descried, and now lost, through the swelling billows.

The next step is taste, the subject of our inquiry, which consists in a distinct, unconfused knowledge of the great and beautiful. Although you see not many possessed of a good taste, yet the generality of mankind are capable of it. The very populace of Athens had acquired a good taste by habit and fine examples, so that a delicacy of judgement seemed natural to all who breathed the air of that elegant city we find a manly and elevated sense distinguish the common people of Rome and of all the cities of Greece, while the level of mankind was preserved in those cities; while the plebeians had a share in the government, and an utter separation was not made between them and the nobles by wealth and luxury. But, when once the common people are rent asunder wholly from the great and opulent, and made subservient to the luxury of the latter; then the taste of nature infallibly takes her flight from both parties.. The poor, by a sordid habit, and an attention wholly confined to mean views, and the rich, by an attention to the changeable modes of fancy, and a vitiated preference for the rich and costly, lose the view of simple beauty and grandeur. It may seem a paradox, and yet I am firmly persuaded, that it would be easier at this day to give a good taste to the young savages of America, than to the noble youth of Europe.

Genius, the pride of man, as man is of the crea

tion, has been possessed but by few, even in the brightest ages. Men of superior genius, while they see the rest of mankind painfully struggling to comprehend obvious truths, glance themselves through the most remote consequences, like lightning through a path that cannot be traced. They see the beauties of nature with life and warmth, and paint them forcibly without effort, as the morning sun does the scenes he rises upon; and, in several instances, communicate to objects a morning freshness and unaccountable lustre, that is not seen in the creation of nature. The poet, the statuary, the painter, have produced images that left nature far behind.

Usher.

THE FUNERAL OF MARIA.

MARIA was in her twentieth year. To the beauty of her form, and excellency of her natural disposition, a parent equally indulgent and attentive had done the fullest justice. To accomplish her person, and to cultivate her mind, every endeavour had been used; and they had been attended with that success they commonly meet with, when not prevented by mistaken fondness, or untimely vanity. Few young ladies have attracted more admiration-none ever felt it less: With all the charms of beauty, and the polish of education, the plainest were not less affected, nor the most igno

rant less assuming. She died when every tongue was eloquent on her virtues, when every hope was ripening to reward them.

It is by such private and domestic distresses, that the softer emotions of the heart are most strongly excited. The fall of more important personages is commonly distant from our observation; but even where it happens under our more immediate notice, there is a mixture of other feelings by which our compassion is weakened. The eminently great, or extremely useful, leave behind them a train of interrupted views, and disappointed expectations, by which the distress is complicated beyond the simplicity of pity. But the death of one, who, like Maria, was to shed the influence of her virtues over the age of a father, and the childhood of her sisters, present to us a little view of family-afflictions, which every eye can perceive, and every heart can feel. On scenes of public sorrow, and national regret, we gaze, as upon those gallery-pictures which strike us with wonder and admiration; domestic calamity is like the miniature of a friend, which we wear in our bosoms, and keep for secret looks and solitary enjoyment.

The last time I saw Maria, was in the midst of a crowded assembly of the fashionable and the gay, where she fixed all eyes by the gracefulness of her motion, and the native dignity of her mien; yet so tempered was that superiority which they conferred with gentleness and modesty, that not a murmur

was heard, either from the rivalship of beauty, or the envy of homeliness. From that scene the transition was so violent, to the hearse and the pall, the grave and the sod, that once or twice my imagination turned rebel to my senses; I beheld the objects around me as the painting of a dream, and thought of Maria as living still.

I was soon, however, recalled to the sad reality. The figure of her father bending over the grave of his darling child, the silent suffering composure in which his countenance was fixed; the tears of his attendants, whose grief was capable of tears; these gave me back the truth, and reminded me, that I should see her no more. There was a flow of sorrow with which I suffered myself to be borne along, with a kind of melancholy indulgence; but when her father dropt the cord with which he had helped to lay his Maria in the earth, its sound on the coffin chilled my heart, and horror for a moment took place of pity.

It was but for a moment-He looked eagerly into the grave; made one involuntary motion to stop the assistants who were throwing the earth into it; then, suddenly recollecting himself, clasped his hands together, threw up his eyes to heaven; and then first I saw a few tears drop from them. I gave language to all this. It spoke a lesson of faith, of piety, and resignation. I went away sorrowful, but my sorrow was neither ungentle nor unmanly; cast on this world a glance, rather of pity

than of enmity; on the next a look of humbleness and hope.

Such, I am persuaded, will commonly be the effect of scenes like that I have described, on minds neither frigid nor unthinking; for of feelings like these, the gloom of a sceptic is as little susceptible as the levity of the giddy. There needs a certain pliancy of the mind, which society alone can give, though its vices often destroy, to render us capable of that gentle melancholy, which makes sorrow pleasant, and affliction useful.

If the influence of such a call to thought, can only smother in its birth one allurement to evil, or confirm one wavering purpose to virtue, I shall not have unjustly commended that occasional indulgence of pensiveness and sorrow, which will thus be rendered, not only one of the refinements, but one of the improvements of life.

5.

THE PATRIOT SOLDIER,

Mirror.

ANOTHER brilliant example of tried fidelity, flashes upon my mind. When Lord Rawdon was in South Carolina, he had to send an express of great importance through a country filled with the enemy; a Corporal of the 17th dragoons, of known courage and intelligence, was selected to escort it. They had not proceeded far, until they were fired upon