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"SIR,

An me ludit amabilis

Insania? Audire, et videor pios

Errare per lucos, amænæ

Qos et aquæ subeunt et auræ.-HOR. 3 Od. iv. 5.

Does airy fancy cheat

My mind well pleas'd with the deceit ?

I seem to hear, I seem to move,

And wander through the happy grove,

Where smooth springs flow, and murm'ring breeze Wantons through the waving trees.-CRELCH.

Method is of advantage to a work, both in re- No. 477.] SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 6, 1712 spect to the writer and the reader. In regard to the first, it is a great help to his invention. When a man has planned his discourse, he finds a great many thoughts rising out of every head, that do not offer themselves upon the general survey of a subject. His thoughts are at the same time more intelligible, and better discover their drift aud meaning, when they are placed in their proper lights and follow one another in a regular series, than when they are thrown together without order and connection. There is always an obscurity in confusion; and the same sentence that would have enlightened the reader in one part of a discourse, perplexes him in another. For the same reason, likewise, every thought in a methodical discourse shows itself in its greatest beauty, as the several figures in a piece of painting receive new grace from their disposition in the picture. The advantages of a reader from a methodical discourse, are correspondent with those of the writer. He comprehends everything easily, takes it in with pleasure, and retains it long.

Method is not less requisite in ordinary conversa. tion than in writing, provided a man would talk to make himself understood. I who hear a thousand coffee-house debates every day, am very sensible of this want of method in the thoughts of my honest countrymen. There is not one dispute in ten which is managed in those schools of politics, where, after the three first sentences, the question is not entirely lost. Our disputants put me in mind of the cuttle-fish, that when he is unable to extricate himself, blackens all the water about him until he becomes invisible. The man who does not know how to methodize his thoughts, has always, to borrow a phrase from the Dispensary, "a barren superfluity of words;" the fruit is lost amidst the exuberance of leaves.

Tom Puzzle is one of the most eminent immethodical disputants of any that has fallen under my observation. Toin has read enough to make him very impertinent: his knowledge is sufficient to raise doubts, but not to clear them. It is pity that he has so much learning, or that he has not a great deal more. With these qualifications, Tom sets up for a freethinker, finds a great many things to blame in the constitution of his country, and gives shrewd intimations that he does not believe In another world. In short, Puzzle is an atheist as much as his parts will give him leave. He has got about half a dozen common-place topics, into which he never fails to turn the conversation, whatever was the occasion of it. Though the matter in debate he about Douay or Denain, it is ten to one but half his discourse runs upon the unreasonableness of bigotry and priesteraft. This makes Mr. Puzzle the admiration of all those who have less sense than himself, and the contempt of all those who have more. There is none in town whom Tom dreads so much as my friend Will Dry. Will, who is acquainted with Tom's logic, when he finds him running off the question, cuts him short with a " What then? We allow all this to be true; but what is it to our present purpose?" I have know Tom eloquent half an hour together, and triumphing, as he thought, in the superiority of the argument, when he has been non-plused on a sudden by Mr. Dry's desiring him to tell the company what it was that he endeavored to prove, In short, Dry is a man of clear methodical head, but few words, and gains the same advantages over Puzzle, that a small body of regular troops would gain over a numberless undisciplined militia.

