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X.

If from what is beneficial we turn our glance to LETTER what is interesting, the single lady is in this respect not surpassed by the wedded matron. For no small portion of her life, I think for the whole of it, with judicious conduct, she is indeed the most attractive personage. The wife resigns, or ought to resign, always her claims to general attention; and to concentre and confine her regards and wishes and objects to her chosen companion, and domestic claims and She has quitted the public stage; she seeks no more the general gaze; she has become part of a distinct and separated proprietary. But the unmarried lady remains still the candidate for every honorable notice, and injures no one by receiving it. Those of the male sex, who are in the same condition, are at as full liberty to pay her their proper attentions as she is to receive them. Being in this position as to society at large, she is always interesting wherever she goes; and, if she preserve her good temper, her steady conduct, and her modest reputation undiminished, and cultivate her amiable, her intellectual and her truly feminine qualities, she cannot go any where, in any station of life, without being an object of interest and pleasureable feeling, to all those of her own circle, with whom she may chuse to be acquainted.

It is only by displaying undue solicitude for changing her condition, or disappointment at the change not occurring, or a peevishness which is imputed to such feelings, or unbecoming attempts to obtain or extort notice, that she lessens her natural attractiveness.

It is for us all, never to regret or covet what we do not or cannot obtain; and never to repine that others have what we do not possess. It is for us all to use

LETTER and value, and cultivate the happinesses which we X. are possessing, and not to sigh or crave for those

which do not come to us.

It is for us all, to be at all times grateful to our kindest Provider, for the daily comforts with which He is supplying us; and to resign every thing else to His will and regulation, and patiently and magnanimously to await His direction of our state and fortunes. Then, every one of us would be enjoying a greater felicity from our ordinary life, than we can experience on any other plan.

He arranges and administers life on this principle. -He requires us to believe in His invisible government and guidance of it;-to be always content with His dispositions and distribution of it;-and to be assured, that if we thus leave it to Him, He will, from time to time, place us in that condition, and in those circumstances which will be really best and happiest for us. Let the single of both sexes think, feel and act firmly and perseveringly on these principles, and they will find that life, in every one of its states and positions, is like a fine garden, full of rich, tho varied, flowers and fruits, in all its compartments."

28

28 I cannot doubt, from my own experience, that happiness accompanies both the single and the married states; I have been now in the latter forty years, and no one can be happier than I have been in it; but I had left my parent roof, and been living in chambers in the Temple, and therefore much alone, for eight years before I married. This was a complete trial of the single state, and in this I have also to say that I was perfectly happy, tho in a different way. I did not marry because I was deficient in happiness, but because the lady deeply interested me; and becoming so attached, my comfort then was associated with her, and having by that time before me, the fair means and probability of an adequate maintenance by regular diligence, on a moderate and careful scale, I changed one mode of happiness for another; to that increase of it which always arises from reciprocal regard; if what is already happy can be more happy, by being differently happy.

OF THE WORLD.

207

LETTER XI.

SYSTEM OF NATURE AS TO THE SUCCESSIVE STATES OF
HUMAN LIFE THE UTILITIES OF THESE SEVERAL STAGES,
AND ESPECIALLY OF A YOUNG PERIOD OF LIFE-HAPPINESS
ATTAINABLE AT EVERY SEASON.

XI.

In our Seasons we have the grateful succession of LETTER
the spring, the summer, and the autumn. In our
Vegetation, the new leaf, the beauteous flower, and
the nutritious fruit. These correspond with contem-
poraneous atmospherical changes of our system, and
are followed by that peculiar destitution and apparent
death of nature, which frosty and chilling winter
brings on. The insect and reptile world exhibit. con-
genial analogies. The vernal temperature recalls or
hatches their tribes into life and feeling, in a creeping
state. They have their summer day of playful gaiety,
varying in its duration, and enjoy existence in a
winged form; their autumn is their time of depositing
their oval brood; and from that they depart into
death or insensibility. These four states of all that
have vital being, growth, maturity, decline and death,
and these annual successions of aerial agencies, which
are so much associated with the life, produce and
suspension of vegetative nature, have been made the
characteristics of our terrestrial system. In the human
race an analogous series of changes and states takes
place, with such striking moral and intellectual results,
as to excite our admiration at the kindness of our
Creator, for having formed His human nature on a plan

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XI.

LETTER of such sagacious benevolence. By this He has appointed, that every human being should have a season of childhood, another of youth, a third of full maturity, with its parental produce, and a following period of decline and death, to pass into another mode of existence elsewhere.

These laws are attached to all who are permitted to pass thro the regular course of human life; tho its Giver has reserved to Himself the resistless right of calling each of us away, at whatever part of it He shall think proper, without completing the full progression of these successive conditions.

These changes in us, have the analogy, with the rest of the organized and ethereal kingdoms of nature, above remarked. But they are obviously a very artificial system of living being, and have been, as to our race, purposely selected and appointed to it; for neither of them was unavoidable. There was no necessity for our being so many years a babe, and so many more in each of the succeeding conditions.

We might have sprung up at once into full formed beings, as Adam was at his creation; and as the Theban fable imagines that body of men to have done, who emerged instantaneously from the dragon's teeth, which Cadmus was fancied to have sown.'

But the great object with us has been, to make moral and intelligent beings of that peculiar kind, which we have thus far attained to be; and we may

1 Ovid describes this fable with his usual ease and picturesqueness. 'He opened the furrow with the plough, he urges and scatters the teeth in the ground; soon, passing belief, the clods began to move, and the point of a spear was seen coming above the earth; presently, heads covered with a nodding painted crest emerged; shoulders followed; breasts and arms laden with spears arise, and a crop of men with shields grows fully up.' Ov. Met. lib. 3, v. 104-110.

XI.

therefore assume that the successive ages and states LETTER thro which we grow into maturity, and decline into dissolution and departure, have been chosen and attached to human nature, from such foreseen and operating instrumentality in facilitating this great result.

That each state, till our decline, is a series of acquisition and progression, none can dispute. In all of us, our powers of body and mind, our ideas and knowlege, our experience and judgment, our skilful use of what capacities we have, our bodily activities and our manual dexterities, incontestably increase before decline, or before final decay comes on. Even as this advances, the intellectual process is in most, if not in all, continued with beneficial enlargement of our anterior attainments.

In each of the subsequent periods we can do, what we were not competent to perform in an earlier condition. We are more efficient, both as moral and as intelligent beings, in our maturity, than at either of our previous ages.

The appointed plan has therefore accomplished its assigned results; and all obtain the benefits from it which were meant to accompany it, tho with that diversity which appears in every human individual.

It was an admirable idea to begin our earthly existence as a filial babe; for in this state, our moral feelings evolve in the most pleasing manner. The first emotions are those of love. If the sucking infant is conscious of any sensibilities, and its sweet smile soon announces that it is so, they must be those of affectionate gratification. How exquisitely happy does it show itself to be on its mother's neck! Its moving and moulding fingers; its murmur of placid

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