ence night is brought on, and which do ray out | been there: he never hired a house in his life, darkness and obscurity upon the earth as the without leaving all about it the seeds of wealth, sun does light.' I consider writers in the same view this sage astrologer does the heavenly bodies. Some of them are stars that scatter light as others do darkness. I could mention several authors who are tenebrificous stars of the first magnitude, and point out a knot of gentlemen, who have been dull in concert, and may be looked upon as a dark constellation. The nation has been a great while benighted with several of these antiluminaries. I suffered them to ray out their darkness as long as I was able to endure it, till at length I came to a resolution of rising upon them, and hope in a little time to drive them quite out of the British hemisphere. No. 583.] Friday, August 20, 1714. Ipse thymum pinosque ferens de montibus altis, With his own hand, the guardian of the bees Dryden. and bestowing legacies on the posterity of the owner. Had all the gentlemen of England made the same improvements upon their estates, our whole country would have been at this time as one great garden. Nor ought such an employment to be looked upon as too inglorious for men of the highest rank. There have been heroes in this art, as well as in others. We are told in particular of Cyrus the Great, that he planted all the Lesser Asia. There is indeed something truly magnificent in this kind of amusement: it gives a nobler air to several parts of nature; it fills the earth with a variety of beautiful scenes, and has something in it like creation. For this reason the pleasure of one who plants is something like that of a poet, who, as Aristotle observes, is more delighted with his productions than any other writer or artist whatsover. Plantations have one advantage in them which is not to be found in most other works, as they give a pleasure of a more lasting date, and continually improve in the eye of the planter. When you have finished a building, or any other undertaking of the like nature, it immediately decays upon your hands: you see it brought to the utmost point of perfection, and from that time hastening to its ruin. On the contrary, when you have finishEVERY station of life has duties which are ed your plantations, they are still arriving at proper to it. Those who are determined by greater degrees of perfection as long as you choice to any particular kind of business, are live, and appear more delightful in every sucindeed more happy than those who are deter-ceeding year than they did in the foregoing. mined by necessity; but both are under an But I do not only recommend this art to men equal obligation of fixing on employments, of estates as a pleasing amusement, but as it is which may be either useful to themselves, or a kind of virtuous employment, and may therebeneficial to others: no one of the sons of fore be inculcated by moral motives; particuAdam ought to think himself exempt from that larly from the love which we ought to have labour and industry which were denounced to for our country and the regard which we ought our first parent, and in him to all his posteri- to bear to our posterity. As for the first I ty. Those to whom birth or fortune may need only mention what is frequently observed seem to make such an application unnecessary, by others, that the increase of forest trees does ought to find out some calling or profession by no means bear a proportion to the destrucfor themselves, that they may not lie as a bur-tion of them, insomuch that in a few ages the den on the species, and be the only useless nation may be at a loss to supply itself with parts of the creation. timber sufficient for the fleets of England. I Many of our country gentlemen in their know when a man talks of posterity in mattets busy hours apply themselves wholly to the of this nature, he is looked upon with an eye of chase, or to some other diversion which they ridicule by the cunning and selfish part of manfind in the fields and woods. This gave oc-kind. Most people are of the humour of an old casion to one of our most eminent English fellow of a college, who, when he was pressed writers to represent every one of them as ly-by the society to come into something that ing under a kind of curse pronounced to might redound to the good of their successors, them in the words of Goliah, I will give grew very peevish: We are always doing,' thee to the fowls of the air and to the beast says he, 'something for posterity, but I would fain see posterity do something for us.' of the field.' Though exercises of this kind, when indulg- But I think men are inexcusable, who fail in ed with moderation, may have a good influ-a duty of this nature, since it is so easily disence both on the mind and body, the country charged. When a man considers that the putaffords many other amusements of a more ting a few twigs into the ground is doing good noble kind. to one who will make his appearance in the Among these, I know none more delightful world about fifty years hence, or that he is perin itself, and beneficial to the public, than haps making one of his own descendants easy that of planting. I could mention a nobleman or rich, by so inconsiderable an expense, if he whose fortune has placed him in several parts finds himself averse to it, he must conclude that of England, and who has always left these he has a poor and base heart, void of all genervisible marks behind him, which show he has ous principles and love to mankind. There is