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been educated at fchool and at college, and with whom I had ever after lived in habits of the strictest friendship, putting me in mind of an engagement I had come under when last in London, to fhow him fome parts of the Highlands in Scotland, and to pafs fome time with him there in growse-shooting. I immediately made the neceffary preparations for this excurfion, and not doubting that my wife would be happy to fhow every mark of attention to the chofen friend of my youth, I wrote to him to haften his journey to Scotland. When he arrived, it was with pain that I observed that my Louisa, fo far from participating the joy I felt at the fight of my friend, feemed to fink in spirits in proportion as I was overjoyed on the occafion.

I left her in a fituation which diftreffed me at the time, and the reflection of which damped all the joy I fhould otherwise have found in the fociety of my friend. I fhortened our excurfion, although I saw it rather disappointed him, in order to get home as foon as poffible. Inftead of being received by my Louisa with that pleasure which I experienced in seeing her after this fhort abfence, I found her ftill oppreffed with that melancholy in which I had left her. It is needlefs, Sir, to detain you with a detail of further particulars. In a word, I find that my wife confiders my partaking in any amuse

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ment, joining in any fociety, or engaging in the moft neceffary and essential business, as a mark of want of attachment and affection to her. That romantic turn of mind, which at firft charmed me fo much, and which her natural good fenfe has not enabled her to restrain within due bounds, leads her to fee every object through a medium very remote from the occur rences of ordinary life. As fhe is a reader of the Lounger, I beg you will favour us with a paper on the danger of encouraging this engaging fort of delufion, fo apt to captivate a young and a virtuous mind, but which I find, from fatal experience, leads to much misery and diftrefs.-Yours, &c.

W. DENHAM.

It might be fuppofed, that the Lounger, who has fomehow been led to confefs himself a bachelor, would not be much diffatisfied at receive ing, in fuch letters as the above and Mr. Eafy's, a fort of teftimony of the inconveniencies of marriage. He must however declare, that they afford him no kind of fatisfaction; nor indeed do the complaints of those córrefpondents induce him to think at all unfavourably of that state in which they have found the embarraffments

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barraffments they defcribe. Want of judgment in our choice, or ridiculously fanguine expectations from what we poffefs, will, in every article of life, produce disappointment and chagrin; and the fituation from which the greatest felicity may be drawn, must neceffarily be that from which most uneafinefs may fpring. But the relations of misfortune are generally exaggerated. From Mrs. Eafy I have received a letter, denying more than half of her husband's affertions. My correfpondent Alcander's relation on the other fide of the queftion, meets with perfect credit from me. I myself know feveral couples as happy as his Euphanor and Almeria; it is probably owing to the truth of its recital, that his letter feems to me not fo well calculated for the entertainment of my readers, as those which perhaps borrow a little from fiction, to furnish out their diftreffes. The epiftles of to-day in particular, I have taken the liberty to read to some of the most creditable of my married acquaintance, who are unanimous in declaring the diftrefs of which they complain to be perfectly out of nature.

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N° 75. SATURDAY, July 8, 1786.

E' troppo barbara quella legge, che vuol disporre del cuor delle donne a cofto della loro rovina.

GOLDONI.

To the AUTHOR of the LOUNGER.

SIR,

Avignon, May 1786. OU will perhaps be surprised at receiving

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a letter from this place; but if you poffefs that benevolence which from your writings one is led to afcribe to you, the unfortunate from any quarter may claim fome of your notice. My ftory, I believe, will not be without its ufe; and if you knew that fort of melancholy indulgence which I feel in addreffing a letter to my native country!-But I will not give way to feeling; I mean fimply to relate; and fituated as I am, banished from the world, and lost to myself, I can tell my story,—I think I can, as that of a third perfon, in which though I may be interested, I will yet be impartial.

My father poffessed a small patrimonial estate in the county of and married, in early life,

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life, a lady whofe birth was much above her fortune, and who unluckily retained all the pride of the first, tho' it but ill fuited the circumftances of the latter. The confequences were fuch as might naturally be looked for. My father was involved in an expenfive ftyle of life, which in a few years obliged him to fell his eftate for payment of his debts. He did not live to feel the diftreffes to which he might have been reduced; and after his death my mother took up her refidence in a country-town, where the pittance that remained from the reversion of my father's effects, affifted by a small pension from government, which a distant relation of my mother's procured for us, enabled her to educate me on that fober plan which neceffity had now taught her to adopt.

Our fituation, however, ftill allowed her to mix fomething of the genteel in my education : and the place in which we lived was inhabited by feveral families, who, like, us, had retired from more public and expenfive life, and ftill retained somewhat of that polish which former intercourse with the fashionable world had conferred. At the age of feventeen, therefore, I was, I believe, tolerably accomplished; and though I knew nothing of high life, nor indeed wifhed to know it, yet I poffeffed a degree of refinement and breeding rather above what the

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