she honours you with a visit, it is on foot. She walks all hours of the day, and leaves indolence, and its concomitant maladies, to be endured by her horses. In this see at once the preservative of her health and personal charms. But when you go to Auteuil, you must have your carriage, though it is no further from Passy to Auteuil than from Auteuil to Passy.

Franklin. Your reasonings grow very tiresome. Gout. I stand corrected. I will be silent and continue my office; take that, and that.

Franklin. Oh! Ohh! Talk on, I pray you! Gout. No, no; I have a good number of twinges for you to-night, and you may be sure of

some more to-morrow.

Franklin. What, with such a fever! I shall go distracted. Oh! Eh! Can no one bear it for me?

Gout. Ask that of your horses; they have served you faithfully.

Franklin. How can you so cruelly sport with my torments?

Gout. Sport! I am very serious. I have here a list of offences against your own health distinctly written, and can justify every stroke inflicted on you.

Franklin. Read it then.

Gout. It is too long a detail; but I will briefly mention some particulars.

Franklin. Proceed. I am all attention.

Gout. Do you remember how often you have promised yourself, the following morning, a walk in the grove of Boulogne, in the garden de la Muette, or in your own garden, and have violated your promise, alleging, at one time, it was too cold, at another too warm, too windy, too moist, or what else you pleased; when in truth it was too nothing, but your insuperable love of ease?

Franklin. That I confess may have happened occasionally, probably ten times in a year.

Gout. Your confession is very far short of the truth; the gross amount is one hundred and ninety-nine times.

Franklin. Is it possible?

Gout. So possible, that it is fact; you may rely on the accuracy of my statement. You know Mr. Brillon's gardens, and what fine walks they contain; you know the handsome flight of an hundred steps, which lead from the terrace above to the lawn below. You have been in the practice of visiting this amiable family twice a week, after dinner, and it is a maxim of your own, that "a man may take as much exercise in walking a mile, up and down stairs, as in ten on level ground." What an opportunity was here for you to have had exercise in both these ways! Did you embrace it, and how often?

Franklin. I cannot immediately answer that question.

Gout. I will do it for you; not once.
Franklin. Not once?

Gout. Even so. During the summer you went there at six o'clock. You found the charming lady, with her lovely children and friends, eager to walk with you, and entertain you with their

agreeable conversation; and what has been your choice? Why to sit on the terrace, satisfying yourself with the fine prospect, and passing your eye over the beauties of the garden below, without taking one step to descend and walk about in them. On the contrary, you call for tea and the chessboard; and lo! you are occupied in your seat till nine o'clock, and that besides two hours' play after dinner; and then, instead of walking home, which would have bestirred you a little, you step into your carriage. How absurd to suppose that all this carelessness can be reconcilable with health, without my interposition!

Franklin. I am convinced now of the justness of poor Richard's remark, that "Our debts and our sins are always greater than we think for."

Gout. So it is. You philosophers are sages in your maxims, and fools in your conduct.

Franklin. But do you charge among my crimes, that I return in a carriage from Mr. Brillon's?

Gout. Certainly; for, having been seated all the while, you cannot object the fatigue of the day, and cannot want therefore the relief of a carriage.

Franklin. What then would you have me to do with my carriage?

Gout. Burn it if you choose; you would at least get heat out of it once in this way; or, if you dislike that proposal, here's another for you; observe the poor peasants, who work in the vineyards and grounds about the villages of Passy, Auteuil, Chaillot, &c.; you may find every day, among these deserving creatures, four or five old men and women, bent and perhaps crippled by weight of years, and too long and too great labour. After a most fatiguing day, these people have to trudge a mile or two to their smoky huts. Order your coachman to set them down. This is an act that will be good for your soul; and, at the same time, after your visit to the Brillons, if you return on foot, that will be good for your body.

Franklin. Ah! how tiresome you are! Gout. Well, then, to my office; it should not be forgotten that I am your physician. There. Franklin. Ohhh! what a devil of a physician! Gout. How ungrateful you are to say so! Is it not I who, in the character of your physician, have saved you from the palsy, dropsy, and apoplexy? one or other of which would have done for you long ago, but for me.

