Page images
PDF
EPUB

Del. But pardon me, madam, for hinting that a young lady of condition, who has a proper sense of her dignity, cannot be seen too rarely, or known too little.

Lady Hon. O, but I hate dignity! for it is the dullest thing in the world, I have always thought, Sir, it was ewing to that you was so little amusing-really I beg your pardon, Sir, I meant to say so little talkative.

Del. I can easily believe your ladyship spoke hastily; for it will hardly be supposed that a person of my family came into the world for the purpose of amusing it.

Lady Hon. Ono, Sir, nobody I am sure, ever knew you to have such a thought. [Turning to Cecilia with a low voice] You cannot imagine, my dear Mrs. Mortimer, how I detest this old cousin of mine! Now I pray tell me honestly, if you don't hate him yourself?

Cec. I hope, Madam, to have no reason to hate him. Lady Hon. La, how you are always upon your guard ! IfI were half as cautious, I should die of the vapors in a mouth; the only thing that keeps me at all alive, is now and then making people angry: for the folks at our house let me go out so seldom, and then send me with such stupid company, that giving them a little torment is really the only entertainment I have. O-but I had almost forgot to tell you a most delightful thing! Gec. What is it?

Lady Hon. Why you must know I have the greatest hopes in the world that my father will quarrel with old "Mr. Delvill!

Cec. And is that such a delightful thing!

Lady Hon. O yes; I have lived upon the very idea this fortnight; for then, you know, they'll both be in a pas sion, and I shall see which of them looks frightfulest. Mortimer Del. When Lady Honoria talks aside, I always suspect some mischief.

Lady Hon. No, no, I was only congratulating Mrs! "Mortimer about her marriage. Tho' really upon second thoughts, I don't know but I ought to condole with her, for I have long been convinced she has a prodigious antipathy to you. I saw it the whole time I was at Delvill Castle, where she used to change color at the very sound "of your name; a symptom I never perceived when I talk.

U

ed to her of Lord Derford, who would certainly have made her a thousand times. better husband,

2

Del. If you mean on account of his title, lady Honoria, your ladyship must be strangely forgetful of the connec tions of your family; for Mortimer, after the death of his uncle, and myself, must inevitably inherit a title far more 'honorable, than any which can be offered by a new sprung up family, like my Lord Ernolf's.

Lady Hon. Yes, Sir; but then you know she would have kept her est, which would have been a vastly better thing than an old pedigree of new relations. Besides, I don't find that any body cares for the noble blood of the Delvills.but themselves; and if she had kept her fortune, every body, I fancy, would have cared for that.

Del. Every body, then, must be highly mercenary and ignoble, or the blood of an ancient and honorable house, would be thought contaminated by the most distant hint, of so degrading a comparison.

Lady Hon. Dear Sir, what should we all do with birth if it was not for wealth? It would neither take us to Ranelagh nor the Opera; nor buy us caps nor wigs, nor supply us with dinners nor bouquets.

Del. Caps nor wigs, dinners and bouquets! Your ladyship's estimate of wealth is extremely minute indeed!

Lady Hon. Why you know, Sir, as to caps and wigs, they are very serious things, for we should look mighty droll figures to go about bareheaded; and as to dinners, how would the Delvills have lasted all these hundred centuries, if they had disdained eating them?

Del. Whatever may be your ladyship's satisfaction in depreciating a house that has the honor of being nearly allied to your own, you will not, I hope, at least instruct this lady turning to Cecilia] to imbibe a similar contempt of its antiquity and dignity.

Mort. Del. This lady, by becoming one of it, will at least secure us from the danger that such contempt will spread further.

[ocr errors]

Cec. Let me only be as secure from exciting as I am from feeling contempt, and I can wish no more.

Dr. Lys. Good and excellent young lady; the first of blessings indeed is yours in the temperance of your own mind. When you began, your career in life, yoù appeared to us short-sighted mortals, to possess more than

your share of good things. Such a union of riches, beauty, independence, talents, education, virtue, seemed at monopoly to raise general envy and discontent; but mark with what exactness the good and the bad is ever balanced! You have had a thousand sorrows to which those who have looked up to you, have been total strangers, and which balance all your advantages for happiness. There is a levelling principle in the world, at war with: pre-eminence, which finally puts us all upon a footing. Del. Not quite. I think an ancient and respectable family

Lady Hon. With a handsome income and high life, gives one a mighty chance for happiness. Don't you think so, Mortimer ?

