if they have any pofterity at all, will probably be an ill-favoured race like themfelves.

What gave rife to thofe laws might have been fome fuch accidents as thefe. It fometimes happened, that a mifer who had spent all his youth in fcraping up money to give his daughter fuch a fortune as might get her a mandarin husband, found his expectations disappointed at laft, by her running away with his footman: this must have been a fad fhock to the poor difconfolate parent, to fee his poor daughter in a one-horfe chaife, when he had defigned her for a coach and fix: what a ftroke from Providence! to fee his dear money go to enrich a beggar; all Nature cried out at the profanation!

It fometimes happened alfo, that a lady who had inherited all the titles, and all the nervous complaints of nobility, thought fit to impair her dignity and mend her conftitution, by marrying a farmer; this muft have been a fad fhock to her inconfolable relations, to fee fo fine a flower fnatched from a flourithing family, and planted in a dunghill; this was an abfolute inverfion of the first principles of things.

In order therefore to prevent the Great from being thus contaminated by vulgar alliances, the obftacles to matrimony have been fo contrived, that the rich only can marry amongst the rich, and the poor, who would leave celibacy, must be content to increase their poverty with a wife. Thus have their laws fairly inverted the inducements to matrimony. Nature tells us, that beauty is the proper allurement of those who are rich, and money of those who are poor; but things here are so contrived, that the rich are invited to marry by that fortune which they do not want, and the poor have no inducement, but that beauty which they do not feel.

An

An equal diffufion of riches through any country ever conftitutes its happinefs. Great wealth in the poffeffion of one ftagnates, and extreme poverty with another keeps him in unambitious indigence; but the moderately rich are generally active; not too far removed from poverty to fear its calamities, nor too near extreme wealth to flacken the nerve of labour, they remain ftill between both in a ftate of continual fluctuation. How impolitic therefore are those laws which promote the accumulation of wealth among the rich, more impolitic ftill in attempting to increase the depreffion on poverty.

Bacon the English philofopher, compares money to manure; if gathered in heaps, fays he, it does no good; on the contrary, it becomes offenfive. But being spread, though never fo thinly, over the furface of the earth, it enriches the whole country. Thus the wealth a nation poffeffes muft expatiate, or it is of no benefit to the publick; it becomes rather a grievance, where matrimonial laws thus confine it to a few.

But this reftraint upon matrimonial community, even confidered in a phyfical light, is injurious. As those who rear up animals take all poffible pains to cross the strain in order to improve the breed; so in thofe countries, where marriage is moft free, the inhabitants are found every age to improve in ftature and in beauty; on the contrary, where it is confined to a caft, a tribe, or an hord, as among the Gaurs, the Jews, or the Tartars, each divifion foon affumes a family likeness, and every tribe degenerates into peculiar deformity. Hence it may be eafily inferred, that if the mandarines here are refolved only to marry among each other, they will foon produce a pofterity with mandarine faces; and we shall fee the heir of fome honourable family fcarcely equal to the abortion of a country farmer.

VOL. III.

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Thefe

Thefe are a few of the obftacles to marriage here, and it is certain, they have in fome measure anfwered the end, for celibacy is both frequent and fashionable. Old batchelors appear abroad without a mask, and old maids, my dear Fum Hoam, have been abfolutely known to ogle. To confefs in friendship; if I were an Englishman, I fancy I should be an old batchelor myfelf; I fhould never find courage to run through all the adventures prefcribed by the law. I could fubmit to court my miftrefs herself upon reasonable terms; but to court her father, her mother, and a long tribe of coufins, aunts, and relations, and then ftand the butt of a whole country church; I would as foon turn tail and make love to her grandmother.

I can conceive no other reason for thus loading matrimony with fo many prohibitions, unless it be that the country was thought already too populous, and this was found to be the moft effectual means of thinning it. If this was the motive, I cannot but congratulate the wife projectors on the fuccefs of their scheme. Hail, Ô ye dim-fighted politicians, ye weeders of men! "Tis yours to clip the wing of industry, and convert Hymen to a broker. "Tis yours to behold fmall objects with a microscopic eye, but to be blind to those which require an extent of vifion. "Tis yours, O ye difcerners of mankind, to lay the line between fociety, and weaken that force by dividing, which should bind with united vigour. 'Tis yours, to introduce national real diftrefs, in order to avoid the imaginary diftreffes of a few. Your actions can be juftified by an hundred reafons like truth, they can be opposed by but a few reasons, and thofe reafons are true.

Farewel.

LETTER

LETTER LXXII.

From Lien Chi Altangi to Hingpo, by the way of Mofcow.

AGE that leffens the enjoyment of life increases our defire of living. Thofe dangers, which, in the vigour of youth we had learned to defpife, affume new terrors as we grow old. Our caution increaf- « ing as our years increase, fear becomes at laft the prevailing paffion of the mind; and the fmall remainder of life is taken up in useless efforts to keep off our end, or provide for a continued existence.

Strange contradiction in our nature, and to which even the wife are liable! If I fhould judge of that part of life which lies before me by that which I have already feen, the profpect is hideous. Experience tells me, that my paft enjoyments have brought no real felicity; and fenfation affures me, that thofe I have felt are ftronger than those which are yet to come. Yet experience and fenfation in vain perfuade; hope, more powerful than either, dreffes out the diftant profpect in fancied beauty, fome happinefs in long perfpective ftill beckons me to purfue, and, like a lofing gamefter, every new difappointment increases my ardour to continue the game.

Whence, my friend, this increased love of life, which grows upon us with our years; whence comes it, that we thus make greater efforts to preferve our existence, at a period when it becomes fcarcely worth the keeping? Is it that Nature, attentive to the prefervation of mankind, increafes our wishes to live, while the leffens our enjoyments; and, as the

robs the fenfes of every pleafure, equips imagination in the fpoil? Life would be infupportable to an old man, who loaded with infirmities, feared death no more than when in the vigour of manhood; the numberlefs calamities of decaying nature, and the confcioufnefs of furviving every pleafure would at once induce him with his own hand to terminate the fcene of mifery; but happily the contempt of death forfakes him at a time when it could be only prejudicial; and life acquires an imaginary value, in proportion as its real value is no more.

Our attachment to every object around us increafes, in general, from the length of our acquaintance with it. I would not chufe, fays a French philofopher, to fee on old poft pulled up, with which I had been long acquainted. A mind long habituated to a certain fet of objects, infenfibly becomes fond of feeing them; vifits them from habit, and parts from them with reluctance: hence proceeds the avarice of the old in every kind of poffeffion. They love the world and all that it produces; they love life and all its advantages; not because it gives them pleafure, but because they have known it long.

Chinvang, the Chafte, afcending the throne of China, commanded that all who were unjustly detained in prison, during the preceding reigns, fhould be fet free. Among the number who came to thank their deliverer on this occafion, there appeared a majeftic old man, who, falling at the emperor's feet, addreffed him as follows: Great father of China, "behold a wretch, now eighty-five years old, who "was fhut up in a dungeon, at the age of twentyI was imprifoned, though a ftranger to crime, or without being even confronted by my "accufers. I have now lived in folitude and in "darknefs for more than fifty years, and am grown "familiar

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