of Faneuil Hall, which was accepted, and they were directed to arry it into effect. The work has been prosecuted with uncommon dis. patch, and without any unfavourable accident, and in twelve months has been completed to general satisfaction. It has evidently been the aim of the agents to adapt the outside additions to the original style of the building, to make it a uniform and consistent pile. The great hall is 76 feet square and 28 feet high, with galleries on three sides on Doric columns; the ceiling is supported by two ranges of Ionic columns; the walls enriched with plaster, and the windows with architraves, &c. Platforms underneath and in the galleries rise amphitheatrically to accommodate spectators, and from the trials already made, it appears favourable for sight and sound. The noble painting of Washington, by Stuart, presented by Samuel Parkman, Esq., is placed at the west end, over the selectmen's seat. The portrait of Peter Faneuil, Esq. will also be placed in a suitable position. Above the great hall is another, 76 feet long, and 30 wide, devoted to the exercise of the different military corps, with apartments on each side for depositing their arms and military equipments, where those of the several companies are arranged and kept in perfect order. The building also contains convenient offices for the selectmen, board of health, assessors, and town treasurer. The lower story is appropriated according to the original intention as a market, and the cellars are leased for various purposes of business. The income of the stalls and cellars will produce a permanent and handsome interest upon the money expended in the enlargement. For the Literary Magazine. SWIFT'S TALE OF A TUB To the Editor, &c. IN looking over your number for July, I found a person, who styles himself Querist, call in question the validity of the title of that satire of |
