for the king of Sweden, the other for the grand monarque of France. This gentleman from Will's is now next door to the upholsterer, safe in his apartment in my Bedlam, with proper medicaments, and the Mercure Gallant to soothe his imagination that he is actually in France. If, therefore, he should escape to Covent-garden again, all persons are desired to lay hold of him, and deliver him to Mr. Morphew, my overseer. At the same time, I desire all true subjects to forbear discourse with him, any otherwise than, when he begins to fight a battle for France, to say, 'Sir, I hope to see you in England.' From my own Apartment, May 31. In this parched season, next to the pleasure of going into the country is that of hearing from it, and partaking the joys of it in description; as in the following letter: 'SIR, I believe you will forgive me, though I write to you a very long epistle; since it relates to the satisfaction of a country life, which I know you would lead, if you could. In the first place, I must confess to you that I am one of the most luxurious men living; and as I am such, I take care to make my pleasures lasting, by following none but such as are innocent and refined, as well as, in some, measure, improving. You have in your labours been so much concerned to represent the actions and passions of mankind, that the whole vegetable world has almost escaped your observation: but sure there are gratifications to be drawn from thence, which deserve to be recommended. For your better information, I wish you could visit your old friend in Cornwall. You would be pleased to see the many alterations I have made about my house, and how much I have improved my estate without raising the rents of it. As the winter engrosses with us near a double portion of the year, the three delightful vicissitudes being crowded almost within the space of six months, there is nothing upon which I have bestowed so much study and expense, as in contriving means to soften the severity of it, and, if possible, to establish twelve cheerful months about my habitation. In order to this, the charges I have been at in building and furnishing a green-house will perhaps be thought somewhat extravagant by a great many gentlemen whose revenues exceed mine. But, when I consider, that all men of any life and spirit have their inclinations to gratify; and when I compute the sums laid out by the generality of the men of pleasure, in the number of which I always rank myself, in riotous eating and drinking, in equipage and apparel, upon wenching, gaming, racing, and hunting; I find, upon the balance, that the indulging of my humour comes at a reasonable rate. 'Since I communicate to you all incidents, serious and trifling, even the death of a but terfly, that fall out within the compass of my little empire; you will not, I hope, be ill pleased with the draught I now send you of my little winter paradise, and with an account of my way of amusing myself and others in it. The younger Piiny, you know, writes a long letter to his friend Gallus, in which he gives him a very particular plan of the situation, the conveniences, and the agreeableness of his villa. In my last, you may remember, I promised you something of this kind. Had Pliny lived in a northern climate, I doubt not but we should have found a very complete orangery among his epistles; and I, probably, should have copied his model, instead of building after my own fancy, and you had been referred to him for the history of my late exploits in architecture: by which means my performances would have made a better figure, at least in writing, than they are like to make at present. The area of my green-house is a hundred paces long, fifty broad, and the roof thirty feet high. The wall toward the north is of solid stone. On the south side, and at both the ends, the stone work rises but three feet from the ground; excepting the pilasters, placed at convenient distances, to strengthen and beautify the building. The intermediate spaces are filled up with large sashes of the strongest and most transparent glass. The middle sash, which is wider than any of the other, serves for the entrance; to which you mount by six easy steps, and descend on the inside by as many. This opens and shuts with greater ease, keeps the wind out better, and is at the same time more uniform than folding-doors. In the middle of the roof there runs a ceiling thirty feet broad, from one end to the other. This is enlivened by a masterly pencil, with all the variety of rural scenes and prospects, which he has peopled with the whole tribe of sylvan deities. Their characters and their stories are so well expressed, that the whole seems a collection of all the most beautiful fables of the ancient poets translated into colours. The remaining spaces of the roof, ten feet on each side of the ceiling, are of the clearest glass, to let in the sky and clouds from above. The building points full east and west, so that I enjoy the sun while he