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with him. Who but himself ever left a throne to learn to sit in it with more grace? Who ever thought himself mean in absolute power, till he had learned to use it?

No. 140.] FRIDAY, AUGUST 10, 1711.
-Animum curis nunc huc, nunc dividit illue.
VIRG. Æn. iv. 285.

This way and that the anxious mind is torn.
WHEN I acquaint my reader that I have many
other letters not yet acknowledged, I believe he will
own what I have a mind he should believe, that I
have no small charge upon me, but am a person of
some consequence in this world. I shall therefore
employ the present hour only in reading petitions in
the order as follows:-

If we consider this wonderful person, it is perplexity to know where to begin his encomium. Others may in a metaphorical or philosophic sense be said to command themselves, but this emperor is also literally under his own command. How generous and how good was his entering his own name as a private man in the army he raised, that none in it might expect to outrun the steps with which he himself advanced! By such measures this godlike prince learned to conquer, learned to use his conquests. How terrible has he appeared in battle, how gentle in victory! Shall then the base arts of the French-upon the receipt hereof, you will sit down immeman be held polite, and the honest labours of the Russian barbarous ? No; barbarity is the ignorance of true honour, or placing anything instead of it. The unjust prince is ignoble and barbarous, the good prince only renowned and glorious.

"MR. SPECTATOR,

"I have lost so much time already, that I desire,

diately and give me your answer. And I would know of you whether a pretender of mine really loves me. As well as I can, I will describe his manners. When he sees me he is always talking of constancy, but vouchsafes to visit me but once a fortnight, and then Though men may impose upon themselves what is always in haste to be gone. When I am sick, I they please by their corrupt imaginations, truth will hear he says he is mightily concerned, but neither ever keep its station: and as glory is nothing else comes nor sends, because, as he tells his acquaintance but the shadow of virtue, it will certainly disappear with a sigh, he does not care to let me know all the at the departure of virtue. But how carefully ought power I have over him, and how impossible it is for the true notions of it to be preserved, and how in-him to live without me. When he leaves the town, dustrious should we be to encourage any impulses towards it! The Westminster school-boy that said the other day he could not sleep or play for the colours in the hall, ought to be free from receiving a blow for ever.

But let us consider what is truly glorious according to the anthor I have to-day quoted in the front of my paper.

The perfection of glory, says Tully, consists in these three particulars: "That the people love us; that they have confidence in us; that being affected with a certain admiration towards us, they think we deserve honour." This was spoken of greatness in the commonwealth. But if one were to form a consummate glory under our constitution, one must add to the above mentioned felicities a certain necessary inexistence, and disrelish of all the rest, without the prince's favour. He should, methinks, have riches, power, honour, command, glory; but riches, power, honour, command, and glory, should have no charms, but as accompanied with the affection of his prince. He should, methinks, be popular because a favourite, and a favourite because popular. Were it not to make the character too imaginary, I would give him Sovereignty over some foreign territory, and make him esteem that an empty addition without the kind regards of his own prince. One may merely have an idea of a man thus composed and circumstantiated, and if he were so made for power without an incapacity of giving jealousy, he would be also glorious without possibility of receiving disgrace. This humility and this importance must make his glory immortal.

These thoughts are apt to draw me beyond the usual length of this paper; but if I could suppose such rhapsodies could outlive the common fate of ordinary things, I would say these sketches and faint images of glory were drawn in August, 1711, when John, Duke of Marlborough, made that memorable march wherein he took the French lines without bloodshed.-T.

The colours taken at Blenheim, in 1704, were fixed up in Westminster-hall, after having been carried in procession through the city.

The sense seems to require" without a capacity," but all Che copies read as here.

he writes once in six weeks, desires to hear from me,
complains of the torment of absence, speaks of flames,
tortures, languishings, and ecstasies. He has the
cant of an impatient lover, but keeps the pace of a
lukewarm one. You know I must not go faster than
he does, and to move at this rate is as tedious as
counting a great clock. But you are to know he is
rich, and my mother says, as he is slow he is sure;
he will love me long, if he love me little; but I ap-
peal to you whether he loves at all. Your neglected
humble servant,
"LYDIA NOVELL.

"All these fellows who have money are extremely
saucy and cold; pray, Sir, tell them of it."

