IDEAS OF HAPPINESS. 22 Effodiuntur opes irritamenta malorum. HOUGH happiness is onr general aim, yet the pursuit of it is as various as the constitution, habits, and age of the person seeking it; and thus each man being moved by his prevalent desires, his faculties, will be directed to the attoinment of three things only, he considers at that time to make a necessary part of his individual happiness. All other good, however great in reality or appearance, excites not a man's desires, who looks not on it to form a part of that happiness, wherewith he, in his present thought, can satisfy himself. Happiness, under this view, every one constantly pursues, and desires what makes any part of it; other things acknowledged to be good, he can look upon without desire, pass by and be contented without. No one is so senseless as to deny, that there is pleasure in knowledge; and for the pleasures of sense, they have too many followers to let it be questioned, whether men are taken with them or no. Now let one man place his satisfaction in sensual pleasures, another in the delight of knowledge; though each of them cannot but confess, there is great pleasure in what the other pursues, yet each is satisfied without what the other enjoys.-Locke. This doctrine may be said to account for the contrariety of means by which men strive for happiness. Time and circumstance may, however, unite to produce the most surprising changes in habits and dispositions: thus, the man of fortune reduced by extravagance to penury, becomes the patient of misery and suffering, till his spirit being blunted, and as it were, extinct, he at length entertains a feeling of disgust for the habits which had alike proved the source of his fleeting prosperity, and its subsequent sorrow. Thus we hear of men, who had passed their youth in opulence, eking out their miserable existence in a poor house surrounded by all the wretchedness which their former state entirely chased from their minds. Such afflictions are as often brought on by the treachery of parasites, as they are by error and misconduct. In either case they must awaken the deepest sympathy, and furnish mankind with many instructive beacons to forewarn him of the mutability of all human affairs. Avarice beggers a man, notwithstanding it may fill his coffers. The worth of money consists in the available advantage with which it invests its possessor, but if the lock be forever turned on it, the treasure might as well have remained in the mine. The happiness of some men may, however, almost be said to consist in avarice. I knew a retired exciseman, who had amassed a considerable property by the most rigid parsimony, so that in the evening of his life he might have enjoyed all the comforts of a hard earned independence. A dangerous fit of water on the chest had nearly terminated his life, when he amused himself in consulting with his neighbour to make his will; with another to nail a few boards together for his coffin; and when his medical attendant expressed his doubt as to the most distant hope of recovery, he calmly asked him what he would allow for the empty phials. At length he recovered by mere miracle; and by way of convincing the world that his avarice was not affectation, he actually left his place of abode without paying the individual whose skill and attention had rescued him from the jaws of dissolution. ANACREONTIC. CUPID once upon a bed Within the leaves a slumbering bec! LONDON MANNERS. HE first inconvenience of a London life, is the late hour of dinner. To pass the day impransus, and then to sit down to a great dinner at eight o'clock, is entirely against the first dictates of common sense, and common stomachs. Some learned persons, indeed, endeavour to support this practice by precedent, and quote the Roman supper; but those suppers were at three o'clock in the afternoon, and ought to be a subject of contempt, instead of imitation, in Grosvenor Square. Women, however, are not so irrational as men, in London, and generally sit down to a substantial luncheon, at three or four; if men would do the same, the meal at eight might be lightened of many of its weighty dishes, and conversation would be no loser; for it is not to be concealed, that conversation suffers great interruption from the manner in which English dinners are managed first the host and hostess (or her unfortunate co-adjutor) are employed during three parts of dinner, in doing the work of the servants, helping fish, or carving venison to twenty hungry souls, to the total loss of the host's powers of amusement, and the entire disfigurement of the fair • hostess's face. Much time is also lost by the attention every one is obliged to pay, in order to find out (which he can never do if he is short-sighted) what dishes are at the other end of the table; and if a guest wishes for a glass of wine, be must peep through the Apollos and Cupids of the plateau, in order to find some one to drink with him: otherwise he must wait till some one asks him, which will probably happen in succession, so that after having had no wine for half an hour, he will have to drink five