I do not know when I have beeer pleased than at being invited last week to be present at the wedding of a friends daughter. I like to make o these ceremonies, which to us old people give back our youth in a manner, aore ayest season, in the remembrance of our own success, or the regrets, scarcely less tender, of our own youthful disappois, in this point of a settlement. On these occasions I am sure to be in good-humor for a week or two after, and enjoy a reflected honey-moon. Being without a family, I am flattered with these temporary adoptions into a friends family. I feel a sort of cousinhood, or uncleship, for the season. I am inducted into degrees of affinity, and, in the participated socialities of the little unity, I lay down for a brief while my solitary bachelorship. I carry this humour so far, that I take it unkindly to be left out, even when a funeral is going on in the house of a dear friend. But to my subject. ---
The union itself had been loled, but its celebration had been hitherto deferred, to an almost unreasoate of suspense in the lovers, by some invincible prejudices which the brides father had unhappily tracted upon the subject of the too early marriages of females. He has beeuring any time these five years -- for to that length the courtship has been protracted -- upon the propriety of putting off the solemnity, till the lady should have pleted her five and tweh year. We all began to be afraid that a suit, which as yet had abated of none of its ardours, might at last be lingered on, till passion had time to cool, and love go out in the experiment. But a little wheedling on the part of his wife, who was by no means a party to these overstrained notions, joio some serious expostulations on that of his friends, who, from the growing infirmities of the old gentleman, could not promise ourselves many years enjoyment of his pany, and were anxious t matters to a clusion during his life-time, at length prevailed, and on Monday last the daughter of my old friend, Admiral ---, having attaihe womanly age of een was ducted to the church by her pleasant cousin J---, who told some few years older.
Before the youthful part of my female readers express their indignation at the abominable loss of time occasioo the lovers by the preposterous notions of my old friend, they will do well to sider the reluce which a fond parent naturally feels at parting with his child. To this unwillingness, I believe, in most cases may be traced the difference of opinion on this poiween child and parent, whatever pretences of i or prudence may be held out to cover it. The hard-heartedness of fathers is a fiheme for romance writers, a sure and moving topic, but is there not something unteo say no more of it, in the hurry which a beloved child is sometimes in to tear herself from the parental stock, and it herself te graftings? The case is heightened where the lady, as in the present instance, happens to be an only child. I do not uand these matters experimentally, but I make a shrewd guess at the wounded pride of a parent upon these occasions. It is no new observation, I believe, that a lover in most cases has no rival so much to be feared as the father. Certainly there is a jealousy in unparallel subjects, which is little less heart-rending than the passion which we more strictly christen by that name. Mothers scruples are more easily got over, for this reason, I suppose, that the prote transferred to a husband is less a derogation and