"MR. SPECTATOR,

"I have been delighted with nothing more through the whole course of your writings, than the substantial account you lately gave of wit, and I could wish further the corrupt taste the age is run into; which you would take some other opportunity to express I am chiefly apt to attribute to the prevalency of a few popular authors, whose merit in some respects has given a sanction to their faults in others. Thus the imitators of Milton seem to place all the excellency of that sort of writing either in the uncouth or antique words, or something else which was highly vicious, though pardonable in that great man. The admirers of what we call point, or turn, look upon it as the particular happiness to which Cowley, Ovid, and others, owe their reputation, and therefore endeavour to imitate them only in such instances. What is just, proper, and natural, does not seem to be the question with them, but by what means a quaint antithesis may be brought about, how one be the consequence of a forced allusion. Now, word may be made to look two ways, and what will though such authors appear to me to resemble those who make themselves fine, instead of being welldressed, or graceful: yet the mischief is, that these beauties in them, which I call blemishes, are thought to proceed from luxuriance of fancy and overflowing of good sense. In one word, they have the character of being too witty; but if you would acquaint

So Philips in his Cyder is careful to mispell the words "orchat, sovran," after Milton, &c.

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"I am a young woman, and reckoned pretty; therefore you will pardon me that I trouble you to decide a wager between me and a cousin of mine, who is always contradicting one because he understands Latin: pray, Sir, is Dimple spelt with a single or double P? I am, Sir,

"Your very humble servant,

BETTY SAUNTER." "Pray, Sir, direct thus, To the kind Querist,' and leave it at Mr. Lillie's, for I do not care to be known in the thing at all. I am, Sir, again, your

humble servant."

"MR. SPECTATOR, “I must needs tell you there are several of your papers I do not much like. You are often so nice there is no enduring you, and so learned there is no understanding you. What have you to do with our petticoats? Your humble servant,

"PARTHENOPE."

ment of our sex will, I hope, in your own opinion, sufficiently excuse me from making any apology for the impertinence of this letter. The great desire I have to embellish my mind with some of those graces which you say are so becoming, and which you assert reading helps us to, has made me uneasy until I am put in a capacity of attaining them. This, Sir, I shall never think myself in, until you shall be pleased to recommend some author or authors to my perusal.

"I thought indeed, when I first cast my eye on Leonora's letter, that I should have had no occasion for requesting it of you; but to my very great concern, I found on the perusal of that Spectator, I was entirely disappointed, and am as much at a loss how to make use of my time for that end as ever. Pray, Sir, oblige me at least with one scene, as you were pleased to entertain Leonora with your probut also those of several others of my acquaintance, logue. I write to you not only my own sentiments, who are as little pleased with the ordinary manner of spending one's time as myself: and if a fervent desire after knowledge, and a great sense of our present ignorance, may be thought a good presage and earnest of improvement, you may look upon your “MR. SPECTATOR, time you shall bestow in answering this request not "Last night, as I was walking in the Park, I met thrown away to no purpose. And I cannot but add a couple of friends. Pr'ythee, Jack,' says one of that, unless you have a particular and more than orthem, let us go and drink a glass of wine, for I dinary regard for Leonora, I have a better title to ain fit for nothing else.' This put me upon reflecting your favour than she: since I do not content myself on the many miscarriages which happen in conver- with a tea-table reading of your papers, but it is my sations over wine, when men go to the bottle to re-entertainment very often when alone in my closet. move such humours as it only stirs up and awakens. This I could not attribute more to any thing than to the humour of putting company upon others which men do not like themselves. Pray, Sir, declare in your papers, that he who is a troublesome companion to himself, will not be an agreeable one to others. Let people reason themselves into good humour before they impose themselves upon their friends. Pray, Sir, be as eloquent as you can upon this subject, and do human life so much good, as to argue powerfully, that it is not every one that can swallow who is fit to drink a glass of wine.

"SIR,

"Your most humble servant."

"I this morning cast my eye upon your paper concerning the expense of time. You are very obliging to the women, especially those who are not young and past gallantry, by touching so gently upon gaming: therefore I hope you do not think it wrong to employ a little leisure time in that diversion; but I should be glad to hear you say something upon the behaviour of some of the female gamesters.

"I have observed ladies, who in all other respects are gentle, good-humoured, and the very pinks of good breeding; who, as soon as the ombre-table is called for, and sit down to their business, are immediately transmigrated into the veriests wasps in

nature.