one consideration which may very | She was exceedingly beautiful; and, when she much enforce what I have here said. Many was but a girl of threescore and ten years of honest minds, that are naturally disposed to do age, received the addresses of several who made good in the world, and become beneficial to love to her. Among these were two brothers, mankind. complain within themselves that they | Harpath and Shalum. Harpath being the firsthave not talents for it. This therefore is a good born, was master of that fruitful region which office, which is suited to the meanest capaci- lies at the foot of mount Tirzah, in the southern ties, and which may be performed by multi-parts of China. Shalum (which is to say the tudes who have not abilities sufficient to de- planter in the Chinese language) possessed all serve well of their country, and to recommend the neighbouring hills, and that great range of themselves to their posterity, by any other me-mountains which goes under the name of Tirthod. It is the phrase of a friend of mine, zah. Harpath was of a haughty contemptuous when any useful country neighbour dies, that spirit; Shalum was of a gentle disposition, be'you may trace him;' which I look upon as a loved both by God and man. good funeral oration, at the death of an honest It is said that among the antedeluvian women, husbandman who hath left the impressions of the daughters of Cohu had their minds wholly his industry behind him in the place where he set upon riches; for which reason the beautiful has lived, Hilpa preferred Harpath to Shalum, because Upon the foregoing considerations, I can of his numerous flocks and herds, that covered scarcely forbear representing the subject of this all the low country which runs along the foot paper as a kind of moral virtue; which, as of mount Tirzah, and is watered by several have already shown, recommends itself like- fountains and streams breaking out of the sides wise by the pleasure that attends it. It must of that mountain. be confessed that this is none of those turbu- Harpath made so quick a despatch of his lent pleasures which are apt to gratify a man courtship, that he married Hilpa in the hunin the heats of youth; but, if it be not so tu-dredth year of her age; and, being of an insomultuous, it is more lasting. Nothing can be lent temper, laughed to scorn his brotber Shamore delightful than to entertain ourselves lum for having pretended to the beautiful Hilpa, with prospects of our own making, and to walk when he was master of nothing but a long chain under those shades which our own industry has of rocks and mountains. This so much proraised. Amusements of this nature compose voked Shalum, that he is said to have cursed his the mind, and lay at rest all those passions brother in the bitterness of his heart, and to have which are uneasy to the soul of man, besides prayed that one of his mountains might fall that they naturally engender good thoughts, upon his head if ever he came within the shaand dispose us to laudable contemplations.dow of it. Many of the old philosophers passed away the From this time forward Harpath would never greatest parts of their lives among their gar-venture out of the valleys, but came to an undens. Epicurus himself could not think sensual timely end in the two hundred and fiftieth year pleasure attainable in any other scene. Every of his age, being drowned in a river as he atreader, who is acquainted with Homer, Virgil, tempted to cross it. This river is called to this and Horace, the greatest geniuses of all anti-day, from his name who perished in it, the quity, knows very well with how much rapture river Harpath; and, what is very remarkable, they have spoken on this subject; and that issues out of one of those mountains which ShaVirgil in particular has written a whole book lum wished might fall upon his brother, when on the art of planting. he cursed him in the bitterness of his heart. This art seems to have been more especially adapted to the nature of man in his primæval state, when he had life enough to see his productions flourish in their utmost beauty, and gradually decay with him. One who lived before the flood might have seen a wood of the tallest oaks in the acorn. But I only mention this particular,in order to introduce, in my next paper, a history which I have found among the accounts of China, and which may be looked upon as an antediluvian novel. No. 584.] Monday, August 23, 1714, Come, see what pleasures in our plains abound: HILPA was one of the hundred and fifty daughters of Zilpa, of the race of Cohu, by whom some of the learned think is meant Cain. Hilpa was in the hundred and sixtieth year of her age at the death of her husband, having brought him but fifty children before he was snatched away, as has been already related. Many of the antediluvians made love to the young widow; though no one was thought so likely to succeed in her affections as her first lover Shalum, who renewed his court to her about ten years after the death of Harpath; for it was not thought decent in those days that a widow should be seen by a man within ten years after the decease of her husband. Shalum, falling into a deep melancholy, and resolving to take away that objection which had been raised against him when he made his first addresses to Hilpa, began, immediately after her marriage with Harpath, to plant all that mountainous region which fell to his lotin the division of this country. He knew how to adapt every plant to its proper soil, and is thought to have inherited many traditional