Franklin. I submit, and thank you for the past, but entreat the discontinuance of your visits for the future; for, in my mind, one had better die than be cured so dolefully. Permit me just to hint, that I have also not been unfriendly to you. I never feed physician or quack of any kind, to enter the list against you; if then you do not leave me to my repose, it may be said you are ungrateful too.

Gout. I can scarcely acknowledge that as any objection. As to quacks, I despise them; they may kill you indeed, but cannot injure me. And, as to regular physicians, they are at last convinced, that the gout, in such a subject as you are, is no

disease, but a remedy; and wherefore cure a remedy?-but to our business,-there.

Franklin. Oh! Oh!-for Heaven's sake leave me; and I promise faithfully never more to play at chess, but to take exercise daily, and live temperately.

Gout. I know you too well. You promise fair; but, after a few months of good health, you will return to your old habits; your fine promises will be forgotten like the forms of the last year's clouds. Let us then finish the account, and I will go. But I leave you with an assurance of visiting you again at a proper time and place; for my object is your good, and you are sensible now that I am your real friend.

TO MADAME HELVETIUS.

WRITTEN AT PASSY.

MORTIFIED at the barbarous resolution pronounced by you so positively yesterday evening, that you would remain single the rest of your life, as a compliment due to the memory of your husband, I retired to my chamber. Throwing myself upon my bed, I dreamt that I was dead, and was transported to the Elysian Fields.

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I was asked whether I wished to see any persons in particular; to which I replied, that I wished to see the philosophers. "There are two who live here at hand in this garden; they are good neighbours, and very friendly towards one another." "Who are they?" "Socrates and Helvetius." "I esteem them both highly; but let me see Helvetius first, because I understand a little French, but not a word of Greek." I was conducted to him; he received me with much courtesy, having known me, he said, by character, some time past. He asked me a thousand questions relative to the war, the present state of religion, of liberty, of the government in France. "You do not inquire, then," said I, "after your dear friend, Madame Helvetius; yet she loves you exceedingly; I was in her company not more than an hour ago." Ah," said he, "you make me recur to my past happiness, which ought to be forgotten in order to be happy here. For many years I could think of nothing but her, though at length I am consoled. I have taken another wife, the most like her that I could find; she is not indeed altogether so handsome, but she has a great fund of wit and good sense; and her whole study is to please me. She is at this moment gone to fetch the best nectar and ambrosia to regale me; stay here awhile and you will see her." "I perceive," said I, "that your former friend is more faithful to you than you are to her; she has had several good offers, but has refused them all. I will confess to you that I loved her extremely; but she was cruel to me, and rejected me peremptorily for your sake." "I pity you sincerely," said he, "for she is an excellent woman, handsome and amiable. But do not the Abbé de la R.... and the Abbé M..... visit her!" Certainly they do; not one of your

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friends has dropped her acquaintance." "If you had gained the Abbé M..... with a bribe of good coffee and cream, perhaps you would have succeeded; for he is as deep a reasoner as Duns Scotus or St. Thomas; he arranges and methodizes his arguments in such a manner that they are almost irresistible. Or, if by a fine edition of some old classic, you had gained the Abbé de la R.... to speak against you, that would have been still better; as I always observed, that when he recommended any thing to her, she had a great inclination to do directly the contrary." As he finished these words the new Madame Helvetius entered with the nectar, and I recognised her immediately as my former American friend, Mrs. Franklin! I reclaimed her, but she answered me coldly; "I was a good wife to you for forty-nine years and four months, nearly half a century; let that content you. I have formed a new connection here, which will last to eternity."

Indignant at this refusal of my Eurydice, I immediately resolved to quit those ungrateful shades, and return to this good world again, to behold the sun and you! Here I am; let us avenge ourselves!

AN ARABIAN TALE.

ALBUMAZAR, the good magician, retired in his old age to the top of the lofty mountain Calabut; avoided the society of men, but was visited nightly by gen and spirits of the first rank, who loved him, and amused him with their instructive conversation.

