Να provifion for her fupport: history 66. Criticism on a fcene in Shakespear's 67. Letter from LORENZO. He goes in fearch of a wife. Characters. Bad effects of neglected education in men 68. Defcription of a Macaroni member of parliament; Mr Umphraville's re- 70. Danger of too much intimacy with the great; a fpirit of independence the Pag. 256x THE MIRROR. N° 37: TUESDAY, June 1. 1779. Credula vitam Spes fovet, et melius cras fore femper ait. T TIBULL HE following effay I received fome time ago from a correfpondent, to whom, if I may judge from the hand-writing, I was once before indebted for an ingenious communication. 'HE experience which every day affords of THE the mortifying difference between those ideal pleasures which we conceive to flow from the poffeffion of certain objects of our wishes, and the feelings confequent upon their actual attainment, has furnished to moft moralifts a text for declaiming on the vanity of human purfuits, the folly of covetoufacfs, the madness of ambition, and the only true wifdom of being humbly fatisfied with the lot and station which Providence has affigned us. It will not appear extraordinary, that those moralifts have hitherto laboured in vain, when it is confidered that their doctrine, ta ken in the latitude in which they usually preach it, would cut off the greatest source of our happiness, overthrow every focial eftablishment, and is nothing less than an attempt to alter the nature of man. It may be a truth, that the balance of happiness and mifery is much the fame in most conditions of life, and confequently, that no change of circumstances will either greatly enlarge the one, or diminish the other. But, while we know that, to attain an object of our wishes, or to change our condition, is not to increase our happiness, we feel, at the fame time, that the purfuit of this object, and the expectation of this change, can increase it in a very fenfible degree. It is by hope that we truly exift; our only enjoyment is the expectation of fomething which we do not poffefs: The recollection of the paft ferves us but to direct and regulate thofe expectations; the prefent is employed in contemplating them: It is therefore only the future which we may be properly faid to enjoy. A philofopher who reafons in this manner, has has a much more powerful incentive to chear. fulness and contentment of mind, than what is furnished by that doctrine which inculcates a perpetual warfare with ourselves, and a reftraint upon the strongest feelings of our na ture. For, while he feels that the poffeffion of the object of his moft earnest defires has given him far lefs pleasure than was promifed by a distant view of it, he is confoled by reflecting that the expectation of this object has, perhaps, brightened many years of his life, enabled him to toil for its attainment with vigour and alacrity, to discharge with ho nour his part in fociety; in fhort, has given him in reality as substantial happinefs as human nature is capable of enjoying. E Though feveral years younger than Eupha nor, I have been long acquainted with him. He is now in his fifty-fecond year; an age when, with most men, the romantic fpirit and enthusiasm of youth have long given place to the cool and fteady maxims of business and the world. It is, however, a peculiarity of my friend's difpofition, that the fame fanguine temperament of mind which, from in. fancy, has attended him through life, ftill continues to actuate him as ftrongly as ever. As he difcovered very early a fondness for claffical learning, his father, at his own defire, advanced his patrimony for his education at the univerfity. At the age of twenty he was left without a fhilling, to make the best of his talents in any way he thought proper. Certain concurring 'circumstances, rather than choice, placed him as an under clerk in a counting-houfe. His favourite ftudies were here totally useless; but, while he gave to bufinefs the moft fcrupulous attention, they ftill, at the intervals of relaxation, furnished his chief amufement. It would be equally tedious and foreign to my purpose to mark minutely the fteps, by which Euphanor, in the courfe of thirty years application to bufinefs, rofe to be mafter of the moderate fortune of fifteen thousand pounds. My friend always confidered money not in the common light, as merely the end of labour, but as the means of purchafing certain enjoyments. which his fancy had pictured as conftituting the fupreme happiness of life. In the beginning of last spring I received from Euphanor the following letter. "My |