glasses in five minutes. Convenience teaches that the best manner of enjoying society at dinner, is to leave every thing to servants that servants can do; so that you may have no no farther trouble than to accept of the dishes that are offered to you, and to drink at your own time of the wines which are handed round. An English dinner, on the contrary, seems to presume beforehand on the silence, dullness, and stupidity of the guests, and to have provided little interruptions, like the jerks which the chaplain gives to the Archbishop, to prevent his going to sleep during sermon. Some time after dinner comes the time of going to a balk or a rout: but this is sooner said than done: it often requires as much time to go from St. James's Square to Cleveland Row, as to go from London to Hounslow. It would require volumes to describe the disappointment which occurs on arriving in the brilliant mob of a ballroom. Sometimes, as it has been before said, a friend is seen squeezed like yourself, at another end of the room, without a possibility of your communicating except by signs; and as the whole arrangement of the society is regulated by mechanical pressure, you may happen to be pushed against those to whom you do not wish to speak, whether bores, slight acquaintances, or determined enemies. Confined by the crowd, and stifled by the heat, and dazzled by the light, all powers of intellect are lost; wit loses its point, and sagacity its observation; indeed, the limbs are so crushed, and the tongue so parched, that, except particularly well-dressed ladies, all are in the case of the traveller, Dr. Clarke, when he says in the plains of Syria, that some might blame him for not making moral reflections on the state of the country; but that he must own that the heat quite deprived him of all power of thought. Hence it is, that the conversation you hear around you, is generally nothing more than "Have you been here long?""Have you been at Mrs. Hotroom's ?"-" Are you going to Lady Deathsqueezes?" Hence, too, Madame de Stael said, very justly, to an Englishman, "Dans vos routs le corps fait plus de frias que l'esprit.' But even if there are persons of a constitution robust enough to talk, they yet do not dare to so, as twenty heads are forced into the compass of one square foot; and even when, to your great delight, you see a persou to whom you have much to say, and, by fair means or foul, elbows and toes, knees and shoulders, have got near them, they often dismiss you with shaking you by the hand, and saying, "My dear Mr. how do you do?" and then continue a conversation with a person whose ear is three inches nealer. At one o'clock, however, the crowd diminishes; and if you are not tired by the five or six hours of playing at company, which you have already had, you may be very comfortable for the rest of the evening. WILLIAM BECKFORD, ESQ. ONE of the most extraordinary characters of the present age, is the subject of this Memoir; and associating the erection of the princely Abbey of Fonthill with his delightful tale of Vathek, he may justly be denominated the Genius of Eastern Romance. Mr. Beckford is of royal and noble descent; as appears by an order registered in the Herald's College, bearing date 20th March, 1810, which recites that his father (the celebrated patriotic Lord Mayor of London, whose statue is in the Guildhall, London,) married Maria, daughter and at length co-heir of the honourable George Hamilton, who was the second surviving son of James, the sixth Eart of Abercorn. This Lady was descended in a direct line from James the second Lord Hamilton, by the Princess Mary Stuart, his wife, eldest daughter of James II. King of Scotland. Mr. Beckford married the Lady Margaret Gordon, only daughter of Charles, late Earl of Aboyne, by whom he has issue two daughters, namely, Margaret Maria Elizabeth Beckford, and Susannah Euphemia Beckford, who married the present Duke of Hamilton. It is remarkable that individuals of three branches of the noble house of Howard are descended from the family of Beckford; viz. 1. Henry Howard, Esq. (only son of Lord Henry Mollineux-Howard,and nephew to the present Duke of Norfolk), whose grandmother, Mary Ballard Long, was daughter and heir to Thomas Beckford, Esq., grandson to Peter Beckford, Esq. Lieutenant-Governor of Jamaica. 2. Charles Augustus Ellis, Lord Howard de Walden (of the Suffolk branch of Howard), whose greatrandmother Anne, the wife of George Ellis, Esq. was elder sister to the Countess of Effingham, and aunt to the present Mr. Beckford. 3. Thomas and Richard, the two last Earls of Effingham, sons of the above Countess. Mr. Beckford on coming possessed of his fortune, made the grand tour, and resided many years in Italy; it was. here he improved that exquisite taste and love of the Fine Arts for which he is pre-eminent. On his return to England, he resolved on building Fonthill-which he accomplished; and in August, 1822, he as hastily determined to dispose of it-and accordingly gave directions to Mr. Christie, of Pall-Mall, to dispose of it; and so great was the anxiety to view the splendid edifice, that upwards |