[3]. Knox.
The pleasures of childhood and youth, when regulated by parental wisdom, and sweetened by filial affection and obedience, must be grateful to the recollection at any age: and for this plain reason, because innocence and simplicity are their leading traits. How soothing, how animating, then, must be reflection, at the evening of a life, wholly spent in virtue and rectitude!
Pope observes that “Every year is a critique on the last. The man despises the boy, the philosopher the man, and the Christian all.” Happy are those who can take a retrospect of all, with the supporting consciousness that each part has been rightly performed! Adieu.
ANNA WILLIAMS.
To Miss MATILDA FIELDING.
Boston.
I am impatient for an opportunity of returning your civilities, my dear Matilda; and if possible, of repaying you some part of the pleasure, which you so liberally afforded me, during my late visit to your hospitable mansion. For this purpose, I must insist on the performance of your promise to spend the winter in town. It is true that I cannot contribute to your amusement in kind. Yet, according to the generally received opinion, that variety is necessary to the enjoyment of life, we may find ours mutually heightened by the exchange. Delightful rambles, and hours of contemplative solitude, free from the interruptions of formality and fashion, I cannot insure; but you may depend on all that friendship and assiduity can substitute; and while the bleak winds are howling abroad, a cheerful fireside, and a social circle, may dispel the gloom of the season. The pleasures of our family are very local. Few are sought, in which the understanding and affections can have no share. For this reason, a select, not a promiscuous acquaintance is cultivated. And however unfashionable our practice may be deemed, we can find entertainment, even in the dull hours of winter, without recourse to cards. Almost every other recreation affords some exercise and improvement to the body or mind, or both; but from this neither can result. The whole attention is absorbed by the game. Reason lies dormant, and the passions only are awake. However little is depending, the parties are frequently as much agitated by hope and fear, as if their all were at stake. It is difficult for the vanquished not to feel chagrin; while the victors are gratified at the expense of their friends. But the principal objection with me, is the utter exclusion of conversation; a source of pleasure, and of profit too, for which I can admit nothing as an equivalent. Winter evenings are peculiarly adapted to this rational and refined entertainment. Deprived of that variety of scenery, and those beauties of nature, which the vernal and autumnal seasons exhibit, we are obliged to have recourse to the fireside for comfort. Here we have leisure to collect our scattered ideas, and to improve, by social intercourse, and the exertion of our mental powers.
Our sex are often rallied on their volubility: and, for myself, I frankly confess, that I am so averse to taciturnity, and so highly prize the advantages of society and friendship, that I had rather plead guilty to the charge than relinquish them.
“Hast thou no friend to set thy mind a-broach?
Good sense will stagnate. Thoughts shut up, want air,