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HAVING lately read your essay on The Pleasures of the Imagination, I was so taken with your thoughts upon some of our English gardens, that I cannot forbear troubling you with a letter upon that subject. I am one, you must know, who am looked upon as a humorist in gardening. I have several acres about my house, which I call my garden, and which a skillful gardener would not know what to call. It is a confusion of kitchen and parterre, orchard and flower garden, which lie so mixed and interwoven with one another, that if a foreigner who had seen nothing of our country, should be conveyed into my garden at his first landing, he would look upon it as a natural wilderness, and one of the uncultivated parts of our country. My flowers grow up in several parts of the garden in the greatest luxuriancy and profusion. I am so far from being fond of any particular oue, by reason of its rarity, that if I meet with any one in a field which pleases me, I give it a place in my garden. By this means, when a stranger walks with me, he is surprised to see several large spots of ground covered with ten thousand different colors, and has often singled out flowers that he might have met with under a common hedge, in a field, or in a meadow, as some of the greatest beauties of the place. The only method I observe in this particular, is to range in the same quarter the products of the same season, that they may make their appearance together, and compose a picture of the greatest variety. There is the same irregularity in my plantations, which run into as great a wilderness as their natures will permit. I take in none that do not naturally rejoice in the soil; and am pleased, when I am walking in a labyrinth of my own raising, not to know whether the next tree I shall meet with is an apple or an oak, an elm or a pear-tree. My kitchen has likewise its partic ular quarters assigned it: for beside the wholesome luxury which that place abounds with, I have always thought a kitchen-garden a more pleasant sight than the finest orangery, or artificial greenhouse. I love to see everything in its perfection; and am more pleased to survey my rows of coleworts and cabbages, with a thousand nameless pot-herbs, springing up in their full fragrancy and verdure, than to see the tender plants of foreign countries kept alive by artificial heats, or withering in an air and soil that are not adapted to them. I must not omit, that there is a fountain rising in the upper part of my garden, which forms a little wandering rill, and administers to the pleasure as well as the plenty of the place. I have so conducted it, that it visits most of my plantations: and have taken particular care to let it run in the same manner as it would do in an open field, so that it generally passes through banks of violets and primroses, plats of willow, or other plants, that seem to be of its own producing. There is another circumstance in which I am very particular, or, as my neighbors call me, very whimsical: as my garden invites into it all the birds of the country, by offering them the conveniency of springs and shades, solitude and shelter, I do not suffer any one to destroy their nests in the spring,

or drive them from their usual haunts in fruit-time; the holly, with many other trees and plants of the I value my garden more for being full of blackbirds same nature, grow so thick in it, that you cannot than cherries, and very frankly give them fruit for imagine a more lively scene. The glowing redness their songs. By this means, I have always the of the berries, with which they are hung at this music of the season in its perfection, and am time, vies with the verdure of their leaves, and is highly delighted to see the jay or the thrush hop- apt to inspire the heart of the beholder with that ping about my walks, and shooting before my eye vernal delight which you have somewhere taken across the several little glades and alleys that I pass notice of in your former papers. It is very pleasthrough. I think there are as many kinds of gar- ant, at the same time, to see the several kinds of dening as of poetry: your makers of parterres and birds retiring into this little green spot, and enflower-gardens are epigrammatists and sonneteers joying themselves among the branches and foliage, in this art; contrivers of bowers and grottoes, treil- when my great garden, which I have before menlages and cascades, are romance writers. Wise tioned to you, does not afford a single leaf for and London are our heroic poets; and if, as a critic, their shelter. I may single out any passage of their works to "You must know, Sir, that I look upon the commend, I shall take notice of that part in the pleasure which we take in a garden as one of the upper garden at Kensington, which was at first most innocent delights in human life. A garden nothing but a gravel pit. It must have been a fine was the habitation of our first parents before the genius for gardening that could have thought of fall. It is naturally apt to fill the mind with forming such an unsightly hollow into so beauti- calmness and tranquillity, and to lay all its turbu ful an area, and to have hit the eye with so un-lent passions at rest. It gives us a great insight common and agreeable a scene as that which it is into the contrivances and wisdom of Providence, now wrought into. To give this particular spot and suggests innumerable subjects for meditation. of ground the greater effect, they have made a I cannot but think the very complacency and satvery pleasing contrast; for, as on one side of the isfaction which a man takes in these works of walk you see this hollow basin, with its several nature to be a laudable, if not a virtuous habit of little plantations, lying so conveniently under the mind. For all which reasons, I hope you will eye of the beholder, on the other side of it there pardon the length of my present letter. appears a seeming mount, made up of trees, rising C. one higher than another, in proportion as they ap proach the center. A spectator, who has not heard this account of it, would think this circular mount was not only a real one, but that it had been actually scooped out of that hollow space which I have before mentioned. I never yet met with any one,

of art.