To shew I am capable of improvement, and hate flattery, I acknowledge I do not like some of your papers; but even there I am readier to call in question my own shallow understanding than Mr. Spectator's profound judgment.

"I am, Sir, your already (and in hopes of being more your) obliged servant, "PARTHENIA."

This last letter is written with so urgent and serious an air, that I cannot but think it incumbent upon me to comply with her commands, which I shall do very suddenly.-T.

No. 141.] SATURDAY, AUGUST 11, 1711.

Migravit ab aure voluptas
Omnis.-HOR. 1 Ep. ii. 187.

Taste, that eternal wanderer, that flies

From head to ears, and now from ears to eyes.-POPE.

In the present emptiness of the town, I have several applications from the lower part of the players, to admit suffering to pass for acting. They in very obliging terms desire me to let a fall on the ground, a stumble, or a good slap on the back, be reckoned a jest. These gambols I shall tolerate for a season, because I hope the evil cannot continue longer than until the people of condition and taste return to town. The method, some time ago, was to entertain that part of the audience who have no faculty above that of eye-sight with rope-dancers and tumblers; which was a way discreet enough, because it prevented confusion and distinguished such as could show all the postures which the body is capable of, from those who were to represent all the passions to "MR. SPECTATOR, which the mind is subject. But though this was "Your kindness to Leonora in one of your papers, prudently settled, corporeal and intellectual acters has given me encouragement to do myself the ho- ought to be kept at a still wider distance than to apnour of writing to you. The great regard you have pear on the same stage at all; for which reason I so often expressed for the instruction and improve-must propose some methods for the improvement

"You must know I keep my temper, and win their money; but am out of countenance to take it, it makes them so very uneasy. Be pleased, dear Sir, to instruct them to lose with a better grace, and you will oblige, Yours,

"RACHEL BASTO."

the bear-garden, by dismissing all bodily actors to that quarter.

it is extremely foreign from the affair of comedy
Subjects of this kind, which are in themselves disa
greeable, can at no time become entertaining, but by
passing through an imagination like Shakspeare's to
form them; for which reason Mr. Dryden would not
allow even Beaumont and Fletcher capable of imi-
tating him.

But Shakspeare's magic could not copied be:
Within that circle none durst walk but he.

In cases of greater moment, where men appear in public, the consequence and importance of the thing can bear them out. And though a pleader or preacher is hoarse or awkward, the weight of his matter commands respect and attention; but in theatrical speaking, if the performer is not exactly proper and graceful, he is utterly ridiculous. In cases where there is little else expected but the pleasure of the ears and eyes, the least diminu- these remarks, if there were not something else in "I should not, however, have troubled you with tion of that pleasure is the highest offence. In this comedy, which wants to be exercised more than acting, barely to perform the part is not commend- the witches: I mean the freedom of some passages, able, but to be the least out is contemptible. To which I should have overlooked if I had not observed avoid these difficulties and delicacies, I am informed, that those jests can raise the loudest mirth, though that while I was out of town, the actors have flown they are painful to right sense, and an outrage upon in the air, and played such pranks, and run such hazards, that none but the servants of the fire-office, modesty. tilers, and masons, could have been able to perform the like. The author of the following letter, it seems, has been of the audience at one of these entertainments, and has accordingly complained to me upon it: but I think he has been to the utmost degree severe against what is exceptionable in the play he mentions, without dwelling so much as he might have done on the author's most excellent talent of humour. The pleasant pictures he has drawn of life should have been more kindly mentioned, at the same time that he banishes his witches, who are too dall devils to be attacked with so much warmth.

"MR. SPECTATOR,

"Upon a report that Moll White had followed you to town, and was to act a part in the Lancashire Witches, I went last week to see that play. It was my fortune to sit next to a country justice of the peace, a neighbour (as he said) of Sir Roger's, who pretended to show her to us in one of the dances. There was witchcraft enough in the entertainment almost to incline me to believe him; Ben Jonson+ was almost lamed: young Bullock† narrowly saved his neck: the audience was astonished; and an old acquaintance of mine, a person of worth, whom I would have bowed to in the pit, at two yards distance, did not know me.

that age: but indeed by such representations a poet "We must attribute such liberties to the taste of sacrifices the best part of his audience to the worst ; and, as one would think, neglects the boxes, to write to the orange-wenches.