is above the horizon. His rays are improved through the glass; and I receive through it what is desirable in a winter sky, without the coarse allay of the season, which is a kind of sifting or straining the weather. My greens and flowers are as sensible as I am of this benefit. They flourish and look cheerful as in the spring, while their fellow-creatures abroad are starved to death. I must add, that a mode. rate expense of fire, over and above the contribution I receive from the sun, serves to keep this large room in a due temperature; it being sheltered from the cold winds by a hill on the north, and a wood on the east. "The shell, you see, is both agreeable and convenient; and now you shall judge, whether I have laid out the floor to advantage. There goes through the whole length of it a spacious walk of the finest gravel, made to bind and unite so firmly that it seems one continued | whole length of the wall; and the spaces that lie stone; with this advantage, that it is easier to between are painted in fresco, by the same hand the foot, and better for walking, than if it were that has enriched my ceiling. what it seems to be. At each end of the walk, on the one and on the other side of it, lies a square plot of grass of the finest turf, and brightest verdure. What ground remains on both sides, between these little smooth fields of green, is flagged with large quarries of white marble; where the blue veins trace ont such a variety of irregular windings, through the clear surface, that these bright plains seem full of rivulets and streaming meanders. This, to my eye, that delights in simplicity, is inexpressibly more beautiful than the chequered floors which are so generally admired by others. Upon the right and upon the left, along the gravel walk, I have ranged interchangeably the bay, the myrtle, the orange, and the lemon-trees, intermixed with painted hollies, silver firs, and pyramids of yew; all so disposed, that every tree receives an additional beauty from its situation, besides the harmony that rises from the disposition of the whole. No shade cuts too strongly, or breaks in harshly upon the other; but the eye is cheered with a mild rather than gorgeous diversity of greens. The borders of the four grass-plots are garnished with pots of flowers. Those delicacies of nature recreate two senses at once; and leave such delightful and gentle impressions upon the brain, that I cannot help thinking them of equal force with the softest airs of music, toward the smoothing of our tempers. In the centre of every plot is a statue. The figures I have made choice of are a Venus, an Adonis, a Diana, and an Apollo; such excellent copics, as to raise the same delight as we should draw from the sight of the ancient originals. Now, sir, you see my whole contrivance to clude the rigour of the year, to bring a northern climate nearer the sun, and to exempt myself from the common fate of my countrymen. I must detain you a little longer, to tell you that I never enter this delicious retirement, but my spirits are revived, and a sweet complacency diffuses itself over my whole mind. And how can it be otherwise, with a conscience void of offence, where the music of falling waters, the symphony of birds, the gentle humming of bees, the breath of flowers, the fine imagery of painting and sculpture; in a word, the beauties and the charms of nature and of art, court all my faculties, refresh the fibres of the brain, and smooth every avenue of thought? What pleasing meditations, what agreeable wanderings of the mind, and what delicious slumbers, have I enjoyed here? And when I turn up some masterly writer to my imagination, methinks here his beauties appear in the most advantageous light, and the rays of his genius shoot upon me with greater force and brightness than ordinary. This place likewise keeps the whole family in good humour, in a season wherein gloominess of temper prevails universally in this island. My wife does often touch her lute in one of the grottos, and my daughter sings to it; while the la dies with you, amidst all the diversions of the town, and in the most affluent fortunes, are fretting and repining beneath a louring sky for they know not what. In the green-house we often dine, we drink tea, we dance countrydances; and, what is the chief pleasure of all, we entertain our neighbours in it, and by this Imeans contribute very much to mend the cliThe north wall would have been but a tire-mate five or six miles about us. I am, your some waste to the eye, if I had not diversified most humble servant, it with the most lively ornaments, suitable to the place. To this intent, I have been at the expense to lead, over arches, from a neighbouring hill, a plentiful store of spring-water, which a beautiful Naiad, placed as high as is possible in the centre of the wall, pours out from an urn. This, by a fall of above twenty feet, makes a most delightful cascade into a bason, that opens wide within the marble floor on that