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HE Dean and a party of his friends, having agreed to walk out of town, to a certain nobleman's, where they were all to fleep, the Dean, who was the greatest walker of the set, foon distanced the rest, with a professed design of securing the best bed. On this, one of the others was dispatched on horse-back by a different road to punish the Dean for his selfishness, who accordingly reached the place of destination long before Swift, and posted a servant of the nobleman's

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at some distance from the house to inform the humorist that the small-pox was in the family. The Dean, who never had the distemper, alarmed at the news, took up his refidence in a little room at the end of a garden or field, where he fupped alone and passed several melancholy hours, while his friends at the mansion were laughing very heartily at his fituation; at length, taking pity of him, they revealed the jest, and received a promife that on no future occafion the best bed should deprive them of his company.

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ALMET THE DERVISE..

LMET, the dervise, who watched the facred lamp in the fepulchre of the prophet, as he one day rose up from the devotions of the morning, which he had performed at the gate of the temple, with his body turned towards the east, and his forehead on the earth, faw before him a man in splendid apparel attended by a long retinue, who gazed stedfastly at him with a look of mournful complacence, and feemed defirous to speak, but unwilling to offend.

The

The dervise, after a short filence, advanced, and faluted him with the usual dignity which independence confers upon humility, requested that he would reveal his purpose.

"Almet," said the stranger " thou feeft before thee a man whom the hand of profperity has overwhelmed with wretchedness. Whatever I once defired as the means of happiness, I now possess, but I am not yet happy, and therefore I despair. I regret the lapse of time, because it glides away without enjoyments; and as I expect nothing in the future but the vanities of the past, I do not wish that the future should arrive. Yet I tremble lest it should be cut off; and my heart finks when I anticipate the moment in which eternity shall close over the vacuity of my life, like the fea upon the path of a ship, and leave no traces of my existence more durable than the furrow which remains after the waves have united. If in the treasures of thy wisdom, there is any precept to obtain felicity, vouchsafe it to me: for this purpose I am come: a purpose which yet I feared to reveal, lest, like all the former, it should be disappointed." Almet liftened with looks of astonishment and pity, to this complaint of a being in whom reason was known to be a pledge of morality; but the ferenity of his counte

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nance foon returned; and, stretching out his hand to heaven, "Stranger," said he, "the knowledge which I have received from the prophet I will communicate to thee.

"As I was fitting one evening at the porch of the temple, penfive and alone, mine eye wandered among the multitude that was scattered before me; and while I remarked the weariness and folitude which was visible in every countenance, I was suddenly struck with a sense of their condition. "Wretched mortals," said I, " to what purpose are ye busy? If to produce happiness, by whom is it enjoyed? Do the linens of Egypt, and the filks of Persia, bestow felicity on those who wear them, equal to the wretchedness of yonder slaves whom I see leading the camels that bring them? Is the fineness of the texture, or the splendour of the tints, regarded with delight by those to whom custom has rendered them familiar? Or can the power of habit render others insensible of pain, who live only to traverse the defert: a scene of dreadful uniformity, where a barren level is bounded only by the horizon; where no change of prospect, or variety of images, relieve the traveller from a sense of toil and danger, of whirlwinds, which in a moment may bury him in the sand, and of thirst, which the wealthy have given half