secrets of that art from the first man. This employment turned at length to his profit as well as to his amusement: his mountains were in a few years shaded with young trees, that grad Ipsi lætitiâ voces ad sidera jactant Virg. Ecl. v. 63. The mountain-tops unshorn, the rocks rejoice ; ually shot up into groves, woods, and forests, No. 585.] Wednesday, Angust 25, 1714. intermixed with walks and lawns, and gardens; insomuch that the whole region, from a naked and desolate prospect, began now to look like a second Paradise. The pleasantness of the place, and the agreeable disposition of Shalum, who was reckoned one of the mildest and wisest of all who lived before the flood, drew into it multitudes of people, who were perpetually employed in the sinking of wells, the digging of trenches, and the hollowing of trees, for the better distribution of water through every part of this spacious plantation. The habitations of Shalum looked every year more beautiful in the eyes of Hilpa, who, after the space of seventy autumns, was wonderfully pleased with the distant prospect of Shalum's hills, which were then covered with inumerable tufts of trees and gloomy scenes, that gave a magnificence to the place, and converted it into one of the finest landscapes the eye of man could behold. THE SEQUEL OF THE STORY OF SHALUM AND THE letter inserted in my last had so good an effect upon Hilpa, that she answered it in less than twelve months, after the following manner: Hilpa, Mistress of the Valleys, to Shalum 'In the 789th year of the creation. 'What have I to do with thee, O Shalum? Thou praiseth Hilpa's beauty, but art thou not secretly enamoured with the verdure of her The Chinese record a letter which Shalum is meadows? Art thou not more affected with said to have written to Hilpa in the eleventh the prospect of her green valleys than thou year of her widowhood. I shall here translate wouldest be with the sight of her person? The it, without departing from that noble simplici-lowings of my herds, and the bleatings of my ty of sentiments and plainness of manners flocks, make a pleasant echo in thy mountains, which appear in the original. Shalum was at this time one hundred eighty years old, and Hilpa one hundred seventy. and sound sweetly in thy ears. What though and I am delighted with the wavings of thy forests, and those breezes of perfumes which flow from the top of Tirzah, are these like the riches of the valley? and 'I know thee, O Shalum; thou art more 'I Shalum, Master of Mount Tirzah, to Hilpa, wise and happy than any of the sons of Mistress of the Valleys. one ? increase and multiply; mayest thou add wood Hilpa to destroy thy solitude, and make thy to wood, and shade to shade: but tempt not retirement populous.' men. Thy dwellings are among the cedars; 'In the 788th year of the creation. thou searchest out the diversity of soils, thou What have I not suffered, O thou daughter markest the change of seasons. understandest the influences of the stars, and of Zilpa, since thou gavest thyself away in woman appear lovely in the eyes of such a Can a womarriage to my rival? I grew weary of the light of the sun, and have been ever since co-alone, that I may enjoy those goodly possesDisquiet me not, O Shalum; let me vering myself with woods and forests. These sions which are fallen to my lot. Win me threescore and ten years have I bewaild the not by thy enticing words. May thy trees loss of thee on the top of mount Tirzah, and soothed my melancholy among a thousand gloomy shades of my own raising. My dwellings are at present as the garden of God: every part of them is filled with fruits, and flowers, and fountains. The whole mountain is perfumed for thy reception. Come up into it, my beloved, and let us people this spot of the new world with a beautiful race of mortals: let us multiply exceedingly among these delightful shades, and fill every quarter of them with sons and daughters. Remember, Oh thou daughter of Zilpah, that the age of man is but a thousand years; that beauty is the admiration but of a few centuries. It flourishes as a mountain oak, or as a cédar on the top of Tirzah, which in three or four hundred years will fade away, and never be thought of by posterity, unless a young wood springs from its rots. Think well on this, and remember thy neighbour in the mountains.' she accepted of a treat in one of the neighThe Chinese say, that a little time afterwards bouring hills to which Shaluin had invited her. This treat lasted for two years, and is said to have cost Shalum five hundred antelopes, two thousand ostriches, and a thousand tons of milk; but what most of all recominended it, herbs, in which no person then living could any was that variety of delicious fruits and potway equal Shalum. He treated her in the bower which he had planted amidst the wood of nightingales.