should have for his wife a woman possessed of every virtue under the sun, beautiful as Venus, but infinitely more decent; majestic as Juno, but not quite such a termagant; and wise as Minerva, but not quite so prosy as Mentor. He may think, again, that perhaps rather less may content his ambition. He may occasionally, by way of recreation, attend a theatre or an opera, and he may forget next morning whether he had been witnessing tragedy or comedy; and perhaps he might not know at the time if he had not a play-bill. He may sometimes have a friend to breakfast with him at his chambers, and he may talk very sensibly on an infinite variety of subjects, and may give his opinions on many a decision, and on various points of law. He may sometimes in an evening visit a quiet domestic family, and make himself very agreeable to all branches of the family, talking politics with the gentleman, economy with the lady, poetry with the daughters, and science with the sons: he may even carry his complaisance so far as to discover tokens of genius in infants six months old; and if the mania of craniology has bitten any of the family, he may discover the organ of numbers in a great booby who, at ten years of age, has just got into long division. He may hold a share in a literary and scientific institution; and he may look wise over a lecture on chemistry without learning how to make soap, or acquiring the art of detecting the admixture of cape with sherry. Thus quietly may he hold on the even tenor of his way; and gradually, though surely, may he rise to celebrity in his profession, and to reputation in the world. All this while, however, he has no adventures; he is as monotonous and remarkless as the sun when it rises without a cloud. But if the said young man neglect his business and run riot, and yield himself up to any species of intemperance and folly, then does he bring himself into ten thousand pretty scrapes, which though not very pleasant to himself, may by a skilful narrator be rendered highly diverting to a reader; or, if the narrator have not confidence in his power of amusing, he may at least assume the air of a monitor, and give through the narrative of transgression an admonition to transgressors. Now, if the gentleman whose vanity we have represented as being gratified by the title of Earl of Trimmerstone had been content to form his fortunes for himself, instead of leaning luxuriously idle on a capricious relative, he would have avoided many of those perplexities into which he was thrown; and though he might not have been honored so much by an association with men of high rank, he would have been honored much more by an intimacy with men of good understanding and decorous conduct. His history would have been more brief, and his mortifications fewer.