menæus and Tranquilla, you will join your wishes to those of their other friends for the happy event of an union in which caprice and felfishness had fo little part.

There is at least this reason why we should be lefs deceived in our connubial hopes than many who enter into the same state, that we have allowed our minds to form no unreasonable expectations, nor vitiated our fancies, in the foft hours of courtship, with vifions of felicity which human power cannot beftow, or of perfection which human virtue cannot attain. That impartiality with which we endeavoured to inspect the manners of all whom we have known was never fo much overpowered by our paffion, but that we difcovered fome faults and weakneffes in each other; and joined our hands in conviction, that as there are advantages to be enjoyed in marriage, there are inconveniencies likewife to be endured; and that, together with confederate intellects and auxiliar virtues, we must find different opinions and oppofite inclinations.

We however flatter ourselves, for who is not flattered by himself as well as by others on the day of marriage? that we are eminently qualified to give mutual pleasure. Our birth is without any fuch remarkable difparity as can give either an opportunity of infulting the other with pompous names and fplendid alliances, or of calling in, upon any domestick controverfy, the overbearing affiftance of powerful relations. Our fortune was equally fuitable, fo that we meet without any of thofe obligations, which always produce reproach or fufpicion, of reproach, which, though they may be forgotten in

the gaieties of the first month, no delicacy will always fupprefs, or of which the fuppreffion must be confidered as a new favour, to be repaid by tameness and fubmiffion, till gratitude takes the place of love, and the defire of pleafing degenerates by degrees into the fear of offending.

The fettlements caufed no delay; for we did not truft our affairs to the negociation of wretches who would have paid their court by multiplying ftipulations. Tranquilla fcorned to detain any part of her fortune from him into whofe hands fhe delivered up her perfon; and Hymenæus thought no act of bafeness more criminal than his who enslaves his wife by her own generofity, who by marrying without a jointure condemns her to all the dangers of accident and caprice, and at laft boasts his liberality, by granting what only the indifcretion of her kindness enabled him to withhold. He therefore received on the common terms the portion which any other woman might have brought him, and referved all the exuberance of acknowledgment for those excellencies which he has yet been able to discover only in Tranquilla.

We did not pass the weeks of courtship like thofe who confider themselves as taking the laft draught of pleasure, and refolve not to quit the bowl without a furfeit, or who know themfelves about to fet happiness to hazard, and endeavour to lofe their sense of danger in the ebriety of perpetual amusement, and whirl round the gulph before they fink. Hymenæus often repeated a medical axiom, that the fuccours of fickness ought not to be wafted in health. We know that however our 'eyes may yet fparkle,

and

and our hearts bound at the presence of each other, the time of liftleffnefs and fatiety, of peevishness and discontent, must come at laft, in which we fhall be driven for relief to fhows and recreations; that the uniformity of life must be sometimes diverfified, and the vacuities of converfation fometimes fupplied. We rejoice in the reflection that we have ftores of novelty yet unexhausted, which may be opened when repletion fhall call for change, and gratifications yet untasted, by which life, when it shall become vapid or bitter, may be restored to its former sweetness and sprightliness, and again irritate the appetite, and again fparkle in the cup.

Our time will probably be less tasteless than that of those whom the authority and avarice of parents unites almoft without their confent in their early years, before they have accumulated any fund of reflection, or collected materials for mutual entertainment. Such we have often feen rifing in the morning to cards, and retiring in the afternoon to dofe, whose happiness was celebrated by their neighbours, because they happened to grow rich by parfimony, and to be kept quiet by infenfibility, and agreed to eat and to fleep together.

We have both mingled with the world, and are therefore no ftrangers to the faults and virtues, the defigns and competitions, the hopes and fears of our cotemporaries. We have both amufed our leifure with books, and can therefore recount the events of former times, or cite the dictates of ancient wisdom. Every occurrence furnishes us with fome hint which one or the other can improve, and if it fhould happen that memory or imagina-VOL. VI.

M

tion

tion fail us, we can retire to no idle or unimproving folitude.

Though our characters, beheld at a distance, exhibit this general refemblance, yet a nearer infpection discovers fuch a diffimilitude of our habitudes and sentiments, as leaves each some peculiar advantages, and affords that concordia difcors, that fuitable difagreement which is always neceffary to intellectual harmony. There may be a total diverfity of ideas which admits no participation of the fame delight, and there may likewife be fuch a conformity of notions, as leaves neither any thing to add to the decifions of the other. With fuch contrariety there can be no peace, with fuch fimilarity there can be no pleasure. Our reafonings, though often formed upon different views, terminate generally in the fame conclufion. Our thoughts, like rivulets iffuing from distant springs, are each impregnated in its course with various mixtures, and tinged by infufions unknown to the other, yet at laft eafily unite into one ftream, and purify themfelves by the gentle effervefcence of contrary qualities.

Thefe benefits we receive in a greater degree as we converfe without referve, because we have nothing to conceal. We have no debts to be paid by imperceptible deductions from avowed expences, no habits to be indulged by the private fubferviency of a favoured fervant, no private interviews with needy relations, no intelligence with fpies placed upon each other. We confidered marriage as the moft folemn league of perpetual friendship, a ftate from which artifice and concealment are to be banished for ever, and in which every act of diffimulation is a breach of faith.

The

The impetuous vivacity of youth, and that ardour of defire, which the first fight of pleasure naturally produces, have long ceafed to hurry us into irregularity and vehemence; and experience has fhewn us that few gratifications are too valuable to be facrificed to complaifance. We have thought it convenient to reft from the fatigue of pleasure, and now only continue that courfe of life into which we had before entered, confirmed in our choice by mutual approbation, fupported in our refolution by mutual encouragement, and affifted in our efforts by mutual exhortation.

Such, Mr. Rambler, is our profpect of life, a profpect which, as it is beheld with more attention, feems to open more extenfive happiness, and fpreads by degrees into the boundless regions of eternity. But if all our prudence has been vain, and we are doomed to give one inftance more of the uncertainty of human difcernment, we fhall comfort ourselves amidst our disappointments, that we were not betrayed but by fuch delufions as caution could not efcape, fince we fought happiness only in the arms of virtue. We

are,

SIR,

Your humble Servants,

HYMENÆUS,

TRANQUILLA.

M 2