The New-York Weekly Magazine, or Miscellaneous Repository Part 143

_UTILE DULCI._

THE NEW-YORK WEEKLY MAGAZINE; or, Miscellaneous Repository.

+Vol. II.+] +Wednesday, March 22, 1797.+ [+No. 90.+

ESSAY ON MARRIAGE.

There is nothing which renders a woman more despicable than her thinking it essential to happiness to be married. Besides the gross indelicacy of the sentiment, it is a false one, as thousands of women have experienced.

But a married state, if entered into from proper motives of esteem and affection, is the happiest, makes women the most respectable in the eyes of the world, and the most useful members of society. Care should be taken not to relinquish the ease, and independence of a single life, to become the slave of a fool, or a tyrant's caprice.

Love is very seldom produced at first sight; at least, in that case, it must have a very unjustifiable foundation. True love is founded on esteem, in a correspondence of tastes and sentiments, and steals on the heart imperceptibly. Therefore, before the affections come to be in the least engaged to any man, women should examine their tempers, their tastes, and their hearts very severely; and settle in their own minds, what are the requisites to their happiness in a married state; and, as it is almost impossible that they should get every thing they wish, they should come to a steady determination what they are to consider as essential, and what may be sacrificed.

Should they have hearts disposed by nature for love and friendship, and possess those feelings which enable them to enter into all the refinements and delicacies of these attachments, matters should be well considered before they give them any indulgence.

Should they have the misfortune to have such tempers, and such sentiments deeply rooted in them; should they have spirit and resolution to resist the solicitations of vanity, the persecution of friends; and can they support the prospect of the many inconveniences attending the state of an old maid, then they may indulge themselves in that kind of sentimental reading and conversation, which is most correspondent to their feelings.

But if it is found on a strict self-examination, that marriage is absolutely essential to their happiness, the secret should be kept inviolable in their own bosoms; but they should shun, as they would do the most fatal poison, all that species of reading and conversation, which warms the imagination, which engages and softens the heart, and raises the taste above the level of common life. If they do otherwise, let them consider the terrible conflict of pa.s.sions this may afterwards raise in their b.r.e.a.s.t.s.

If this refinement once takes deep root in their minds, and they do not mean to obey its dictates, but marry from vulgar and mercenary views, they may never be able to eradicate it entirely, and then it will embitter all their married days. Instead of meeting with sense,--tenderness--delicacy--a lover--a friend--an equal companion in a husband, they may be tried with insipidity and dulness;--shocked with indelicacy;--and mortified by indifference.

To avoid these complicated evils, joined to others which may arise from the opinion of the infelicity thence arising; women who are determined, at all events to marry, should have all their reading and amus.e.m.e.nts of such a kind, as do not affect the heart nor the imagination, except in the way of wit and humour.

Whatever are a woman's views in marrying, she should take every possible precaution to prevent being disappointed. If fortune, and the pleasure it brings be her aims, the princ.i.p.al security she can have for this will depend on her marrying a good-natured, generous man; who despises money, and who will let her live where she can best enjoy that pleasure, that pomp, and parade of life for which she married him.

In order to ensure felicity, it is difficult to point out in the married state the most effectual method, nor can we advise whom a woman should marry, but we may with great confidence advise whom she should not marry.

A companion that may entail any hereditary disease on posterity, particularly madness, should be avoided. Such risque is the height of imprudence, and highly criminal.

A woman should not marry a fool; he is the most intractable of all animals; he is led by his pa.s.sions and caprices, and is incapable of hearing the voice of reason. Besides it may probably too hurt a woman's vanity to have a husband, for whom she has reason to blush and tremble every time he opens his lips in company.

But she worst circ.u.mstance that attends a fool, is his constant jealousy of his wife's being thought to govern him. This renders it impossible to lead him; and he is continually doing absurd and disagreeable things, for no other reason but to shew he dare do them.

A rake is always a suspicious husband, because he has only known the most worthless of the s.e.x.

Women, who have a sense of religion, should not think of husbands who have none. If husbands have tolerable understandings, though not actuated by religious principles themselves, they will be glad that their wives have religion, for their own sakes, and for the sake of their families.

If they are weak men, they will be continually shocking and teasing them about their principles.

A sudden sally of pa.s.sion should never be given way to, and dignified with the name of love.---Genuine love is not founded on caprice; it is founded in nature, or honourable views;--on virtue--on similarity of tastes, and sympathy of soul.

In point of fortune, which is necessary to the happiness of both, a competency is requisite. But what that competency may be, can only be determined by their own tastes. If they have enough between them, as will satisfy all demands, it is sufficient.

Marriage will at once dispel the enchantment raised by external beauty; but the virtues and graces that first warmed the heart, that reserve, and delicacy which always left the lover something further to wish, and often made him doubtful of his mistress's sensibility and attachment, may and ought ever to remain.

The tumult of pa.s.sion will naturally subside; but it will be succeeded by an endearment that affects the heart in a more equal, more sensible, and more tender manner.

THE VICTIM OF MAGICAL DELUSION; _OR, INTERESTING MEMOIRS OF MIGUEL, DUKE DE CA*I*A._ Unfolding Many Curious Unknown Historical Facts.

_Translated from the German of Tsc.h.i.n.k._

(Continued from page 291.)

The fifth of August, in the night of which the plot was to be carried into execution, the King sent orders to all the troops that were quartered in the neighbourhood of Lis*on, to march instantly to the capital under the pretext of a review. On the morning of the same day, he delivered himself sealed instructions to his most faithful officers, ordering them not to be opened before noon, when they were to execute the contents with the greatest dispatch.