gon.

who has walked in this garden, who was not struck with that part of it which I have here mentioned. As for myself, you will find, by the account which I have already given you, that my compositions in gardening are altogether after the Pindaric manner, and run into the beautiful wildness of nature, without affecting the nicer elegances What I am now going to mention, will perhaps deserve your attention more than anything 1 have yet said. I find that, in the discourse which I spoke of at the beginning of my letter, you are against filling an English garden with evergreens; and indeed I am so far of your opinion, that I can by no means think the verdure of an evergreen comparable to that which shoots out annually, and clothes our trees in the summer seaBut I have often wondered that those who are like myself, and love to live in gardens, have never thought of contriving a winter garden, which should consist of such trees only as never cast their leaves. We have very often little snatches of sunshine and fair weather in the most uncomfortable parts of the year, and have frequently several days in November and January that are as agreeable as any in the finest months. At such times, therefore, I think there could not be a greater pleasure than to walk in such a winter garden as I have proposed. In the summer season the whole country blooms, and is a kind of garden; for which reason we are not so sensible of those beauties that at this time may be everywhere met with; but when nature is in her desolation, and presents us with nothing but bleak and barren prospects, there is something unspeakably cheerful in a spot of ground which is covered with trees that smile amid all the rigors of winter, and give us a view of the most gay season in the midst of that which is the most dead and melancholy. I have so far indulged myself in this thought, that I have set apart a whole acre of ground for the execution of it. The walls are covered with ivy instead of vines. The laurel, the horn beam and

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"I am, Sir," etc.

No. 478.] MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 8, 1712.

HOR. Ars. Poet. v. 72.

-Unus,
Quem penes arbitrium est, et jus, et norma-
Fashion, sole arbitress of dress.
'MR. SPECTATOR,

"IT happened lately that a friend of mine, who had many things to buy for his family, would oblige me to walk with him to the shops. He was very nice in his way, and fond of having every thing shown; which at first made me very uneasy; but as his humor still continued, the things which I had been staring at along with him began to fill my head, and led me into a set of amusing thoughts concerning them.

"I fancied it must be very surprising to any one who enters into a detail of fashious to consider how far the vanity of mankind has laid itself out in dress, what a prodigious number of people it maintains, and what a circulation of money it occasions. Providence in this case makes use of the folly which we will not give up, and it becomes instrumental to the support of those who are willing to labor. Hence it is that fringe makers, lacemen, tire-women, and a number of other trades, which would be useless in a simple state of nature, draw their subsistence; though it is seldom seen that such as these are extremely rich, because their original fault being founded upon vanity, keeps them poor by the light inconstancy of its nature. The variableness of fashion turns the stream of business, which flows from it, now into one channel, and anou into another; so that different sets of people sink or flourish in their turns by it.

From the shops we retired to the tavern, where I found my friend express so much satisfaction for the bargains he had made, that my moral reflections (if I had told them) might have passed for a reproof; so I chose rather to fall in with him, and let the discourse run upon the use of fashions.

"Here we remembered how much man is gor erned by his senses, how livelily he is struck by the objects which appear to him in an agreeable manner, how much clothes contribute to make us

agreeable objects, and how much we owe it to curselves that we should appear so.

"We considered man as belonging to societies; Societies as formed of different ranks, and different ranks distinguished by habits, that all proper duty or respect might attend their appearance.

"We took notice of several advantages which are met with in the occurrences of conversation; how the bashful man has been sometimes so raised, as to express himself with an air of freedom, when he imagines that his habit introduces him to company with a becoming manner; and again, how a fool in fine clothes shall be suddenly heard with attention, till he has betrayed himself; whereas a man of sense, appearing with a dress of negligence, shall be but coldly received till he be proved by time, and established in a character. Such things as these we could recollect to have happened to our own knowledge so very often, that we concluded the author had his reasons, who advises his son to go in dress rather above his fortune than

under it.

finishing stroke of breeding, as it has been for Englishmen to go to France for it.