— This wood was made up of such fruit-trees and plants as are most agreeable to the several kinds of singing birds; so that it had drawn into it all the music of the country, and was filled from one end of the year to Having here inserted this letter, which I the other with the most agreeable concert in look upon as the only antediluvian billet-season. doux now extant, I shall in my next paper He showed her every day some beautiful give the answer to it, and the sequel of this and surprising scene in this new region of wood-lands; and, as by this means he had story. all the opportunities he could wish for of No. 586.] Friday, August 27, 1714. -Quæ in vita usurpant homines, cogitant, curant, vident quæque agunt vigilantes, agitantque, ea cuique in somno accidunt. Cic. de Div. The things which employ men's waking thoughts and actions recur to their imaginations in sleep. By the last post, I received the following letter which is built upon a thought that is new, and very well carried on; for which reason I shall give it to the public without alteration, addition, or amendment. SIR, She had not been long among her own people in the valleys, when she received new overtures, and at the same time a most splendid visit from Mishpach, who was a mighty man of old, and had built a great city, which he called after his own name. Every house was made for at least a thousand years; nay, there were some that were leased out for three lives; so that the quantity of stone and timber consumed in this building is scarce to 'It was a good piece of advice which Pybe imagined by those who live in the present thagoras gave to his scholars that every age of the world. This great man entertain-night before they slept they should examine ed her with the voice of musical instruments what they had been doing that day, and so which had been lately invented, and danced discover what actions were worthy of pursuit before her to the sound of the timbrel. He to-morrow, and what little vices were to be also presented her with several domestic prevented from slipping unawares into a hautensils wrought in brass and iron which had bit. If I might second the philosopher's adbeen newly found out for the convenience of vice, it should be mine, that, in a morning, life. In the mean time Shalum grew very before my scholar rose, he should consider uneasy with himself, and was sorely dis- what he had been about that night, and pleased at Hilpa for the reception which with the same strictness, as if the condition she had given to Mishpach, insomuch that he has believed himself to be in was real. he never wrote to her or spoke of her dur- Such a scrutity into the actions of his fancy, ing a whole revolution of Saturn; but, find- must be of considerable advantage; for this ing that this intercourse went no further reason, because the circumstances which a than a visit, he again renewed his addresses man imagines himself in during sleep are to her; who, during his long silence, is said generally such as entirely favour his inclinavery often to have cast a wishing eye upon tions, good or bad, and give him imaginary mount Tirzah. opportunities of pursuing them to the utHer mind continued wavering about twenty most; so that his temper will lie fairly open years longer between Shalum and Mishpach; to his view, while he considers how it is for though her inclinations favoured the for- moved when free from those constraints mer, her interest pleaded very powerfully for which the accidents of real life put it under. the other. While her heart was in this un-Dreams are certainly the result of our waking settled condition, the following accident hap- thoughts, and our daily hopes and fears are pened, which determined her choice. A high what give the mind such nimble relishes of tower of wood that stood in the city of Mish-pleasure, and such severe touches of pain in pach having caught fire by a flash of light- its midnight rambles. A man that murders ning, in a few days reduced the whole town his enemy, or deserts his friend, in a dream, to ashes. Mishpach resolved to rebuild the had need to guard his temper against replace whatever it should cost him; and, venge and ingratitude, and take heed that having already destroyed all the timber of he be not tempted to do a vile thing in the the country, he was forced to have recourse pursuit of false, or the neglect of true hoto Shalum, whose forests were now two hun-nour. For my part, I seldom receive a bedred years old. He purchased these woods nefit, but in a night or two's time I make with so many herds of cattle and flocks of most noble returns for it; which, though my sheep, and with such a vast extent of fields benefactor is not a whit the better for, yet and pastures, that Shalum was now grown it pleases me to think that it was from a more wealthy than Mishpach; and there- principle of gratitude in me that my mind fore appeared so charming in the eyes of was susceptible of such generous transport, Zilpah's daughter, that she no longer refused while I thought myself repaying the kindness him in marriage. On the day in which he of my friend: and I have often been ready to brought her up into the mountains, he raised beg pardon, instead of returning an injury, a most prodigious pile of cedar, and of every after considering that, when the offender was sweet-smelling wood, which reached above in my power, I had carried my resentments three hundred cubits in height: he also cast much too far. into the pile bundles of myrrh, and sheaves 'I think it has been observed in the course of spikenard, enriching it with every spicy of your papers, how much one's happiness or shrub, and making it fat with the gums of misery may depend upon the imagination : his plantations. This was the burnt offering of which truth those strange workings of which Shalum offered in the day of his es- fancy in sleep are no inconsiderable instanpousals: the smoke of it ascended up to hea-ces; so that not only the advantage a man ven, and filled the whole country with incense has of makiug discoveries of himself, but a and perfume. regard to his own ease or disquiet, may in. VOL. II. 45 duce him to accept of my advice. Such as glad I am not possessed of those extraordinary are willing to comply with it, I shall put qualities. into a way of doing it with pleasure, by ob- Lastly, Mr. Spectator, I have been a great serving only one maxim which I shall give correspondent of yours, and have read many them, viz. To go to bed with a mind entirely of my letters in your paper which I never free from passion, and a body clear of the least wrote you. If you have a mind I should really intemperance.” be so, I have got a parcel of visions and other miscellanies in my noctuary, which I shall send you to enrich your paper on proper occasions. 