posed that my female neighbours, are blind to the strangeness of Sophia's conduct, or indifferent to the prosecution of a successful amour. The old unmarried women (I never use the vulgar term, old maids,) already begin to surmise that evil, which their own solitary state, constantly impells them to conceive. All exclaim against a happiness, which they cannot enjoy themselves; the young men begin to hint, that he is without one attraction to a woman of common sense; and the young women wonder, that any man of virtuous sentiments, can regard so shameless and immodest a girl. But it appears to me, that envyand not reason, is the moving spring of the censure; although, God knows, a young woman in my days, would not have ventured upon so perilous an expe riment, as openly courting a bashful idiot.

After two weeks promonade courtship, the gentleman has reluctantly yielded to the importunities of Sophia, and the Right Reverend, has tied the knot, which dooms her to share his fortune, endure his bumours, and comply with his caprices. The conduct of Sophia always reminds me of the couplet of my old favourite, Shakespeare, who says,

"She never yet was foolish that was fair;
"For even her folly helped her to an heir."

I must allow, that the bold carriage of Sophia, in respect to her courtship, is not exactly common to all the young women of the town-that is, I do not believe they all court in the street; and yet I could bring pretty strong evidence too, upon this point, against the general run of them. Within my time,

however, I have observed a change for the worse, in their behaviour towards the other sex, neither pleas. ing, nor decorous. They all show too much disposition to court; so that I have been unable for a long time, to see any thing like courtship on the part of the men. My grand-daughter Susan, gave a tea party a few weeks ago, and having some curiosity to see the beaux of the arch little rogue, I even obtrud. ed Winter upon the lap of May, for half an hour or so. But the climate of manners, was too warm for my polar constitution of mind. Susan, and indeed, all her companions, were as familiar with the men, as if they had been of the same sex I could not see a blush, or a downcast eye, in the whole round of company, except the crimson, which I felt overspreading my own cheek, partly from indignation and partly from shame, at the violation of good breeding committed by the men; who in their turn, observed no more respect for the females, than the latter exhibited reserve towards the gentlemen. As I left the rooms, I could not help sighing for the chaste and decorous manners of the ancient time; when impudence was never mistaken for ease, grossness for affability, nor immodesty for polished breeding

How nicely extremes verge upon one another. A line only separates the boor from the well-bred man, and the easy assurance of women, supposed to be characteristic of polished society, is an art so dif. ficult to practise in a happy medium, that the slightest want of skill, tact, or sensibility, leaves the fine lady on a level with the washerwoman, and the vir gin belle, as immodest in exterior, as the daughters of frailty.

THE

AUTHOR'S JEWEL,

NUMBER VI.

EMILY HOOD.

That spot is now all desolate and bare,

Its dwellings down, its tenants past away;
None but her own and father's grave is there,
And nothing outward tells of human clay;
Ye could not know where lies a thing so fair,
No stone is there to show, no tongue to say.

LORD BYRON.

There are moments of anguish and desolation of heart, which sensibility sometimes experiences, with. out being caused by sorrow or misfortune, that if narrated would wring tears of agony from the sternest brow, and prostrate us in the dust in spite of reason and philosophy. Were the history of such feelings fully described, they would form a kind of Romance of the Heart, to which nine-tenths of mankind could respond no throb of sympathy, and of which therefore, they would repel the belief, with an air of callous skepticism, that only betrayed their want of sensibility, or comprehensiveness of mind. So it is, also with the history of many of the afflictions of life, where the incidents and characters being beyond the sympathy of the general run of mankind, they are wiewed as extravagant, or ridiculed as Ro.

F

mantic, merely because they surpass the dulness of our imagination, or are too delicate and refined for our grosser perceptions Every thing beyond the sphere of our own thoughts and feelings, is in fact a kind of Romance, so that in many cases, it becomes difficult to discriminate, between reality and fiction, and to decide which is the picture of imagination and which the real history of human life. Such is the character of the story, which from actual information I am now about to relate.

Andrew Hood was an English gentleman, who be ing reduced in his native country from the pinnacle of affluence almost to penury, through the treacher. ous villainy of professing friends; determined to emigrate to the U. States, and lay the foundation of new fortunes for his young family, a wife and three chil. dren, in a strange land favourable to industry, and free from the prejudices of rank and title. On the passage, however, it was his misfortune to lose his wife and two children, who died of the small pox, which was then a raging epidemic; and he landed on the shores of the new world, a strange and desolate man, with no ties to bind him to existence, save the lovely and delicate little orphan that he pressed to his bosom in an agony of sorrow and of tenderness, that bedewed its unconscious cheek with the fond tear of a doating parent. His surviving child was a beautiful and interesting girl, that presented him with a miniature image of his lost wife, and daily twined new and stronger tendrils of affection around the susceptible heart of the fond and doating father, who soon perceived, that his child alone was to him

all that makes life happy, and reconciles affliction to its destiny of protracted suffering.

With the remnant of a fortune once princely, Hood purchased a small, but handsome farm, in the vicinity of a luxurious and gay city He would have flown to the wilderness, and sequestered himself in its thickest forests, to escape from the smiling villainy of man; but his sensibilities, his habits and his edu cation, all urged him to remain in a spot, so favoura ble to the instruction of his daughter, where science and refinement were easily accessible, and still in some degree congenial to his bruised and lacerated spirit; for he was intellectual and refined beyond the common lot of men of fortune; his taste was delicate, his intellect powerful and his mind and manners pol. ished and refined.

The parents of a beautiful daughter are like travelling Pilgrims, bearing a rich and glittering treasure, through a country thickly infested by robbers, who at every step threaten to despoil them. Emily Hood was a beautiful girl, that attracted the eye of every passenger and excited even virtue itself to languish for her possession She had now passed safely, and with brilliant success through a course of instruction, which developed a luxuriant and quick under. standing and acquired while it refined all the arts and accomplishments peculiar to her sex, with the excep. tion of the most frivolous—among which was dancing. Emily could not dance ;-her father was averse to it, and she felt in herself a consciousness of something, perhaps self respect, or dignity, or pride, which made her recoil from so trifling, so degrading an amuse