Thirdly, Whereas several great scholars, who might have been otherwise useful to the world, have spent their time in studying to describe the dresses of the ancients from dark hints, which they are fain to interpret and support with much learning; it will from henceforth happen that they shall be freed from the trouble, and the world from these useless volumes. This project will be a registry, to which posterity may have recourse, for the clearing such obscure passages as tend that way in authors; and therefore we shall not for the future submit ourselves to the learning of etymo ogy, which might persuade the age to come that the farthingale was worn for cheapness, or the furbelow for warmth.

"Fourthly, Whereas they, who are old them. selves, have often a way of railing at the extrava gance of youth, and the whole age in which their children live; it is hoped that this ill-humor will be much suppressed, when we can have recourse to the fashious of their times, produce them in our vindication, and be able to show that it might have been as expensive in Queen Elizabeth's time only to wash and quill a ruff, as it is now to buy cravats or neck-handkerchiefs.

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"At last the subject seemed so considerable, that it was proposed to have a repository built for fashions, as there are chambers for medals and other rarities. The building may be shaped as that which stands among the pyramids in the form of a woman's head. This may be raised 'We desire also to have it taken notice of, that upon pillars, whose ornaments shall bear a just rela- because we would show a particular respect to tion to the design. Thus there may be an imitation foreigners, which may induce them to perfect their of fringe carved in the base, a sort of appearance breeding here in a knowledge which is very proper of lace in the frieze, and a representation of curling for pretty gentlemen, we have conceived the motto locks, with bows of ribands sloping over them, for the house in the learned language. There is may fill up the work of the cornice. The inside to be a picture over the door, with a looking glass may be divided into two apartments appropriated and a dressing chair in the middle of it; then on to each sex. The apartments may be filled with one side are to be seen, one above another, patchshelves, on which boxes are to stand as regularly boxes, pincushions, and little bottles; on the other, as books in a library. These are to have folding powder bags, puffs, combs, and brushes; beyond doors, which being opened, you are to behold a these, swords with fine knots, whose points are baby dressed out in some fashion which has flour-hidden, and fans almost closed, with the handles ished, and standing upon a pedestal, where the time of its reign is marked down. For its further regulation let it be ordered, that every one who invents a fashion shall bring in his box, whose front he may at pleasure have either worked or painted with some amorous or gay device, that, like books with gilded leaves and covers, it may the sooner draw the eyes of the beholders. And to the end that these may be preserved with all due care, let there be a keeper appointed, who shall be a gentleman qualified with a competent knowledge in clothes, so that by this means the place will be a comfortable support for some beau who has spent his estate in dressing.

"The reasons offered, by which we expected to gain the approbation of the public, were as follows:

"First, That every one who is considerable enough to be a mode, or has any imperfection of nature or chance, which it is possible to hide by the advantage of clothes, may, by coming to this repository, be furnished herself, and furnish all, who are under the same misfortune, with the most agreeable manner of concealing it; and that on the other side, every one who has any beauty in face or shape, may also be furnished with the most agreeable manner of showing it.

Secondly, That whereas some of our young gentlemen who travel, give us great reason to suspect that they only go abroad to make or imbrove a fancy for dress, a project of this nature may be a means to keep them at home; which is in effect the keeping of so much money in the kingdom And perhaps the balance of fashion in Europe, which now leans upon the side of France, may be so altered for the future, that it may become as common with Frenchmen to come to England for their

downward, are to stand out interchangeably from
the sides, until they meet at the top, and form a
semicircle over the rest of the figures; beneath
all, the writing is to run in this pretty sounding
manner:

Adeste, O quotquot sunt, Veneres, Gratiæ, Cupidines:
En vobis adsunt in promptu

All

Faces, vincula, spicula;

Hinc eligite, sumite, regite.

ye Venuses, Graces, and Cupids, attend: See prepared to your hands,

Darts, torches, and bands:

Your weapons here choose, and your empire extend.