side. a reasonable distance, on either hand of the cascade, the wall is hollowed into two spreading scollops, each of which receives a couch of green velvet, and forms at the same time a canopy over them. Next to them come two large aviaries, which are likewise let into the stone. These are succeded by two grottos, set off with all the pleasing rudeness of shells, and moss, and cragged stones, imitating, in miniature, rocks and precipices, the most dreadful and gigantic works of nature. After the grottos, you have two niches; the one inhabited by Ceres, with her sickle and sheaf of wheat; and the other by Pomona, who, with a countenance full of good cheer, pours a bounteous autumn of fruits out of her horn. Last of all come two colonies of bees, whose stations lying east and west, the onc is saluted by the rising, the other y the setting sun. These, all of them being placed at proportioned intervals, furnish out the At No. 180.] T. S. Tuesday, June 3, 1710. Stultitiam patiuntur opes.- From my own Apartment, June 2. I HAVE received a letter which accuses me of partiality in the administration of the Censorship; and says, that I have been very free with the lower part of mankind, but extremely cautious in representations of matters which concern men of condition. This correspondent takes upon him also to say, the upholsterer was not undone by turning politician, but became bankrupt by trusting his goods to persons of quality; and demands of me, that I should do justice upon such as brought poverty and distress upon the world below them, while they themselves were sunk in pleasures and lux ury, supported at the expense of those very persons whom they treated with negligence, as if they did not know whether they dealt with them or not. This is a very heavy accusation, both of me, and such as the man aggrieved accuses me of tolerating. For this reason, I re solved to take this matter into consideration; and upon very little meditation, could call to my memory many instances which made this complaint far from being groundless. The root of this evil does not always proceed from injustice in the men of figure, but often from a false grandeur which they take upon them in being unacquainted with their own business; not considering how mean a part they act, when their names and characters are subjected to the little arts of their servants and dependants. The overseers of the poor are a people who have no great reputation for the discharge of their trust; but are much less scandalous than the overseers of the rich. Ask a young fellow of a great estate, who was that odd fellow that spoke to him in a public place? he answers, one that does my business.' It is, with many, a natural consequence of being a man of fortune, that they are not to understand the disposal of it; and they long to come to their estates, only to put themselves under new guardianship. Nay, I have known a young fellow, who was regularly bred an attorney, and was a very expert one until he had an estate fallen to him. The moment that happened, he, who could before prove the next land he cast his eye upon his own, and was so sharp, that a man at first sight would give him a small sum for a general receipt, whether he owed him any thing or not; such a one, say, have I seen, upon coming to an estate, forget all his diffidence of mankind, and become the most manageable thing breathing. He immediately wanted a stirring man to take upon him his affairs, to receive and pay, and do every thing which he himself was now too fine a gentleman to understand. It is pleasant to consider, that he who would have got an estate, had he not come to one, will certainly starve because one fell to him; but such contradictions are we to ourselves, and any change of life is insupportable to some natures. pretends to prove out of his own books, and those of his whole neighbourhood. He has the confidence to say, that there is a mug-house near Long-acre, where you may every evening hear an exact account of distresses of this kind. One complains that such a lady's finery is the occasion that his own wife and daughter appear so long in the same gown. Another, that all the furniture of her visiting apartment are no more hers, than the scenery of a play are the proper goods of the actress. Nay, at the lower end of the same table, you may hear a butcher and poulterer say, that, at their proper charge, all that family has been maintained since they last came to town. The free manner in which people of fashion are discoursed on at such meetings, is but a just reproach of their failures in this kind; but the melancholy relations of the great necessities tradesmen are driven to, who support their credit in spite of the faithless promises which are made them, and the abatement which they suffer when paid by the extortion of upper servants, is what would stop the most thoughtless man in the career of his pleasures, if rightly represented to him. If this matter be not very speedily amended, I