ll permit
The innocent sweet pleasures of the stage;
And shall I venture to exchange my lot?
Then we have children folded in our arms
To bring them to the play-house; heavens! what troubles!
Then we lie in, are big, or sick, or vexed:
These make us bid farewell to comedy!

At length these imagined sons-in-law appear; Filidan declares that in
these three girls he cannot find the mistress he adores. Amidor
confesses he only asked for one of his daughters out of pure gallantry,
and that he is only a lover--in verse! When Phalante is questioned after
the great fortunes he hinted at, the father discovers that he has not a
stiver, and out of credit to borrow: while Artabaze declares that he
only allowed Alcidon, out of mere benevolence, to flatter himself for a
moment with the hope of an honour that even Jupiter would not dare to
pretend to. The four lovers disperse and leave the old gentleman more
embarrassed than ever, and his daughters perfectly enchanted to enjoy
their whimsical reveries, and die old maids--all alike "Visionaries!"

SOLITUDE.

We possess, among our own native treasures, two treatises on this
subject, composed with no ordinary talent, and not their least value
consists in one being an apology for solitude, while the other combats
that prevailing passion of the studious. Zimmerman's popular work is
overloaded with commonplace; the garrulity of eloquence. The two
treatises now noticed may be compared to the highly-finished gems, whose
figure may be more finely designed, and whose strokes may be more
delicate in the smaller space they occupy than the ponderous block of
marble hewed out by the German chiseller.

Sir George Mackenzie, a polite writer, and a most eloquent pleader,
published, in 1665, a moral essay, preferring Solitude to public
employment. The eloquence of his style was well suited to the dignity of
his subject; the advocates for solitude have always prevailed over those
for active life, because there is something sublime in those feelings
which would retire from the circle of indolent triflers, or depraved
geniuses. The tract of Mackenzie was ingeniously answered by the elegant
taste of John Evelyn in 1667. Mackenzie, though he wrote in favour of
solitude, passed a very active life, first as a pleader, and afterwards
as a judge; that he was an eloquent writer, and an eloquent critic, we
have the authority of Dryden, who says, that till he was acquainted with