"I am, Sir, your most humble Servant,

"A. B."

The proposal of my correspondent I cannot but look upon as an ingenious method of placing persons (whose parts make them ambitious to exert themselves in frivolous things) in a rank by themselves. In order to this, I would propose that there be a board of directors of the fashionable society; and, because it is a matter of too much weight for a private man to determine alone, I should be highly obliged to my correspondents if they would give in lists of persons qualified for this trust. If the chief coffee-houses, the conver sations of which places are carried on by persons, each of whom has his little number of followers and admirers, would name from among themselves two or three to be inserted, they should be put up with great faithfulness. Old beaux are to be represented in the first place; but as that sect, with relation to dress, is almost extinct, it will, I fear, be absolutely necessary to take in all time-servers, properly so deemed; that is, such as, without any conviction of conscience, or view of interest, change with the world, and that merely

from a terror of being out of fashion. Such also, who from facility of temper, and too much obsequiousness, are vicious against their will, and follow leaders whom they do not approve, for want of courage to go their own way, are capable persons for this superintendency. Those who are loth to grow old, or would do anything contrary to the course and order of things, out of fondness to be in fashion, are proper candidates. To conclude, those who are in fashion without apparent merit, must be supposed to have latent qualities, which would appear in a post of direction; and therefore are to be regarded in forming these lists. Any who shall be pleased according to these, or what further qualifications may occur to himself, to send a list, is desired to do it within fourteen days after this date.

N. B. The place of the physician to this society, according to the last-mentioned qualification, is already engaged.

T.

No. 479.] TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 9, 1712. Dare jura maritis.-HOR. Ars. Poet. 398. To regulate the matrimonial life. MANY are the epistles I every day receive from husbands who complain of vanity, pride, but, above all, ill-nature in their wives. I cannot tell how it is, but I think I see in all their letters that the cause of their uneasiness is in themselves; and indeed I have hardly ever observed the married condition unhappy, but from want of judgment or temper in the man. The truth is, we generally make love in a style and with sentiments very unfit for ordinary life: they are half theatrical, half romantic. By this means, we raise our imaginations to what is not to be expected in human life; and because we did not beforehand think of the creature we are enamored of, as subject to dishumor, age, sickness, impatience, or sullenness, but altogether considered her as the object of joy; human nature itself is often imputed to her as her particular imperfection, or defect.

I take it to be a rule, proper to be observed in all occurrences of life, but more especially in the domestic, or matrimonial part of it, to preserve always a disposition to be pleased. This cannot be supported but by considering things in their right light, and as nature has formed them, and not as our own fancies or appetites would have them. He then who took a young lady to his bed, with no other consideration than the expectation of scenes of dalliance, and thought of her (as I said before) only as she was to administer to the gratification of desire; as that desire flags, will, without her fault, think her charms and her merit abated: from hence must follow indifference, dislike, peevishness, and rage. But the man who brings his reason to support his passion, and beholds what he loves, as liable to all the calamities of human life, both in body and mind, and even at the best what must bring upon him new cares and new relations; such a lover, I say, will form himself accordingly, and adapt his mind to the nature of his circumstances. This latter person will be prepared to be a father, a friend, an advocate, a steward for people yet unborn, and has proper affections ready for every incident in the marriage state. Such a man can hear the cries of children with pity instead of anger; and, when they run over his head, he is not disturbed at the noise, but is glad of their mirth and health. Tom Trusty has told me, that he thinks it doubles his attention to the most intricate affair he is about.

to hear his children, for whom all his cares are applied, make a noise in the next room: on the other side, Will Sparkish cannot put on his periwig, or adjust his cravat at the glass, for the noise of those damned nurses and squalling brats; and then ends with a gallant reflection upon the comforts of matrimony, runs out of the hearing, and drives to the chocolate-house.

