No. 72. SATURDAY, June 17, 1786.

Debita.

Sors ista Senecta

VIRG.

IN every man's lot there are certain incidents, either regarding himself, or those with whom he is closely connected, which, like mile-stones on a road, mark the journey of life, and call our attention both to that portion of it which we have already passed, and to that which it is probable we have still to go. The death or the marriage of a friend, his departure for a distant country, or his return from it, not only attract our notice to such events themselves, but naturally recal to our memories, and anticipate to our imaginations, a chain of other events connected

with, or dependent upon them. Those little prominent parts of life stop the even and unheeded course of our ordinary thoughts; and, like him who has gained a height in his walk, we not only look on the objects which lie before us, but naturally turn to compare them with those we have left behind.

Though my days, as my readers may have gathered from the accounts I have formerly given, pass with as much uniformity as those of most men; yet there are now and then occurrences in them which give room for this variety of reflection. Some such lately crossed me in the way; and I came home, after a solitary walk, disposed to moralize on the general tenor of life, to look into some of the articles of which it consists, and to sum up their value and their use, When Peter let me in, methought he looked older than he used to do. I opened my memorandum-book for 1775.-I can turn

over the leaves between that time and this (said I to myself) in a moment-thus !and, casting my eye on the blank paper that remained, began to meditate on the decline of life, on the enjoyments, the comforts, the cares, and the sorrows of age.

Of domestic comforts, I could not help reflecting how much celibacy deprives us; how many pleasures are derived from a family, when that family is happy in itself, is dutiful, affectionate, good-humoured, virtuous. I cannot easily account for the omission of Cicero, who, in his treatise "De Senectute," enumerates the various enjoyments of old age, without once mentioning those which arise from the possession of worthy and promising children. Perhaps the Roman manners and customs were not very much calculated to promote this: they who could adopt the childen of others, were not likely to be so exclusively attached to their own, or to feel from that attachment a very high degree of

pleasure; or, it may be, the father of Marcus felt something on the subject of children, of which he was willing to spare himself the recollection. But though a bachelor myself, I look with equal veneration and complacency on the domestic blessings of a good old man, surrounded by a virtuous and flourishing race, in whom he lives over the best days of his youth, and from whose happiness he draws so much matter for his own. It is at that advanced period of life that most of the enjoyments of a bachelor begin to leave him, that he feels the solitariness of his situation, linked to no surrounding objects, but those from which the debility or the seriousness of age must necessarily divorce him. The club, the coffeehouse, and the tavern, will make but a few short inquiries after his absence; and weakness or disease may imprison him to his home, without their much feeling the want of his company, or any of their mem

bers soothing his uneasiness with theirs. The endearing society, the tender attentions of a man's own children, give to his very wants and weakness a sort of enjoyment, when those wants are supplied, and that weakness aided, by the hands he loves.

Though the celibacy of the female sex is still more reproached, and is thought more comfortless than that of ours, yet I confess it seems to me to possess several advantages of which the other is deprived. An old maid has been more accustomed to home and to solitude than an old bachelor, and can employ herself in many little female occupations, which render her more independent of society for the disposal of her time, and the amusement of her mind. The comparatively unimportant employments of the female world, which require neither much vigour of body, nor much exertion of soul, occupy her hours and her attention, and prevent that