shall think fit to print exact lists of all persons who are not at their own disposal, though above the age of twenty-one; and as the trader is made bankrupt for absence from his abode, so shall the gentleman for being at home, if, when Mr. Morphew calls, he cannot give an exact account of what passes in his own family. After this fair warning, no one ought to think himself hardly dealt with, if I take upon me to pronounce him no longer master of his estate, wife, or family, than he continues to improve, cherish, and maintain them upon the basis of his own property, without incursions upon his neighbour in any of these particulars. According to that excellent philosopher, EpicIt is a mistaken sense of superiority, to be- tetus, we are all but acting parts in a play; and lieve a figure, or equipage, gives men prece-it is not a distinction in itself to be high or low, dence to their neighbours. Nothing can create respect from mankind, but laying obligations upon them; and it may very reasonably be concluded, that if it were put into a due balance, according to the true state of the account, many who believe themselves in possession of a large share of dignity in the world, must give place to their inferiors. The greatest of all distinctions in civil life is that of debtor and creditor; and there needs no great progress in logic to know which, in that case, is the advantageous side. He who can say to another, Pray, master,' or, 'Pray, my lord, give me my own,' can as justly tell him, It is a fantastical distinction you take upon you, to pretend to pass upon the world for my master or lord, when, at the same time that I wear your livery, you owe me wages; or, while I wait at your door, you are ashamed to see me until you have paid my bill.' but to become the parts we are to perform. I am by my office prompter on this occasion; and shall give those who are a little out in their parts, such soft hints as may help them to proceed, without letting it be known to the audience they were out; but if they run quite out of character, they must be called off the stage, and receive parts more suitable to their genius. Servile complaisance shall degrade a man from his honour and quality, and haughtiness be yet more debased. Fortune shall no longer appro priate distinctions, but nature direct us in the disposition both of respect and discountenance. As there are tempers made for command, and others for obedience; so there are men born for acquiring possessions, and others incapable of being other than mere lodgers in the houses of their ancestors, and have it not in their very I composition to be proprietors of any thing. The good old way among the gentry of Eng-These men are moved only by the mere effects land, to maintain their pre-eminence over the lower rank, was by their bounty, munificence, and hospitality; and it is a very unhappy change, if at present, by themselves or their agents, the luxury of the gentry is supported by the credit of the trader. This is what my correspondent of impulse: their good-will and disesteem are to be regarded equally; for neither is the effect of their judgment. This loose temper is that which makes a man, what Sallust so well remarks to happen frequently in the same person, to be covetous of what is another's, and profuse of what is his own. This sort of men is usually | With such inclinations in my heart I went to amiable to ordinary eyes; but, in the sight of my closet yesterday in the evening, and resolved reason, nothing is laudable but what is guided to be sorrowful; upon which occasion I could by reason. The covetous prodigal is of all others not but look with disdain upon myself, that the worst man in society. If he would but take though all the reasons which I had to lament time to look into himself, he would find his soul the loss of many of my friends are now as forall over gashed with broken vows and promises; cible as at the moment of their departure, yet and his retrospect on his actions would not con- did not my heart swell with the same sorrow sist of reflections upon those good resolutions, which I felt at that time; but I could, without after mature thought, which are the true life of tears, reflect upon many pleasing adventures I a reasonable creature, but the nauseous memory have had with some, who have long been blended of imperfect pleasures, idle dreams, and occa- with common earth. Though it is by the besional amusements. To follow such dissatis- nefit of nature, that length of time thus blots fying pursuits, is it possible to suffer the igno- out the violence of afflictions; yet, with temminy of being unjust? I remember in Tully's pers too much given to pleasure, it is almost neEpistle, in the recommendation of a man to an cessary to revive the old places of grief in our affair which had no manner of relation to mo- memory; and ponder step by step on past life, ney, it is said, 'You may trust him, for he is a to lead the mind into that sobriety of thought frugal