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Parva leves capiunt animos. -
OVID, Ars Am., i. 159.

Light minds are pleased with trifles.

When I was in France, I used to gaze with great astonishment at the
splendid equipages, and party-coloured habits of that fantastic
nation.  I was one day in particular contemplating a lady that sat
in a coach adorned with gilded Cupids, and finely painted with the
Loves of Venus and Adonis.  The coach was drawn by six milk-white
horses, and loaden behind with the same number of powdered footmen.
Just before the lady were a couple of beautiful pages, that were
stuck among the harness, and, by their gay dresses and smiling
features, looked like the elder brothers of the little boys that
were carved and painted in every corner of the coach.

The lady was the unfortunate Cleanthe, who afterwards gave an
occasion to a pretty melancholy novel.  She had for several years
received the addresses of a gentleman, whom, after a long and
intimate acquaintance, she forsook upon the account of this shining
equipage, which had been offered to her by one of great riches but a
crazy constitution.  The circumstances in which I saw her were, it
seems, the disguises only of a broken heart, and a kind of pageantry
to cover distress, for in two months after, she was carried to her
grave with the same pomp and magnificence, being sent thither partly
by the loss of one lover and partly by the possession of another.

I have often reflected with myself on this unaccountable humour in
womankind, of being smitten with everything that is showy and
superficial; and on the numberless evils that befall the sex from
this light fantastical disposition.  I myself remember a young lady
that was very warmly solicited by a couple of importunate rivals,
who, for several months together, did all they could to recommend
themselves, by complacency of behaviour and agreeableness of
conversation.  At length, when the competition was doubtful, and the
lady undetermined in her choice, one of the young lovers very
luckily bethought himself of adding a supernumerary lace to his
liveries, which had so good an effect that he married her the very
week after.

The usual conversation of ordinary women very much cherishes this
natural weakness of being taken with outside and appearance.  Talk
of a new-married couple, and you immediately hear whether they keep
their coach and six, or eat in plate.  Mention the name of an absent
lady, and it is ten to one but you learn something of her gown and
petticoat.  A ball is a great help to discourse, and a birthday
furnishes conversation for a twelvemonth after.  A furbelow of
precious stones, a hat buttoned with a diamond, a brocade waistcoat
or petticoat, are standing topics.  In short, they consider only the
drapery of the species, and never cast away a thought on those
ornaments of the mind that make persons illustrious in themselves
and useful to others.  When women are thus perpetually dazzling one
another’s imaginations, and filling their heads with nothing but
colours, it is no wonder that they are more attentive to the
superficial parts of life than the solid and substantial blessings
of it.  A girl who has been trained up in this kind of conversation
is in danger of every embroidered coat that comes in her way.  A
pair of fringed gloves may be her ruin.  In a word, lace and
ribands, silver and gold galloons, with the like glittering gewgaws,
are so many lures to women of weak minds or low educations, and,
when artificially displayed, are able to fetch down the most airy
coquette from the wildest of her flights and rambles.

True happiness is of a retired nature, and an enemy to pomp and
noise; it arises, in the first place, from the enjoyment of one’s
self, and, in the next, from the friendship and conversation of a
few select companions; it loves shade and solitude, and naturally
haunts groves and fountains, fields and meadows; in short, it feels
everything it wants within itself, and receives no addition from
multitudes of witnesses and spectators.  On the contrary, false
happiness loves to be in a crowd, and to draw the eyes of the world
upon her.  She does not receive any satisfaction from the applauses
which she gives herself, but from the admiration she raises in
others.  She flourishes in courts and palaces, theatres and
assemblies, and has no existence but when she is looked upon.

Aurelia, though a woman of great quality, delights in the privacy of
a country life, and passes away a great part of her time in her own
walks and gardens.  Her husband, who is her bosom friend and
companion in her solitudes, has been in love with her ever since he
knew her.  They both abound with good sense, consummate virtue, and
a mutual esteem; and are a perpetual entertainment to one another.
Their family is under so regular an economy, in its hours of
devotion and repast, employment and diversion, that it looks like a
little commonwealth within itself.  They often go into company, that
they may return with the greater delight to one another; and
sometimes live in town, not to enjoy it so properly as to grow weary
of it, that they may renew in themselves the relish of a country
life.  By this means they are happy in each other, beloved by their
children, adored by their servants, and are become the envy, or
rather the delight, of all that know them.