Belubel, the strong, came one evening to see Albumazar; his height was seven leagues, and his wings when spread might overshadow a kingdom. He laid himself gently down between the long ridges of Elluem; the tops of the trees in the valley were his couch; his head rested on Calabut as on a pillow, and his face shone on the tent of Albumazar.

The magician spoke to him with rapturous piety of the wisdom and goodness of the Most High; but expressed his wonder at the existence of evil in the world, which he said he could not account for by all the efforts of his reason.

"Tell me then," said Albumazar, "what I do not know; inform my ignorance, and enlighten my understanding." Contemplate," said Belubel, the scale of beings, from an elephant down to an oyster. Thou seest a gradual diminution of faculties and powers, so small in each step that the difference is scarce perceptible. There is no gap, but the gradation is complete. Men in general do not know, but thou knowest, that in ascending from an elephant to the infinitely Great, Good, and Wise, there is also a long gradation of beings, who possess powers and faculties of which thou canst yet have no conception."

THE EPHEMERA;

AN EMBLEM OF HUMAN LIFE.

WRITTEN TO MADAME BRILLON, OF PASSY.

You may remember, my dear friend, that when we lately spent that happy day in the delightful garden and sweet society of the Moulin Joly, I stopped a little in one of our walks, and stayed some time behind the company. We had been shown numberless skeletons of a kind of little fly, called an ephemera, whose successive generations, we were told, were bred and expired within the day. I happened to see a living company of them on a leaf, who appeared to be engaged in conversation. You know I understand all the inferior animal tongues. My too great application to the stuly of them is the best excuse I can give for the little progress I have made in your charming lang age. I listened through curiosity to the discourse of these little creatures; but as they, in their national vivacity, spoke three or four together, I could make but little of their conversation. I found, however, by some broken expressions that I heard now and then, they were disputing warmly on the merit of two foreign musicians, the one a cousin, the other a moscheto; in which dispute they spent their time, seemingly as regardless of the shortness of life as if they had been sure of living a month. Happy people! thought I; you are certainly under a wise, just, and mild government, since you have no public grievances to complain of, nor any subject of contention but the perfections and imperfections of foreign music. I turned my head from them to an old grayheaded one, who was single on another leaf, and talking to himself. Being amused with his soliloquy, I put it down in writing, in hopes it will likewise amuse her to whom I am so much indebted for the most pleasing of all amusements, her delicious company and heavenly harmony.

"It was," said he, "the opinion of learned philosophers of our race, who lived and flourished long before my time, that this vast world, the Moulin Joly, could not itself subsist more than eighteen hours; and I think there was some foundation for that opinion, since, by the apparent motion of the great luminary that gives life to all nature, and which in my time has evidently declined considerably towards the ocean at the end of our carth, it must then finish its course, be extinguished in the waters that surround us, and leave the world in cold and darkness, necessarily producing universal death and destruction. I have lived seven of those hours, a great age, being no less than four hundred and twenty minutes of time. How very few of us continue so long! I have seen generations born, flourish, and expire. My present friends are the children and grandchildren of the friends of my youth, who are now,

alas, no more! And I must soon follow them; for, by the course of nature, though still in health, I cannot expect to live above seven or eight minutes longer. What now avails all my toil and labour, in amassing honey-dew on this leaf, which I cannot live to enjoy! What the political struggles I have been engaged in, for the good of my compatriot inhabitants of this bush, or my philosophical studies for the benefit of our race in general! for, in politics, what can laws do without morals? Our present race of ephemera will in a course of minutes become corrupt, like those of other and older bushes, and consequently as wretched. And in philosophy how small our progress! Alas! art is long, and life is short! My friends would comfort me with the idea of a name, they say, I shall leave behind me; and they tell me I have lived long enough to nature and to glory. But what will fame be to an ephemera who no longer exists? And what will become of all history in the eighteenth hour, when the world itself, even the whole Moulin Joly, shall come to its end, and be buried in universal ruin?"