man.' It is certain, he who has not re- which poises the heart, and makes it beat with gard to strict justice in the commerce of life, due time, without being quickened with desire, can be capable of no good action in any other or retarded with despair, from its proper and kind; but he, who lives below his income, lays equal motion. When we wind up a clock that up, every moment of life, armour against a base is out of order, to make it go well for the fuworld, that will cover all his frailties while he ture, we do not immediately set the hand to the is so fortified, and exaggerate them when he is present instant, but we make it strike the round naked and defenceless. of all its hours, before it can recover the regu larity of its time. Such, thought I, shall be my method this evening; and since it is that day A stage-coach sets out exactly at six from of the year which I dedicate to the memory of Nando's coffee-house to Mr. Tiptoe's dancing-such in another life as I much delighted in school, and returns at eleven every evening, for one shilling and four-pence. ADVERTISEMENT. when living, an hour or two shall be sacred to sorrow and their memory, while I run over all N. B. Dancing shoes, not exceeding four the melancholy circumstances of this kind inches height in the heels, and periwigs, not ex-which have occurred to me in my whole life. ceeding three feet in length, are carried in the coach-box gratis. From my own Apartment, June 5. THERE are those among mankind, who can enjoy no relish of their being, except the world is made acquainted with all that relates to them, and think every thing lost that passes unobserved; but others find a solid delight in stealing by the crowd, and modelling their life after such a manner, as is as much above the approbation as the practice of the vulgar. Life being too short to give instances great enough of true friendship or good-will, some sages have thought it pious to preserve a certain reverence for the manes of their deceased friends; and have withdrawn themselves from the rest of the world at certain seasons, to commemorate in their own thoughts such of their acquaintance who have gone before them out of this life. And indeed, when we are advanced in years, there is not a more pleasing entertainment, than to recollect in a gloomy moment the many we have parted with, that have been dear and agreeable to us, and to cast a melancholy thought or two after those, with whom, perhaps, we have indulged ourselves in whole nights of mirth and jollity. The first sense of sorrow I ever knew was upon the death of my father,* at which time I was not quite five years of age; but was rather amazed at what all the house meant, than possessed with a real understanding why nobody was willing to play with me. I remember I went into the room where his body lay, and my mother sat weeping alone by it. I had my battledore in my hand, and fell a beating the coffin, and calling Papa; for, I know not how, I had some slight idea that he was locked up there. My mother catched me in her arms, and, transported beyond all patience of the silent grief she was before in, she almost smothered me in her embraces; and told me in a flood of tears, Papa could not hear me, and would play with me no more, for they were going to put him under ground, whence he could never come to us again.' She was a very beautiful woman, of a noble spirit, and there was a dignity in her grief amidst all the wildness of her transport; which, methought, struck me with an instinct of sorrow, that, before I was sensible of what it was to grieve, scized my very soul, and has made pity the weakness of my heart ever since. The mind in infancy is, *This anecdote of Steele's history seems to have es caped the notice of the writer of his life in the Biog Britain. Steele's father was a counsellor at law, and some time private secretary to James I. duke of Ormond. His son (Sir Richard) was born at Dublin, but of Engbrought to London very young, he was put to school at fish extraction, probably about the year 1676; and being the Charter-house, as it seems, by the direction of his patron, James I. duke of Ormond, who was one of the governors of that hospital, and who, if he had lived long enough, might probably have been very serviceable to our author. methinks, like the body in embryo; and re-attended with a hamper of wine, of the same ceives impressions so forcible, that they are as hard to be removed by reason, as any mark with which a child is born is to be taken away by any future application. Hence it is, that goodnature in me is no merit ; but having been so frequently overwhelmed with her tears before I knew the cause of any affliction, or could draw defences from my own judgment, I imbibed commiseration, remorse, and an unmanly gentleness of mind, which has since insnared me into ten thousand calamities; from whence I can reap no advantage, except it be, that, in such a humour as I am now in, I can the better indulge myself in the