How different to this is the life of Fulvia!  She considers her
husband as her steward, and looks upon discretion and good
housewifery as little domestic virtues unbecoming a woman of
quality.  She thinks life lost in her own family, and fancies
herself out of the world when she is not in the ring, the playhouse,
or the drawing-room.  She lives in a perpetual motion of body and
restlessness of thought, and is never easy in any one place when she
thinks there is more company in another.  The missing of an opera
the first night would be more afflicting to her than the death of a
child.  She pities all the valuable part of her own sex, and calls
every woman of a prudent, modest, retired life, a poor-spirited,
unpolished creature.  What a mortification would it be to Fulvia, if
she knew that her setting herself to view is but exposing herself,
and that she grows contemptible by being conspicuous!

I cannot conclude my paper without observing that Virgil has very
finely touched upon this female passion for dress and show, in the
character of Camilla, who, though she seems to have shaken off all
the other weaknesses of her sex, is still described as a woman in
this particular.  The poet tells us, that after having made a great
slaughter of the enemy, she unfortunately cast her eye on a Trojan,
who wore an embroidered tunic, a beautiful coat of mail, with a
mantle of the finest purple.  “A golden bow,” says he, “hung upon
his shoulder; his garment was buckled with a golden clasp, and his
head covered with a helmet of the same shining metal.”  The Amazon
immediately singled out this well-dressed warrior, being seized with
a woman’s longing for the pretty trappings that he was adorned with:

- Totumque incauta per agmen,
Faemineo praedae et spoliorum ardebat amore.
AEn., xi. 781.

- So greedy was she bent
On golden spoils, and on her prey intent.

Somnia, terrores magicos, miracula, sagas,
Nocturnos lemures, portentaque Thessala rides?
HOR., Ep. ii. 2, 208.

Visions and magic spells, can you despise,
And laugh at witches, ghosts, and prodigies?

Going yesterday to dine with an old acquaintance, I had the
misfortune to find his whole family very much dejected.  Upon asking
him the occasion of it, he told me that his wife had dreamt a very
strange dream the night before, which they were afraid portended
some misfortune to themselves or to their children.  At her coming
into the room, I observed a settled melancholy in her countenance,
which I should have been troubled for, had I not heard from whence
it proceeded.  We were no sooner sat down, but, after having looked
upon me a little while, “My dear,” says she, turning to her husband,
“you may now see the stranger that was in the candle last night.”
Soon after this, as they began to talk of family affairs, a little
boy at the lower end of the table told her that he was to go into
join-hand on Thursday.  “Thursday!” says she.  “No, child; if it
please God, you shall not begin upon Childermas-day; tell your
writing-master that Friday will be soon enough.”  I was reflecting
with myself on the oddness of her fancy, and wondering that anybody
would establish it as a rule, to lose a day in every week.  In the
midst of these my musings, she desired me to reach her a little salt
upon the point of my knife, which I did in such a trepidation and
hurry of obedience that I let it drop by the way; at which she
immediately startled, and said it fell towards her.  Upon this I
looked very blank; and observing the concern of the whole table,
began to consider myself, with some confusion, as a person that had
brought a disaster upon the family.  The lady, however, recovering
herself after a little space, said to her husband with a sigh, “My
dear, misfortunes never come single.”  My friend, I found, acted but
an under part at his table; and, being a man of more good-nature
than understanding, thinks himself obliged to fall in with all the
passions and humours of his yoke-fellow.  “Do not you remember,
child,” says she, “that the pigeon-house fell the very afternoon
that our careless wench spilt the salt upon the table?”–”Yes,” says
he, “my dear; and the next post brought us an account of the battle
of Almanza.”  The reader may guess at the figure I made, after
having done all this mischief.  I despatched my dinner as soon as I
could, with my usual taciturnity; when, to my utter confusion, the
lady seeing me quitting my knife and fork, and laying them across
one another upon my plate, desired me that I would humour her so far
as to take them out of that figure and place them side by side.
What the absurdity was which I had committed I did not know, but I
suppose there was some traditionary superstition in it; and
therefore, in obedience to the lady of the house, I disposed of my
knife and fork in two parallel lines, which is the figure I shall
always lay them in for the future, though I do not know any reason
for it.

