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THE RAMBLER.

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necessary to gaiety; and that those who desire to partake of the pleasure of wit must contribute to its production, since the mind stagnates without external ventilation, and that effervescence of the fancy, which flashes into transport, can be raised only by the infusion of dissimilar ideas.

Numb. 102. Saturday, March 9, 1751.

Ipsa quoque assiduo labuntur tempora motu,
Non secus ac flumen: neque enim consistere flumen,
Nec levis hora potest: sed ut unda impellitur unda,
Urgeturque prior veniente, urgetque priorem,
Tempora sic fugiunt pariter, pariterque sequuntur.

Ovid.

  With constant motion as the moments glide.
 Behold in running life the rolling tide!
 For none can stem by art, or stop by pow'r,
 The flowing ocean, or the fleeting hour:
 But wave by wave pursued arrives on shore,
 And each impell'd behind impels before:
 So time on time revolving we descry;
 So minutes follow, and so minutes fly.

Elphinston.

"LI F E" says Seneca, "is a voyage, in the progress of which we are perpetually changing our scenes: we first leave childhood behind us, then youth, then the years of ripened manhood, then the better and more pleasing part of old age." The perusal of this passage having incited in me a train of reflections on the state of man, the incessant fluctuation of his wishes, the gradual change of his disposition to all external objects, and the thoughtlessness with which he floats along the stream of time, I sunk into a slumber amidst my meditations, and on a sudden

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