'I am, &c. 'Oxford, Aug. 20. 'JOHN SHADOW." Intus, et in cute novi. Pers. Sat iii. 30. They, indeed, who can sink into sleep with their thoughts less calm or innocent than they should be, do but plunge themselves into scenes of guilt and misery; or they who are willing to purchase any midnight disquietudes for the satisfaction of a full meal, or a skin No. 587.] Monday, August 30, 1714. full of wine; these I have nothing to say to, as not knowing how to invite them to reflections full of shame and horror; but those that I know thee to thy bottom; from within will observe this rule, I promise them they Thy shallow centre to the utmost skin.-Dryden. shall awake into health and cheerfulness, and THOUGH the author of the following vision be capable of recounting, with delight, those glorious moments, wherein the mind has been is unknown to me, I am apt to think it may be indulging itself in such luxury of thought, such the work of that ingenious gentleman, who noble hurry of imagination. Suppose a man's promised me, in the last paper, some extracts going supperless to bed should introduce him out of his noctuary. 'SIR, to the table of some great prince or other, where he shall be entertained with the noblest marks of honour and plenty, and do so much I was the other day reading the life of business after, that he shall rise with as good Mahomet. Among many other extravagana stomach for his breakfast as if he had fasted cies, I find it recorded of that impostor, that, all night long: or, suppose he should see his in the fourth year of his age, the angel Gabriel dearest friends remain all night in great dis- caught him up while he was among his playtresses, which he could instantly have disen- fellows; and, carrying him aside, cut open his gaged them from, could he have been content breast, plucked out his heart, and wrung out to have gone to bed without the other bottle; of it that black drop of blood, in which, say believe me these effects of fancy are no con- the Turkish divines, is contained the fomes temptible consequences of commanding or in- peccati. so that he was free from sin ever after. dulging one's appetite. I immediately said to myself, Though this story be a fiction, a very good moral may be drawn from it, would every man but apply it to himself, and endeavour to squeeze out of his heart whatever sins or ill qualities he finds in it. I forbear recommending my advice upon many other accounts, until I hear how you and your readers relish what I have already said; among whom, if there be any that may pretend it is useless to them, because they never dream at all, there may be others per- 'While my mind was wholly taken up with haps who do little else all day long. Were this contemplation, I insensibly fell into a every one as sensible as I am what happens to most pleasing slumber, when methought two him in his sleep, it would be no dispute whether porters entered my chamber carrying a large we pass so considerable a portion of our time chest between them. After having set it in the condition of stocks and stones, or whe-down in the middle of the room, they departther the soul were not perpetually at work ed. I immediately endeavoured to open what upon the psinciple of thought. However, it is was sent me, when a shape, like that in which an honest endeavour of mine to persuade my we paint our angels, appeared before me, and countrymen to reap some advantage from so many unregarded hours, and as such you will encourage it. 'I shall conclude with giving you a sketch or two of my way of proceeding. forbade me. "Enclosed," said he, "are the hearts of several of your friends and acquaintance; but, before you can be qualified to see and animadvert on the failings of others, you must be pure yourself;" whereupon he drew If I have any business of conseqnence to out his incision knife, cut me open, took out do to-morrow, I am scarce dropt asleep to- my heart, and began to squeeze it. I was in a night but I am in the midst of it; and when at confusion to see how many things, which awake, I consider the whole procession of the I had always cherished as virtues, issued out affair, and get the advantage of the next day's of my heart on this occasion. In short after experience before the sun has risen upon it. it had been thoroughly squeezed, it looked There is scarcely a great post but what I like an empty bladder; when the phantom, have some time or other been in; but my be-breathing a fresh particle of divine air into it, haviour while I was master of a college pleases restored it safe to its former repository; and, me so well, that whenever there is a province having sewed me up, we began to examine the of that nature vacant, I intend to step in as soon chest. as I can. The hearts were all enclosed in transpa'I have done many things that would not parent phials, and preserved in liquor which pass examination, when I have had the art of looked liked spirits of wine. The first which flying or being invisible; for which reason I am fl cast my eye upon I was afraid would have |