It is not difficult for a man to see that a person has conceived an
aversion to him.  For my own part, I quickly found, by the lady’s
looks, that she regarded me as a very odd kind of fellow, with an
unfortunate aspect:  for which reason I took my leave immediately
after dinner, and withdrew to my own lodgings.  Upon my return home,
I fell into a profound contemplation on the evils that attend these
superstitious follies of mankind; how they subject us to imaginary
afflictions, and additional sorrows, that do not properly come
within our lot.  As if the natural calamities of life were not
sufficient for it, we turn the most indifferent circumstances into
misfortunes, and suffer as much from trifling accidents as from real
evils.  I have known the shooting of a star spoil a night’s rest;
and have seen a man in love grow pale, and lose his appetite, upon
the plucking of a merry-thought.  A screech-owl at midnight has
alarmed a family more than a band of robbers; nay, the voice of a
cricket hath struck more terror than the roaring of a lion.  There
is nothing so inconsiderable which may not appear dreadful to an
imagination that is filled with omens and prognostics:  a rusty nail
or a crooked pin shoot up into prodigies.

I remember I was once in a mixed assembly that was full of noise and
mirth, when on a sudden an old woman unluckily observed there were
thirteen of us in company.  This remark struck a panic terror into
several who were present, insomuch that one or two of the ladies
were going to leave the room; but a friend of mine taking notice
that one of our female companions was big with child, affirmed there
were fourteen in the room, and that, instead of portending one of
the company should die, it plainly foretold one of them should be
born.  Had not my friend found this expedient to break the omen, I
question not but half the women in the company would have fallen
sick that very night.

An old maid that is troubled with the vapours produces infinite
disturbances of this kind among her friends and neighbours.  I know
a maiden aunt of a great family, who is one of these antiquated
Sibyls, that forebodes and prophesies from one end of the year to
the other.  She is always seeing apparitions and hearing death-
watches; and was the other day almost frighted out of her wits by
the great house-dog that howled in the stable, at a time when she
lay ill of the toothache.  Such an extravagant cast of mind engages
multitudes of people not only in impertinent terrors, but in
supernumerary duties of life, and arises from that fear and
ignorance which are natural to the soul of man.  The horror with
which we entertain the thoughts of death, or indeed of any future
evil, and the uncertainty of its approach, fill a melancholy mind
with innumerable apprehensions and suspicions, and consequently
dispose it to the observation of such groundless prodigies and
predictions.  For as it is the chief concern of wise men to retrench
the evils of life by the reasonings of philosophy, it is the
employment of fools to multiply them by the sentiments of
superstition.

For my own part, I should be very much troubled were I endowed with
this divining quality, though it should inform me truly of
everything that can befall me.  I would not anticipate the relish of
any happiness, nor feel the weight of any misery, before it actually
arrives.

I know but one way of fortifying my soul against these gloomy
presages and terrors of mind; and that is, by securing to myself the
friendship and protection of that Being who disposes of events and
governs futurity.  He sees, at one view, the whole thread of my
existence, not only that part of it which I have already passed
through, but that which runs forward into all the depths of
eternity.  When I lay me down to sleep, I recommend myself to His
care; when I awake, I give myself up to His direction.  Amidst all
the evils that threaten me, I will look up to Him for help, and
question not but He will either avert them, or turn them to my
advantage.  Though I know neither the time nor the manner of the
death I am to die, I am not at all solicitous about it; because I am
sure that he knows them both, and that He will not fail to comfort
and support me under them.