with needy relations, no intelligence with spies placed upon
each other. We considered marriage as the most solemn league of
perpetual friendship, a state from which artifice and concealment are to
be banished for ever, and in which every act of dissimulation is a
breach of faith.

The impetuous vivacity of youth, and that ardour of desire, which the
first sight of pleasure naturally produces, have long ceased to hurry us
into irregularity and vehemence; and experience has shewn us that few
gratifications are too valuable to be sacrificed to complaisance.

We have thought it convenient to rest from the fatigue of pleasure, and
now only continue that course of life into which we had before entered,
confirmed in our choice by mutual approbation, supported in our
resolution by mutual encouragement, and assisted in our efforts by
mutual exhortation.

Such, Mr. Rambler, is our prospect of life, a prospect which, as it is
beheld with more attention, seems to open more extensive happiness, and
spreads, by degrees, into the boundless regions of eternity. But if all
our prudence has been vain, and we are doomed to give one instance more
of the uncertainty of human discernment, we shall comfort ourselves
amidst our disappointments, that we were not betrayed but by such
delusions as caution could not escape, since we sought happiness only in
the arms of virtue.

We are, Sir,
Your humble Servants,
HYMENAEUS.
TRANQUILLA.

No. 168. SATURDAY, OCTOBER 26, 1751.

_--Decipit
Frons prima multos: rara mens intelligit,
Quod interiore condidit cura angulo_. PHAEDRUS, Lib. iv. Fab. i. 5.

The tinsel glitter, and the specious mien,
Delude the most; few pry behind the scene.

It has been observed by Boileau, that "a mean or common thought
expressed in pompous diction, generally pleases more than a new or noble
sentiment delivered in low and vulgar language; because the number is
greater of those whom custom has enabled to judge of words, than whom
study has qualified to examine things." This solution might satisfy, if
such only were offended with meanness of expression as are unable to
distinguish propriety of thought, and to separate propositions or images
from the vehicles by which they are conveyed to the understanding. But
this kind of disgust is by no means confined to the ignorant or
superficial; it operates uniformly and universally upon readers of all
classes; every man, however profound or abstracted, perce