softness of humanity, and enjoy that sweet anxiety which arises from the memory of past afflictions. We, that are very old, are better able to remember things which befell us in our distant youth, than the passages of later days. For this reason it is, that the companions of my strong and vigorous years present themselves more immediately to me in this office of sorrow. Untimely and unhappy deaths are what we are most apt to lament; so little are we able to make it indifferent when a thing happens, though we know it must happen. Thus we groan under life, and bewail those who are relieved from it. Every object that returns to our imagination raises different passions, according to the circumstance of their departure. Who can have lived in an army, and in a serious hour reflect upon the many gay and agreeable men that might long have flourished in the arts of peace, and not join with the imprecations of the fatherless and widow on the tyrant to whose ambition they fell sacrifices? But gallant men, who are cut off by the sword, move rather our veneration than our pity; and we gather relief enough from their own contempt of death, to make that no evil, which was approached with so much cheerfulness, and attended with so much honour. But when we turn our thoughts from the great parts of life on such occasions, and instead of lamenting those who stood ready to give death to those from whom they had the fortune to receive it; I say, when we let our thoughts wander from such noble objects, and consider the havoc which is made among the tender and the innocent, pity enters with an unmixed softness, and possesses all our souls at once. Here (were the words to express such sentiments with proper tenderness) I should record the beauty, innocence, and untimely death, of the first object my eyes ever beheld with love. The beauteous virgin! how ignorantly did she charm, how carelessly excel? Oh Death! thou hast right to the bold, to the ambitious, to the high, and to the haughty; but why this cruelty to the humble, to the meek, to the undiscerning, to the thoughtless? Nor age, nor business, nor distress, can erase the dear image from my imagination. In the same week, I saw her dressed for a ball, and in a shroud. How ill did the habit of death become the pretty trifler? I still behold the smiling earthlarge train of disasters were coming on to my memory, when my servant knocked a closet-door, and interrupted me with a letter, -A sort with that which is to be put to sale on Thursday next, at Garraway's coffee-house. Upon the receipt of it, I sent for three of my friends. We are so intimate, that we can be company in whatever state of mind we meet, and can entertain each other without expecting always to rejoice. The wine we found to be generous and warming, but with such a heat as moved us rather to be chcerful than frolicksome. It revived the spirits, without firing the blood. We commended it until two of the clock this morning; and having to-day met a little before dinner, we found, that though we drank two bottles a man, we had much more reason to recollect than forget what had passed the night before. THE town grows so very empty, that the greater number of my gay characters are fled out of my sight into the country. My beaux are now shepherds, and my belles wood-nymphs. They are lolling over rivulets, and covered with shades, while we who remain in town, hurry through the dust about impertinencies, without knowing the happiness of leisure and retirement. To add to this calamity, even the actors are going to desert us for a season, and we shall not shortly have so much as a landscape or a forest scene to refresh ourselves with in the midst of our fatigues. This may not, perhaps, be so sensible a loss to any other as to me; for I confess it is one of my greatest delights to sit unobserved and unknown in the gallery, and entertain myself either with what is personated on the stage, or observe what appearances present themselves in the audience. If there were no other good consequences in a play-house, than that so many persons of different ranks and conditions are placed there in their most pleasing aspects, that prospect only would be very far from being below the pleasures of a wise man. There not one person you can see, in whom, if you look with an inclination to be pleased, you may not behold something worthy or agreeable. Our thoughts are in our features; and the visage of those in whom love, rage, anger, jealousy, or envy, have their frequent mansions, carries the traces of those passions wherever the amorous, the choleric, the jealous, or the envions, are pleased to make their appearance. However, the assembly at a play is usually made up of such as have a sense of some elegance in pleasure; by which means the audience is generally composed of those who have gentle affections, or at least of such, as at that time, are in the best humour you can ever find them. This has insensibly a good effect upon * Democritus. |