Mort. Del, 1 do, indeed; but add, a' connection with an amiable woman, and I think the chances for happiness are more than doubled.

Dr. Lys. Right, Mortimer; we are well agreed.

ADDITIONAL LESSONS.
Directions bow to spend our Tinte.

WE all

E all of us complain of the shortness of time saith Seneca, and yet have much more than we know what to do with. Our lives, says he, are spent either in doing nothing at all, or in doing nothing to the purpose, or in doing nothing that we ought to do: we are always complaining our days are few, and acting a tho' there would be no end of them. That noble philosopher has described our inconsistency with ourselves in this particular, by all those various turns of expression and thought which are peculiar to his writings.

2. I often consider mankiritings.

as wholly inconsistent. with itself in a point that bears some affinity to the former. Though we seem grieved at the shortness of life in general, we are wishing every period of it at an end.. The minor longs to be at age, then to be a man of basiness, then to make up an estate; then to arrive at honours, then to retire. Thus, although the whole of life is allowed by every one to be short, the several divisions of it appear long and tedious.

3 We are for lengthening our span in general, but would fain contract the parts of which it is composed.

The usurer would be very well satisfied to have all the.. time annihilated that lies between the present moment and next quarter day. The politician would be contented to lose three years in his life, could he place things in the posture which he fancies they will stand in after such a revolution of time.

4. The lover would be glad to strike out of his existence all the moments that are to pass away before the happy meeting. Thus as fast as our time runs, we should be very glad in most parts of our lives, that it ran much faster than it does. Several hours of the day hang upon our hands, nay, we wish away whole,years; and travel through time as through a country filled with many wild and empty wastes, which we would fain hurry over, that we may arive at those several little settlements or imagi nary points of rest which are dispersed up and down in it..

5. Ifwe may divide the life of most men in twenty parts, we shall find that at least nineteen of them are mere gaps and chasms, which are neither filled with pleasure nor business. I do not however include in this calculation the life of those men who are in a perpetual hurry of affairs, but of those only who are not alwas engaged in scenes of action; and 1 hope I shall not do an unacceptable piece of service to these persons, if I point out to them certain. methods for filling up their empty spaces of life. The methods I shall propose to them are as follows:

6. The first is the exercise of virtue, in the most general acceptation of the word. That particular scheme which comprehends the social virtues, ma give employ-t ment to the most industrious temper, and find a man in business more than the most active station of life. To advise the ignorant, relieve the needy, comfort the afflicted, are duties that fall in our way almost every day: of cur lives.

7. A man has frequent opportunities of mitigating the fierceness of a party; of doing justice to the character of deserving man; of softening the envious, quieting the angry, and rectifying the prejudiced; which are all of them employments suited to a reasonable nature, and bring great satisfaction to the person who can busy himself in them with discretion.

8. There is another kind of virtue that may find em→ · ployment for those retired hours in which we are alto gether left to ourselves, and destitute of company and conversation. I mean that intercourse and communica tion which every reasonable creature ought to maintain with the great Author of his being.

9. The man who lives under an habitual sense of the divine presence, keeps up a perpetual cheerfulness of temper and enjoys every moment the satisfaction of thinking himself in company with his dearest and best of friends. The time never lies heavy upon him; it is-impossible for him to be alone.

10. His thoughts and passions are the most busied at such hours when those of other men are the most unac tive; he no sooner steps out of the world, but his heart burns with devotion, swells with hope, and triumphs in the consciousness of that presence which every where surrounds him; or, on the contrary, pours out its fears, its sorrows, its apprehensions, to the great supporter of its existence.

11. I have here only considered the necessity of a man's being virtuous, that he may have something to do; but if we consider further, that the exercise of virtue is not only an amusement for the time it lasts, but that its influence extends to those parts of our existence which lie beyond the grave, and that our whole eternity is to take. its colour from those hours which we here employ in vir tue or in vice, the argument redoubles upon us, før putting in practice this method of passing away our time. 12. When a man has a little stock to improve, and has opportunities of turning it all to good account, what shall we think of him if he suffers nineteen parts of it to lie dead, and perhaps employs even the twentieth to his ruin or di advantage? But becanse the mind cannot be always in its fervor nor strained up to a pitch of virtue, it is necessary to find out proper employments for it in its relaxationsa

13. The next method therefore that I would propose to fill up our time, should be useful and innocent diver sion. I must confess I think it is below reasonable Creatures to be altogether conversant in such diversions

« PreviousContinue »