To me, after all my eager pursuits, no solid pleasures now remain, but the reflection of a long life spent in meaning well, the sensible conversation of a few good lady ephemeræ, and now and then a kind smile and a tune from the ever amiable Brillante.

APOLOGUE ON WAR.

FROM A LETTER TO THE REV. DR. PRIESTLEY.

In what light we are viewed by superior beings, may be gathered from a piece of late West India news, which possibly has not yet reached you. A young angel of distinction being sent down to this world on some business, for the first time, had an old courier-spirit assigned him as a guide. They arrived over the seas of Martinico, in the middle of the long day of obstinate fight between the fleets of Rodney and De Grasse. When, through the clouds of smoke, he saw the fire of the guns, the decks covered with mangled limbs, and bodies dead or dying; the ships sinking, burning, or blown into the air; and the quantity of pain, misery, and destruction, the crews yet alive were thus with so much eagerness dealing round to one another; he turned angrily to his guide, and said, "You blundering blockhead, you are ignorant of your business; you undertook to conduct me to the earth, and you have brought me into hell!" "No, sir," says the guide, "I have made no mistake; this is really the earth, and these are men. Devils never treat one another in this cruel manner; they have more sense, and more of what men (vainly) call humanity."

Ir was a remarkable exhibition of God's good providence, when the dignity of humanity was to be vindicated anew on these fresh and vast fields which the pious spirit of Columbus had opened to the elder nations, that so many great men stood ready for the apostleship to which they were called. The illustrious person whose name occupies the highest place in our history, had no type in the past, and has had no parallel in the present. The youthful secretary, who in years of turbulent toil shared his midnight conversations, and when Peace smiled upon an exhausted but free people, became the chief architect of that system of government which exists among the noblest monuments of human wisdom, has not received the measure of praise which awaits him, but the rays of his glory brighten as they diverge in the distance of time, and he will yet be regarded as the most gigantic-minded of the statesmen of his century. And that pure and august intelligence, in the alembic of whose mind the treasures of the memory were turned to reason, who seemed while interpreting the laws of man to utter the eternal ordinations of Justice, was worthy, with his friend, to be united, in purpose, principle, and action, to the Great Captain. Washington, Hamilton, and Marshall,-the soldier, the statesman, the jurist-how grateful ought we to be that in the period of our greatest need they were raised up! What hopes of our race are justified by their appearance in these latter days, and in this new world!

But there were others, besides the three who in their respective spheres held such supremacy, to whom we owe the homage of grateful recollection. Franklin, already a sage, approved himself a hero; and the fieryhearted Adams, the undaunted Henry, the fervid Rutledge, the wise and pure-minded Jay, and at a later time Madison, Bradford, and many more, with powerful and peculiar faculties, did ample service to the cause of freedom. And in the second class of our great men, though the receding tide of popular applause

may bear him farther toward the sea of undistinguishable men, with bold and peculiar lineaments stands THOMAS JEFFERSON, who as a simple politician, acting for the present, had a more powerful influence than any of his contemporaries or successors.

Thomas Jefferson was born in the county of Albemarle, in Virginia, on the second day of April, 1743. At the age of fourteen, left entirely to himself, with no relative or friend to guide or counsel him, he exhibited a decision and energy of character that secured the esteem of the most respectable persons of his acquaintance. He entered William and Mary College at seventeen, and subsequently studied law under George Wythe. The difficulties with England had already begun, and while a student he was a listener to the celebrated debate on Patrick Henry's resolutions against the Stamp Act. From this period his mind was occupied with public affairs. In 1769 he was chosen to represent his native county in the colonial assembly, and in 1775 took his seat in the old Congress, "where," says John Adams, "though a silent member, he was so prompt, frank, explicit and decisive, upon committees, that he soon seized my heart." He retired from Congress in the autumn of 1776, and was two years engaged in the laborious and important duty of revising and reducing to a single code the statutes of Parliament, the acts of the Virginia Assembly, and parts of the common law. In 1779 he was chosen governor, but resigned the office at the end of two years, and in 1783 was again elected a member of Congress. In 1784 he was appointed Minister to the Court of Paris, where he continued six years, except during brief intervals in which he visited Hol. land, Piedmont, the southern and western parts of France, and England. In November, 1789, he returned to Virginia, and immediately after was appointed Secretary of State by Washington. He resigned this office in 1793, and was in retirement until 1797, when he was chosen Vice-President of the United States. In 1801 he was elected President, by

