had so good an effect, that he married her the very week after. The usual conversation of ordinary women very much cherishes this natural weakness of being taken with outside and appearance. Talk of a new married couple, and you immediately hear whether they keep their coach and six, or eat in plate mention the name of an absent lady, and it is ten to one but you learn something of her gown and petticoat. A ball is a great help to discourse, and a birth day furnishes conversation for a twelvemonth after. A furbelow of precious stones, an hat, buttoned with a diamond, a brocade waistcoat or petticoat, are standing topics. In short, they consider only the drapery of the species, and never cast away a thought on those ornaments of the mind, that make persons illustrious in themselves, and useful to others. When women are thus perpetually dazzling one another's imaginations, and filling their heads with nothing but colours, it is no wonder that they are more attentive to the superficial parts of life, than the solid and substantial blessings of it. A girl who has been trained up in this kind of conversation, is in danger of every embroidered coat that comes in her way. A pair of fiinged gloves may be her ruin. In a word, lace and ribbands, silver and gold galoons, with the like glittering gewgaws, are so many lures to women of weak minds or low educations, and, when artificially displayed, are able to fetch down the most airy coquette from the wildest of her flights and rambles. ་ True happiness is of a retired nature, and an enemy to pomp and noise; it arises, in the first place, from the enjoyment of one's self; and in the next, from the friendship and conversation of a few select companions; it loves shade and solitude, and naturally haunts groves and fountains, fields and meadows : In short, it feels every thing it wants within itself, and receives no addition from multitude of witnesses and spectators. On the contrary, false happiness loves to be in a croud, and to draw the eyes of the world upon. her. She does not receive any satisfaction from the applauses which she gives herself, but from the admiration which she raises in others. She flourishes in courts and palaces, theatres and assemblies, and has no existence but when she is looked upon. Aurelia, though a woman of great quality delights in the privacy of a country life, and passes away a great part of her time in her own walks and gardens. Her husband, who is her bosom-fiiend and companion in her solitudes, has been in love with her ever since he knew her. They both abound with good sense, consummate virtue, and a mutual esteem; and are a perpetual entertainment to one another. Their family is under so regular an seconomy in its hours of devotion and repast, employment and diversion, that it looks like a little common-wealth within itself. They often go into company, that they may return with the greater delight to one another; and sometimes live in town, not to enjoy it so properly as to grow weary of it, that they may renew in themselves the relish of a country life. By this means they are happy in each other, beloved by their children adored by their servants, and are become the envy, or rather the delight of all that know them. How different to this is the life of Fulvia! She considers her husband as her steward, and looks upon discretion and good housewifery as little domestic virtues, unbecoming a woman of quality. She thinks life lost in her own family, and fancies herself out of the world, when she is not in the ring, the play - house, or the drawing-room she lives in a perpetual motion of body, and restlessness of thought, and is never easy in any one place, when she thinks there is more company in another. The missing of an opera the first night, would be more afflicting to her than the death of a child. She pities all the valuable part of her own sex, and calls every woman of a prudent modest retired life, a poor spirited and unpolished creature. What a mortification would it be to Fulvia, if she knew that her setting herself to view is but exposing herself, and that she grows contemptible by being conspicuous! I cannot conclude my paper, without observ. ing that Virgil has very finely touched upon this female passion for dress and show, in the character of Camilla; who, though she seems to have shaken off all the other weaknesses of her sex, is still described as a woman in this particular. The poet tells us, that after having made a great slaughter of the enemy, she unfortunately cast her eye on a Trojan who wore an embroidered tunic, a beautiful coat of mail, with a mantle of the finest purple. A golden bow, says he, hung upon his shoulder; his garment was buckled with a golden clasp, and his head covered with an helmet of the same shining metal. The Amazon imme diately singled out this well dressed warrior being seized with a woman's longing for the pretty trappings that he was adorned with : Totumque incauta per agmen Fœmineo prædæ et spoliorum ardebat amore. This heedless pursuit after these glittering trifles, the poet, by a nice concealed moral, represents to have been the destruction of his female hero. 3 - Equitis quoque jam migravit ab aure voluptas Omnis ad incertos oculos, et gaudia vana. HOR. Ep. 1, 1. 2, v. 187. But even our knights from wit and genius fly FRANCIS. ་ Ir is my design in this paper to deliver down to posterity a faithful account of the Italian opera, and of the gradual progress which it as made upon the English stage; for there is no question but our great grand-children wil |