quently from the only time which we can call our own, and of which, if we neglect the duties to make provision against visionary attacks, we shall certainly counteract our own purpose.

Again, on taking a survey of the business and employments in which we have been engaged during the last year, it must strike every reflecting man, how small a share the most vigorous powers of his mind have had in them; and how contracted their scope has been to their seeming possibility of action. He will find wide chasms of continued vacuity, and many smaller spaces unfilled up, even though his business has been hurried, and his pursuits vehement. And that if all the employment of the mind, during the season, were crowded into a space just sufficient to hold it, a few hours would perhaps appear to be all that was necessary for the purpose; for such is the inequality of our corporeal to our intellectual faculties, that we contrive in minutes, what takes us as many years to execute; and the soul is obliged to stand an idle spectator of the labour of the hands, and expedition of the feet.

Yet though the common occasions of our present condition, require but a small part of the soul's cogitations, it is nevertheless probable that she is al ways exerting her peculiar powers with greater or lesser force; and lest a power so restless, should be either unprofitably or hurtfully employed, and lest the superfluities of intellect should run to waste, it is no vain speculation to consider how we may govern our thoughts so as to restrain them from irregular motions, or confine them from boundless dissipation.

As I said before, the recollection of the past, is most useful by way of provision for the future; and, therefore, in reviewing all occurrences that fall under a moral or religious point of view, it is proper that a man stop at the first thoughts, to remark by what train of ideas he was led thither, and why he still continues the reflection. In like manner, if he is dwelling with delight upon a stratagem of successful fraud, a night of licentious riot, or an intrigue of guilty pleasure, let him instantly summon off his imagination as from an unlawful pursuit; let him instantly expell all the ideas from his remembrance, of which, though he cannot seriously approve them, the pleasure over-powers the guilt, and refer them to a future hour, when they may be considered with greater safety. Such an hour will certainly come; for the impressions of past pleasure are always lessening, but the sense of guilt, which respects futurity, continues the same.

The serious and impartial retrospect of our conduct, is also indisputably necessary to the confirmation, or recovery of our virtue. It is indeed of so great use, that without it we should always be to begin life; be reduced for ever by the same allurements, and misled by the same fallacies. But in order that we may not lose the advantage of our experience, we must endeavour to see every thing in its proper light, and excite in ourselves those sentiments which the author of nature has decreed as companions to the followers of good or evil.

As to our mode of conducting ourselves in future, though our pursuits are so various, one rule may be applied to

all. Let us constantly consider ourselves as on a death-bed, and never do any thing of which we would be ashamed, if cut off in the middle of it, and called to answer at the bar of an allseeing and heart-searching judge. Futurity holds up many dazzling prospects, but there are many hidden snares lodged in it, by which the imagination is entangled. Futurity is the proper abode of hope and fear, with all their train, and progeny, of subordinate apprehensions and desires. In futurity events and chances are yet floating at large, without apparent connection with their causes, and we therefore too easily indulge the liberty of gratifying ourselves with a pleasing choice of those advanvantages which yet belong to no body; but it has this hazard in it, that we shall be unwilling to quit what we thus seize when its owner appears. It is easy, and common, to think upon that which may be gained, till at last we resolve to gain it; and to imagine the happiness of particular conditions, till we can be easy in no other. We ought by all means to let our desires fix upon nothing in another's power or possession, for the sake of our quiet as well

as our innocence. When a man finds himself led, though by a train of honest sentiments, to wish for that to which he has no right, he should start back as from a pitfall covered with flowers.

As this (season, when one year has just taken leave of us never more to return, and another commenced with all the symptoms of bustle and variety,) appears so well fitted by nature for a little serious reflection, we may surely allow ourselves some secession from noise, business, and folly, in order to discover the primary movements of our hearts. Some suspension of common affairs, some pause of temporal anxiety and pleasure, is doubtless necessary to him that deliberates for eternity; who is forming the only plans in which miscarriage can never be repaired, and examining the only question, in which mistakes cannot be rectified.

To conclude; whoever wishes for pleasant recollections, must endeavour to lead a life free from wilful errors; must entertain a humble opinion of his own wisdom, and not expect more from his endeavours, than can be justified by their propriety and rectitude.

1811.

HAVING met with some short observations by one of your correspondents, on the folly of deep play at cards; I have been, from these hints, induced to offer you some general remarks, on an amusement that seems to carry intoxication along with it; for at this time, while the nobility and gentry are squandering away thousands of pounds at it every night of the year, Sundays not excepted, our merchants are sitting in one room, and their clerks in another, for whole nights on the rack at sixpenny whist; and the tradesmen and servants cursing their bad luck at threehalfpenny loo. This mania has infected all ranks, and is still gaining ground. Volumes have been published on the subject, and these volumes are read and studied with the utmost eagerness. The whole is reduced into a science, with all its branches. Our young men investigate it with pleasure, until they believe themselves to be masters of the rules laid down-hazard more and more upon their chance and skill combined-lose at one time, and perhaps gain a little at another, until at last they become so infatuated, as to think of nothing else, and are all impatience for the hour of meeting.

No. XX.

While cards are thus sanctioned by the countenance of the most respectable families of the kingdom, and introduced in their circles every night as a refined amusement, there is no hope of assuaging the growing evil. It is with them the reformation must first commence, if ever it do commence; and is it not singular, Mr Spy, that such people should condescend, thus constantly to indulge in a game, at which they know the lowest vulgar are sitting cursing in every corner of the city? With a few desultory observations on the arguments for and against this amusement, I shall fill up this sheet, and send it to you to make what use of you think fit..

In the first place, it has been maintained, that the universal taste for cardplaying which prevails throughout almost every part of Europe, has produced a considerable change in the manners of men, and that this change appears to have been for the better. Before the invention of cards, there was less general intercourse between the sexes; that is, they were less together, less in society or company: but the perpetual intercourse between them, which card-playing has occasioned, has greatly softened and civilized the manners of the men, and rendered them less inclined to daring schemes of violence and ambition, than at former pe