According as the husband has disposed in himself, every circumstance in his life is to give him torment or pleasure. When the affection is well placed, and is supported by the considerations of duty, honor, and friendship, which are in the highest degree engaged in this alliance, there can nothing rise in the common course of life, or from the blows or favors of fortune, in which a man will not find matters of some delight unknown to a single condition.

He that sincerely loves his wife and family, and studies to improve that affection in himself, conceives pleasure from the most indifferent things; while the married man who has not bid adieu to the fashions and false gallantries of the town, is perplexed with everything around him. In both these cases men cannot, indeed, make a sillier figure, than in repeating such pleasures and pains to the rest of the world: but I speak of them only as they sit upon those who are involved in them. As I visit all sorts of people, I cannot indeed but smile, when the good lady tells her husband what extraordinary things the child spoke since he went out. No longer than yesterday I was prevailed with to go home with a fond husband; and his wife told him, that his son, of his own head, when the clock in the parlor struck two, said papa would come home to dinner presently. While the father has him in a rapture in his arms, and is drowning him with kisses, the wife tells me he is but just four years old. Then they both struggle for him, and bring him up to me, and repeat his observation of two o'clock. I was called upon, by looks upon the child, and then at me, to say something: and I told the father that this remark of the infant of his coming home, and joining the time with it, was a certain indication that he would be a great historian and chronologer. They are neither of them fools, yet received my compliment with great acknowledgment of my prescience. I fared very well at dinner, and heard many other notable sayings of their heir, which would have given very little entertainment to one less turned to reflection than I was: but it was a pleasing speculation to remark on the happiness of a life, in which things of no moment give occasion of hope, self-satisfaction, and triumph. On the other hand, I have known an illnatured coxcomb, who has hardly improved in anything but bulk, for want of this disposition, silence the whole family as a set of silly women and children, for recounting things which were really above his own capacity.

When I say all this, I cannot deny but there are perverse jades that fall to men's lots, with whom it requires more than common proficiency in philosophy to be able to live. When these are joined to men of warm spirits, without temper or learning, they are frequently corrected with stripes; but one of our famous lawyers* is of opinion that this ought to be used sparingly; as I remember, those are his very words: but as it is proper to draw some spiritual use out of all afflictions, I should rather recommend to those who are visited with women of spirit, to form themselves for the world by patience at home. Socrates, who is by all accounts the undoubted head of the sect of the henpecked,

* Bracton.