a majority of one over Mr. Adams, in the House of Representatives, and at the end of eight years he finally quitted public life. The remainder of his days was passed at Monticello, in the care of his estate, in reading and correspondence, and in efforts to promote the prosperity of the University of Virginia, of which he was the founder. He died in the eighty-fourth year of his age, on the fourth of July, 1826, just half a century from the declaration of independence.

Mr. Jefferson's claims to consideration as an author rest chiefly upon his Notes on Virginia, State Papers, and the Autobiography, Correspondence, and Anas, included in the four volumes of his writings, published after his death by Mr. Randolph. The letters which are here printed commence with the year 1775 and continue until a few days before his death. They are addressed to the most distinguished persons of this extraordinary period, so prolific of great men as well as of great events, are upon an infinite variety of subjects, and afford the best view that can be given of his intellectual and moral character. The friendly intercourse between himself and Mr. Adams, which had been suspended in the heats of political controversy, was resumed many years before they died. They forgot the infirmities of age "in the recollection of ancient times;" and perhaps the most interesting portion of this correspondence is that which was addressed to his illustrious associate.

From an early period he had written down all such facts respecting the country as promised to be of use to him in any public or private station, and in 1781, while confined to his chamber by an injury received in falling from his horse, he compiled from his memoranda the Notes on Virginia, to oblige M. de Marbois, of the French legation, who had been instructed by his government to procure information in regard to the natural and political condition of the different states. While in Paris, in 1784, he revised and enlarged the work, and had two hundred copies of it printed for distribution among his friends. One of these, upon the death of the person to whom it had been given, fell into the hands of a bookseller, who employed the Abbé Morellet to translate it, and his version, which was a very poor one, was submitted to Mr. Jefferson for approval. He would gladly have suppressed it, but as this was not practicable he

corrected a few of its worst faults, and when, upon its appearance, Stockdale of London applied to him for the original, he consented to the publication of an English edition, though reluctantly, for he feared the effects in Virginia of what he had said in it of slavery. There was no alternative, however, for if he had declined, a retranslation would have been made from the version of Morellet, and he chose to let the world see that his work was not so bad as the abbé had made it appear.

Mr. Jefferson desired that it should be engraved upon his monument that he was the author of the Declaration of Independence, which was reported to the Congress by a committee of which he was a member. A letter on this subject which he wrote to Mr. Adams in 1819 has caused much controversy, and coincidences of expression, which could hardly have been accidental, have been pointed out in the Declaration and documents previously written by other men. The instances are rare in which the committees of public bodies are in any just sense the authors of its reports, which are commonly but embodiments of the spirit of its discussions. While the Congress was in a state of intense excitement, on the seventh of June, 1776, Richard Henry Lee moved that the country be declared independent, and soon after the committee to prepare the declaration was appointed. For twenty days the subject was discussed in fervid and powerful speeches by the ablest men in the assembly: Mr. Jefferson being present all the while, taking notes of the heads of the arguments, and treasuring in his mind every striking expression of fact or opinion. It is reasonable to suppose that no important statement or suggestion is contained in the Declaration which had not been uttered in the debates. Its literary merits are not remarkable, and they were less as it came from the hands of Mr. Jefferson. Mr. Adams and Dr. Franklin suggested some improvements in the committee, and others were made in the House, which struck out or amended the style of several passages.

As a cultivator of elegant literature, under favourable circumstances, Mr. Jefferson would have attained to considerable excellence. His appropriate field perhaps would have been the essay on manners. He was wanting in power. assiduity and integrity for moral speculations, but had the ready penetration and vivacity necessary to a painter of society. His style was