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of miscellaneous and periodical publication, I remain perfectly convinced of their utility, on account of their tendency to diffuse knowledge among the middling and poorer ranks of society, and to attract the notice of idlers and triflers. I have, therefore, from the beginning been a friend to your undertaking, which, without descending to foment the frivolity and lubricity of the times, applies itself judiciously to that love of novelty and variety, which distinguishes our modern world from the plodding world of our fathers.

With a view to contribute somewhat to the pasture of the Bee, I have thought that it might not be amiss to set an example of forming an article in your miscellancy, composed of pertinent selections from the epistolary correspondence of persons of learning and taste, which have not been published; thereby preserving many curious, useful, and agreeable particulars, which might otherwise be finally lost, either from the inadequacy of the whole pieces, in which they are contained, to appear before the public, or the difficulty of rendering them in that shape profitable either to the editor or to the reader.

Many important facts, many vivacious and agreeable remarks, many beautiful and prolific thoughts, are to be found scattered amid the rubbish of trivial correspondence; and one cannot but wish that they should be picked up and preserved.

Every person of literary eminence, indeed

almost every person of taste, sentiment, and social inclination, must, in the course of an ordinary lifetime, be possessed of many specimens of fruitful imagination, painful investigation, or light, brilliant and agreeable remark, or reflection, in the letters of his friends, and, without impropriety, may render them anonymously useful to society at large. Retired from the busy world, my own correspondence has not been extensive; yet it contains many emanations of the human mind divine, that may be useful and agreeable to a remote posterity, and ought not to be involved in the neral heretical catastrophe that generally attends the letters of the vulgar. Why should a fine thought be doomed to inclose a pound of butter, a roll of tobacco, or to singe a pullet, when it might light up a brilliant flame in the mind of a poet, or furnish matter for the page of a philosophical historian?

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Having said so much, Sir, by way of apology, for offering my scanty gleanings as a specimen of what I wish to promote, I shall proceed frankly to present them to your readers, hoping that they may hereafter call forth such as may be found more worthy of their attention. I am, Sir, your humble servant,

PAPYRIUS PRÆCURSOR.

I met yesterday with a line of Martial that pleased me much, and I will here give it, as it may have escaped your observation :--

Fortuna multis dat nimis, nulli satis.

As the goddess has not thought proper to distinguish you, or your humble servant, by the first part of the line, I would fain hope that, in one of her whims, she will give us the satis. But, alas! what is that satis? our mellifluous English poet, with all the aid of the philosophical Bolingbroke, shrunk from the definition of satis in his bold description of happiness, while health and peace cost him but a few scratches of his elegant pen!

Methinks he was chicken-hearted, and might have done it with a dash, by setting it down to the account of moderate desires.

It is the fret that gets upon our minds, and the want of sedatives to allay it, that plays the devil with us all.

Let us cultivate engaging, and rational, and easily attainable pursuits, as the sedatives for this fret, and all will be well.

If fortune, who governs all things, shall call us into eminent or busy stations, let us be daring and busy; but if she compels us to remain in the shade, let us remember, that the laurel thrives in the shade with peculiar procerity.

I was born to the possession of a small estate,

and having missed my way in the world, by some of the freaks of the fickle She that stands upon the globe with a bandage on her eyes, I have lately ended a poetical essay on my own pursuits, in the following manner, after having said that I desire not" volitare vivus per ora virum :

Thus would I pass my unambitious days,
Unknown to envy, undisturb'd with praise;
Guiltless, enjoy the lot Heav'n freely gave,

Steal soft through life, and hide me in the grave. The great misery with respect to this said business of contentment, is, that we imagine we can obtain it by the power of ratiocination, and by comparing our situations with such as are more unfortunate than our own. Now contentment, as I said before, is only to be obtained by going out of ourselves, to dwell upon agreeable, interesting, and permanent objects and pursuits, that prevent us from falling back (as it were) and pressing upon ourselves, which must certainly terminate in quarrelling with ourselves, or in the production of the English spleen, or French ennui, a disease from which, that you may be preserved, by my admirable nostrum, is the sincere and hearty prayer of, my dear Sir, your affectionate humble servant.

B. A.:

On the Benefits to be derived from Foreign Travel.

-Facilis decensus Averni:

Noctes atque dies patet atri janua ditis.

Sed revocare gradum, superasque evadere ad auras, opus, hic labor est..

Hoc

SIR,

TO THE EDITOR OF THE BEE.

(March 27. 1793.)

I HAD no conception of the extent of my old friend's genius, till, in turning over a volume of Tournefort's travels, I found the following copy of a letter to his eldest son upon his travels.

A. B.

CALEDONIUS RUSTICUS' LETTER TO HIS SON.. DEAR SON,

I have three of your letters to acknowledge; one from Lyons, one from Blois, and the last from Paris. I am sorry to find you flying like a harlequin from place to place, without remaining long enough in any one to make. useful observations.

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