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countrymen anfwered, fmiling

"Does your

Excellency think any English blockhead could have had fenfe enough to have thought of fuch a contrivance?"

A REMARKABLE

ANECDOTE OF THAIS,

THE CELEBRATED

T

GRECIAN WOMAN OF PLEASURE.

HE Macedonians, tired with being long from home, and fearful, from particular fymptoms, that their giddy-headed hero madly intended. to make Perfepolis the feat of his empire, fecretly deputed proper perfons to make intereft with Thais, who was prime miftrefs to Alexander, to work him to the deftruction of that city by fire. The terms were, abfolute and certain affaffination, in its moft dreadful extent, if the refufed; and, on the contrary, upon the accomplishment of her fcheme, befides a very great and important pecuniary reward, the alluring promife of a fuperb and matchlefs fet of the finest filigreed Persian dreffing-plate, to be executed by

the

the first artist in all Babylon.-The propofal was accepted; the attempt fucceeded; and history informs us, that she wrought her imperial keeper to the deed, by previously raifing his fpirits with wine, and then elevating them by the power of mufic to the wildeft pitch of the most extravagant furor.

To this anecdote we are indebted for the Alexander's Feast of Dryden, the firft ode, perhaps, in the English language, and a compofition which would have done the author (who was finking into the vale of years when he wrote it) infinite credit in his meridian.

ON

GOOD HUMOUR and SOCIAL MIRTH.

HE feafon is now commenced, when we

THE
Tmuft be neceffarily deprived of fome plez-

fures, and therefore it is reasonable to fuppofe, that we shall have recourse to expedients to substitute others in their place. When the verdure of fpring, the luxuriance of fummer, and the pride of autumn, bloom and flourish no longer,

to

to chear our spirits amid the gloom which winter cafts around, we must have recourfe to thofe ingenious authors, whofe glowing imaginations have caught the fading landfcape of the year, and preferved it in all the beauties of poetic defcription. Here we may enjoy either a perpetual spring, or an unfading fummer; and from the noise and hurry of the town, retire to country life and rural fimplicity.

When this employment ceafes to delight, then we may confult the facred records of antiquity; and in order to pafs our lives in an agreeable and ufeful manner, enquire how thofe men, who have acquired renown, paffed theirs; this will give fortitude to our minds, and refolution to our virtue ; for we fhall feldom find any man confpicuously great, whofe life was not marked by extraordinary difficulty, at leaft, whofe tablature was not diftinguished by fome peculiar ftrokes : thefe circumftances are what call to action those excellencies of character which ennoble and perpetuate names.

But this is a fort of amufement that will not always pleafe; the gloom of a winter's day may for difpofe the mind, and make it fo indolent, that it fhall be diffatisfied when it contemplates fuperior

excellence, because it thinks itself unable to equal orto excel it. But allowing both of these sources of amufement to fail, there is another of focial mirth and friendship, to which we are greatly indebted during those months, when no other inducement would be fufficient to draw us from home, if it were not to be happy in the house of a friend; here one common complaint of an intemperate feafon, gives a keener relish to those enjoyments which mitigate the feverity, and make ample amends for all the inconveniences of it.

I have often feen a general complaint of this nature, to be the very means of as general a propofal for amufements, which having innocence and mirth on their fide, have infenfibly given a ftronger rivet to all the focial virtues: fo that when I feel a cold nipping froft in the feverest winter, I have fome confolation to think, that, perhaps, in thofe affociations of mankind, which this may cause, the mutual refentment of friends fhall fubfide, and benevolence and focial virtue diffuse their warmeft influence through every heart. If this proportion was actually obferved between the temperature of our season, and its effects on focial life, I fhould with all my foul (though my body, I fear, would be but ill able

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to fuftain it) wifh for a winter as cold as ever the inhabitants of Nova Zembla experienced.

There is an urbanity, which, when it takes place, diffipates every gloom, relaxes all reftraint, and gives us to enjoy focial mirth without interruption, and domeftic happiness without referve. And though I am ready to grant, that human life is worthy the most serious attention and improvement, I cannot be brought to allow, that no recreations are lawful, and that innocent trifling may not fometimes be allowed. For my own part, I fee not why the severity of reason should never permit the smile of wit, and the laugh of jocularity; nor why wisdom should always confift in a contracted brow, as if poring over the records of the dead, or pronouncing the fevereft fentence upon the living.-If imagination must not fubdue reafon, might not reafon regulate imagination?

Suppofe every opportunity be taken of exercifing the moft benevolent virtues of the human mind, we shall find many vacancies lie heavy upon our hands, which were furely much better filled up by the agreeable fallics of wit, than fuffered to pafs by as a total blank of human exiftence.--Mirth diffufes its pleafing fenfations throughout

our

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