body, from the venerable superior to the novice of yesterday; that she had threatened to end her own life in that moment when any of the sisterhood should pronounce, in her hearing, the name of Frederick; and that, after an unslackening course of such fasting, mortification, and watchfulness, as, by comparison, branded the severest penances of the convent with the character of voluptuousness and luxury, she had, but one hour before his arrival, brought her spotless being to an end, by having strained, beyond the capacities of her frame, the rigours of mortification. "The former part of this sentence was all that Frederick heard. On his recovery he caught the affrighted religious by the throat, and demanded, with the most frantic gestures, to be instantly conducted to the body of the miserable Eliza: he gazed in the taciturn transports of extreme mental agony on her angelic countenance, upon which death had been able to effect no change, but by amendment; for, more calmly sweet, more floridly beautiful to the eye, as well as more vividly glowing to the touch, than he had ever remembered them, were the features of the goddess of his idolatry; and he could hardly be persuaded that he did not still hear her sigh, as he applied his cheek to hers in an ecstasy of sorrow. "A settled gloom now fixed itself on the countenance of Frederick: and as he looked out of the convent window on the country below, he felt full of indignation at Nature for sympathizing so little with his sorrows; for the sun had now gilded the western horizon, the birds were singing on every bough, the little lambs were sporting round their mothers, and the unfeeling grasshoppers were chirrupping, as unconscious of what had T happened. Unwilling, however, to let pass a moment so favourable for his journey, he resolved to set out instantly for his pensive habitation with his poor but friendly fisherman; and having enjoined the abbess to collect the dear ashes of his beloved into a golden urn, and having forced down a couple of mouthfuls to sustain his sinking frame, he flung himself from the walls of the convent; and after a short preparative for his departure, repaired to his well-known and long-deserted dwelling in the Orkney Isles, whither he conveyed all the memorials of his beloved Eliza, and there established his permanent abode, which he vowed never to quit during the remainder of his wretched days, but for the mournful purpose of annually repairing to, and weeping over, the urn, that contained all that ever gave him an interest in this sublunary scene, in the person of his adored Eliza." N° 85. SATURDAY, JANUARY 4, 1794. Nemo leditur nisi seipso. Our sorrows originate in ourselves. PETRARCH. Præfat. de Remed. I HAVE often considered with myself, how it should come to pass that an addiction to melancholy is more common among my countrymen than other Europeans. That physical causes have some share in this conformation of mind, can be doubted by no one who regards the variableness of our climate, and that dependence on the atmosphere to which the human frame is reduced by the enervations of modern refinement. There are good grounds, however, for thinking that little more belongs to climate than a predisposing influence in human affairs, which physically inclines us to a particular form of government, or particular bent of manners, but which readily gives place to such counter tendencies, as the existing government, by whatever forms established, can oppose to its progress. The moral opposition which we are able to set up, in our civil and social capacity, to the capricious rule of the elements, denotes one of our great prerogatives above the brute creation, and marks that ascendency which reason holds in all the concerns and attributes of our being. This supremacy of the mind, this mastery of the spiritual part of us, is a cheerful and elevating thought amidst those hourly prostrations of human pride, which fill up the date of this perishable existence. It is certainly some proof, if proofs were wanting, that the world was created for man's use and sovereignty, when we reflect, that while other animals are confined to particular spots of the globe, and degenerate in strange latitudes, the human species flourishes in every part of the earth, accommodates itself to every change of climate, and maintains its pre-eminence wherever it is situated by nature or by accident. It should seem, therefore, that man is a much more independent animal than we suppose him, on the influence of outward adventitious causes, and that a more internal and spiritual source is at the bottom of all his varieties and revolutions of character. It is an easy and indolent way of accounting for the phænomena of the mind, to derive them from physical and irremediable causes; but the more accurate thinker perceives and acknowledges the great preponderancy of habit in all that respects our qualities, attainments, and dispositions, and discerns how clear and speaking a truth it is, that man was meant to be the framer of his own happiness, and the instrument of his own elevation. In conformity with these principles, we are to look for the origin of the different casts and complexions of the mind, by which different men and countries are characterised, not so much in the operation of climate, or in the effects of a physical organization, as in the influences of that second nature which results from our habits, our educations, and the circumstances of our political condition. There is in the savage world, under all latitudes and climates, a prevailing uniformity of character, which affords a powerful inference, that the various modifications of mind, which branch out under circumstances of civilization, are not the immediate consequences of local or atmospherical peculiarities; I say, not the immediate consequences, because I have allowed them to be often ultimately derivable from this source, in admitting its predisposing influence on the subsequent political arrangements which gradual civilization introduces. If some complexional differences appear in the character of the savage, they are small and proximate, like shades of the same colour, and are hardly strong enough to appropriate the different histories which travellers have related of them, so that one might not serve for the other, unless for the topographical differences by which they are distinguished. The minds of men may not ill be compared to those plants, of which a multitude of different species are enumerated; in the stems, however, and early shoots of which, but small distinction is discerned, and which wait until culture has decked them in the graceful maturity of their foliage and flowers, for their peculiarities and variations to be pronounced and recognized. Melancholy is among those modifications of the human character, which wait the fecundating efficacy of social refinement, ere they break out in all their diversities of shade and colouring: like those other qualities which manifest themselves principally or solely in the members of civil society, it is more justly traced to moral than to physical causes; and I cannot help thinking, that, in the idea which imputes so great a measure of it to atmosphere and climate, there is much bad philosophy, and much ignorance of human nature. Plautus observes well, in speaking of the mind of man "Hospitium est calamitatis, quid verbis opus est; If, therefore, in our search after the grounds of |