These precautions being taken, the king ordered the Great Council of State to a.s.semble at one o'clock. The Bishop of Br*ga and the Marquis of Villa Re*l were arrested as soon as they entered the council chamber, and a captain of the life guard seized the Duke of Ca*ina at the same time in the public street. This was the time when all the officers opened their sealed orders, which contained the names of those whom they were to arrest, and of the prison to which they were to conduct them.

Every one of the conspirators was confined in a different prison, and some were arrested by more than one officer. All those that had been ordered to execute the king's command, arrived at the same time at the places of their destination, and performed their mission almost in one moment. The number of the prisoners amounted to forty-seven.

A committee of Grandees was now appointed to try the conspirators. The letters through which the plot had been discovered were not produced of the beginning of the trial, in order not to betray the Marquis of Aja*onti. Baeza being threatened to be put to the rack confessed first, and the rest confirmed his confession after having been put to the torture. The Marquis of Villa Re*l and the Duke of Ca*ina, and the two prelates confessed voluntarily.

Alumbrado endured the first degree of the torture without confessing any thing; however, at the second he began to be more tractable.

Imagining that my readers will be desirous to learn the particulars of the life of this extraordinary man, I will give a short sketch of what I could learn.

He was born at *a*. If the virtues of parents were as inheritable as their rank and fortune, he would not have been a disgrace to a family as n.o.ble as it was respectable. Already in his juvenile age he exhibited marks of a penetrating understanding, of an extraordinary docility and acuteness, but nature had thrown away her gifts upon a villain. The great rigour with which his father watched his conduct, had no other effect but that of making him a hypocrite, for he would commit any crime if he could do it un.o.bserved, although he was generally believed to be a pattern of every virtue. In his ninth year he killed a girl by a stone thrown from a sling, and was capable not only of fathering the crime upon one of his play-fellows, but, at the same time of rendering his accusation more plausible by his solemn protestations, and the tears he shed over the corpse. Progress of time changed his conduct not in the least, he rather improved in wickedness, and in the art of concealing his crimes.

Inheriting from his father an immense fortune, he determined to indemnify himself for his former constraint, by the most licentious manner of life, and abandoned himself to all sorts of debauchery, with a fury that ruined both his health and his fortune. The grief at this conduct broke the heart of his mother, at which he was not very sorry, expecting to improve his fortune by a new inheritance. He was, however, disappointed, for his mother, thinking it sinful to support him in his debaucheries, left her wealth to a cloister. Glowing with thirst for revenge, he set it on fire and ran away.

The vengeance of Heaven pursued him, and want soon completed the measure of his wretchedness. Whithersoever he went he was haunted by the unrelenting punishments of the Omnipresent Judge on high, and the greatest distress. At length he obtained leave of a captain, who was just going to sea, to embark on board of his vessel.

Thus he did, indeed, get out of the reach of public justice, but not of the vengeance of Heaven. The ship was captured by Algerine pirates, and he was dragged to captivity.

He abjured his religion and turned Mahometan, in order to ease the yoke of slavery that lay heavy on his shoulders. His great capacities enabled him soon to improve his situation, and during some successful cruizes against his own countrymen, he acquired a considerable fortune, which he increased rapidly through his speculations on land and sea, which he carried on for more than twenty years with astonishing success.

Meanwhile he took every opportunity of injuring the Christians, and Portugal lost through his infernal intrigues her most valuable possessions in Africa.

Yet his good fortune became at last the source of new misfortunes, puffing him up with pride in such a manner, that he aspired to a dignity in the state which a renegado rarely or never obtains. The Dey of Algiers died, and he spared neither expences nor artifices to be const.i.tuted his successor; his ambitious views were however frustrated.

His pride was wounded, and he endeavoured to gain his aim by additional bribes, but in vain! Enraged with new disappointment, he conspired against the new Dey; a Dervise, whom he wanted to implicate in his plot, betrayed him, and he had scarcely time to save himself by a sudden flight, leaving all his ill-gotten wealth behind.

On his return to Europe he disguised himself in the garb of a pilgrim, and affected to be a peregrinating penitentiary. Wherever he pa.s.sed through he pretended to have visited the holy sepulchre, where the infidels had detained him a long while, in captivity, from which he had been delivered, at length, in a miraculous manner. He distributed small pieces of wood, stone and earth, as valuable relics, for which the poor superst.i.tious mult.i.tude paid him great sums of money.

Thus he roamed from place to place, and met every where with credulous people, with hospitality and alms. At Aran*uez he got acquainted with the Bishop of P--*, who, at that time, exercised the office of a papal legate at the court of Spa*n. His pharisaical hypocrisy enabled him to ingratiate himself with that worthy prelate, who was so much deceived by him, that he received him into his service.

Alumbrado dispatched the private secretary of his deluded master by a dose of poison, and succeeded him in his place. The unsuspecting prelate was so much pleased with Alumbrado's abilities and services, that he recommended him to Oliva*ez when he returned to Rome.

The character of the Prime Minister of Spa*n differed materially from that of the Bishop; Alumbrado, however, knew how to accommodate himself to every one. He soon prejudiced his new patron so much in his favour, that he entrusted him with the execution of a political charge of the greatest importance, and Alumbrado acquitted himself so well of his commission, that the Minister promised to reward his services on the first opportunity. Alumbrado improved every opportunity of securing the favour of his master, and endeavoured anxiously to explore his ruling pa.s.sions.

The keen-sighted dissembler soon found out that the Minister was a great admirer of the occult sciences, and instantly hinted that he had acquired a great knowledge of those sciences on his travels. From that moment the Minister was rather in Alumbrado's service than the latter in his.