"Monsieur Chezluy to Pharamond. "DREAD SIR,

Those who

owned and acknowledged that he owed great part of his virtue to the exercise which his useful wife constantly gave it. There are several good instructions may be drawn from his wise answers "I have from your own hand (inclosed under to the people of less fortitude than himself on her the cover of Mr. Eucrate, of your majesty's bed. subject. A friend, with indignation, asked how chamber) a letter which invites me to court. I so good a man could live with so violent a crea- understand this great honor to be done me more ture? He observed to him, that they who learn out of respect and inclination to me, rather than to keep a good seat on horseback, mount the least regard to your own service; for which reason I manageable they can get; and, when they have beg leave to lay before your majesty my reasons mastered them, they are sure never to be discom- for declining to depart from home; and will not posed on the backs of steeds less restive. At doubt but as your motive in desiring my attendseveral times, to different persons, on the same ance was to make me a happier man, when you subject, he has said, "My dear friend, you are think that will not be effected by my remove, you beholden to Xantippe, that I bear so well your will permit me to stay where I am. flying out in a dispute." To another, "My hen have an ambition to appear in courts, have either clacks very much, but she brings me chickens. an opinion that their persons or their talents are They that live in a trading street are not dis- particularly formed for the service or ornament of turbed at the passage of carts." I would have, that place; or else are hurried by downright desire if possible, a wise man be contented with his lot, of gain, or what they call honor, to take upon themeven with a shrew; for, though he cannot make selves whatever the generosity of their master can her better, he may, you see, make himself better give them opportunities to grasp at. But your by her means. goodness shall not be thus imposed upon by me: I will therefore confess to you, that frequent solitude, and long conversation with such who know no arts which polish life, have made me the plainest creature in your dominions. Those less capacities of moving with a good grace, bearing a ready affability to all around me, and acting with ease before many, have quite left me. I am come to that, with regard to my person, that I consider it only as a machine I am obliged to take care of, in order to enjoy my soul in its faculties with alacrity; well remembering that this habitation of clay will in a few years be a meaner piece of earth than any utensil about my house. When this is, as it really is, the most frequent reflection I have, you will easily imagine how well I should become a drawing-room; add to this, what shall a man without desires do about the generous Pharamond? Monsieur Eucrate has hinted to me, that you have thoughts of distinguishing me with titles. As for myself, in the temper of my present mind, appellations of honor would but embarrass discourse, and new behavior toward me perplex me in every habitude of life. I am also to acknowledge to you, that my children, of whom your majesty condescended to inquire, are all of them mean, both in their persons and genius. The estate my eldest son is heir to, is more than he can enjoy with a good grace. My self-love will not carry me so far as to impose upon mankind the advancement of persons (merely for their being related to me) into high distinctions, who ought for their own sakes, as well as that of the public, to affect obscurity. I wish, my generous prince, as it is in your power to give honors and offices, it were also to give talents suitable to them; were it so, the noble Pharamond would reward the zeal of my youth with abilities to do him service in

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But, instead of pursuing my design of displaying conjugal love in its natural beauties and attractions, I am got into tales to the disadvantage of that state of life. I must say, therefore, that I am verily persuaded, that whatever is delightful in human life is to be enjoyed in greater perfection in the married than in the single condition. He that has this passion in perfection, in occasions of joy, can say to himself, beside his own satisfaction, How happy will this make my wife and children!" Upon occurrences of distress or danger, can comfort himself, "But all this while my wife and children are safe." There is something in it that doubles satisfactions, because others participate them; and dispels afflictions because others are exempt from them. All who are married without this relish of their circumstance are in either a tasteless indolence and negligence which is hardly to be attained, or else live in the hourly repetition of sharp answers, eager upbraidings, and distracting reproaches. In a word, the married state, with and without the affection suitable to it, is the comrletest image of heaven and hell we are capable of receiving in this life.-T.

No. 480.] WEDNESDAY, SEPT. 10, 1712.
Responsare cupidinibus, contemnere honores
Fortis, et in seipso totus teres atque rotundus.
HOR. 2 Sat. vii, 85.

He, Sir, is proof to grandeur, pride, or pelf,
And, greater still, he's master of himself:
Not to and fro, by fears and factions hurl'd,
But loose to all the interests of the world;
And while the world turns round, entire and whole,
He keeps the sacred tenor of his soul.-PITT.

THE other day, looking over those old manuscripts of which I have formerly given some account, and which relate to the character of the mighty Pharamond of France, and the close friendship between him and his friend Eucrate, I found among the letters, which had been in the custody of the latter, an epistle from a country gentleman to Pharamond, wherein he excuses himself from coming to court. The gentleman, it seems, was contented with his condition, had formerly been in the king's service; but at the writing the following letter had, from leisure and reflection, quite another sense of things than that which he had in the more active part of his life.

my age.

Those who accept of favor without merit, support themselves in it at the expense of your ma jesty. Give me leave to tell you, Sir, this is the reason that we in the country hear so often repeated the word prerogative. That part of your law which is reserved in yourself, for the readier service and good of the public, slight men are eternally buzzing in our ears, to cover their own follies and miscarriages. It would be an addition to the high favor. you have done me, if you would let Eucrate send me word how often and in what cases, you allow a constable to insist upon the prerogative. From the highest to the lowest officer in your dominions, something of their own carriage they would exempt from examination, under the shelter of the word prerogative. I would fain,

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