"I must not conclude till I have taken notice of the moral with which this comedy ends. The two young ladies having given a notable example of outwitting those who had a right in the disposal of them, and marrying without the consent of parents-one of the injured parties, who is easily reconciled, winds up all with this remark,

Design whate'er we will,

There is a fate which over-rules us still," "We are to suppose that the gallants are men of merit, but if they had been rakes, the excuse might have served as well. Hans Carvel's wife was of the same principle, but has expressed it with a delicacy which shows she is not serious in her excuse, but in a sort of humorous philosophy turns off the thought of her guilt, and says, That if weak women go astray.

Their stars are more in fault than they. "This no doubt is a full reparation, and dismisses the audience with very edifying impressions.

"These things fall under a province you have "If you were what the country people reported partly pursued already, and therefore demands your you-a white witch-I could have wished you had animadversion, for the regulating so noble an enterbeen there to have exercised that rabble of broom-tainment as that of the stage. It were to be wished sticks with which we were haunted for above three hours. I could have allowed them to set Clod in the tree, to have scared the sportsmen, plagued the justice, and employed honest Teague with his holy water. This was the proper use of them in comedy, if the author had stopped here; but I cannot conceive what relation the sacrifice of the black lamb, and the ceremonies of their worship to the devil,‡ have to the business of mirth and humour.

that all who write for it hereafter would raise their
genius, by the ambition of pleasing people of the
best understanding; and leave others to show
nothing of the human species but risibility, to seek
their diversion at the bear-gardens, or some other
privileged place, where reason and good manners
have no right to disturb them. "I am, &c."
'August 8, 1711."

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T.

No. 142.] MONDAY, AUGUST 13, 1711.
Irrupta tenet copula
HOR. 1 Od. xiii. 12.
Whom love's unbroken bond unites.

"The gentleman who writ this play, and has drawn some characters in it very justly, appears to have been misled in his witchcraft by an unwary folewing the inimitable Shakspeare. The incantations ia Macbeth have a solemnity admirably adapted to the occasion of that tragedy, and fill the mind with THE following being genuine, and the images of a mutable horror; besides that the witches are aa worthy passion, I am willing to give the old lady's part of the story itself, as we find it very particularly admonition to myself, and the representation of her related in Hector Boetius, from whom he seems to own happiness, a place in my writings. have taken it. This therefore is a proper machine where the business is dark, horrid, and bloody; but

Alluding to Shadwell's comedy of the Lancashire Witches, which had been lately acted several times, and was advertised for the very night in which this Spectator is dated.

The names of two actors then upon the stage.

: Different incidents in the play of the Lancashire Witches. SPECTATOR-Nos. 21 & 22.

MR. SPECTATOR,

August 9, 1711.

"I am now in the sixty-seventh year of my age, do not strike at the root of the greatest evil in life, and read you with approbation; but methinks you which is the false notion of gallantry in love. It is,

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and has long been, upon a very ill foot; but I who guage to ladies; but you have a mind elevated above have been a wife forty years, and was bred up in a the giddy notions of a sex ensnared by flattery, and way that has made me ever since very happy, see misled by a false and short adoration into a solid through the folly of it. In a word, Sir, when 1 and long contempt. Beauty, my fairest creature, was a young woman, all who avoided the vices of the palls in the possession, but I love also your mind: age were very carefully educated, and all fantastical your soul is as dear to me as my own; and if the objects were turned out of our sight. The tapes- advantages of a liberal education, some knowledge, try-hangings, with the great and venerable simpli- and as much contempt of the world, joined with the city of the Scripture stories, had better effects than endeavours towards a life of strict virtue and relinow the loves of Venus and Adonis, or Bacchus and gion, can qualify me to raise new ideas in a breast Ariadne, in your fine present prints. The gentleman so well disposed as yours is, our days will pass away I am married to made love to me in rapture, but it with joy; and old age, instead of introducing melanwas the rapture of a Christian and a man of honour, choly prospects of decay, give us hope of eternal not of a romantic hero or a whining coxcomb. This youth in a better life. I have but few minutes from put our life upon a right basis. To give you an idea the duty of my employment to write in, and without of our regard one to another, I enclose to you seve-time to read over what I have writ; therefore beral of his letters, writ forty years ago, when my seech you to pardon the first hints of my mind, which lover; and one writ the other day, after so many I have expressed in so little order. years cohabitation. "I am, dearest creature,

"MADAM,

"Your servant,
"ANDROMACHE."

August 7, 1671.

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"Your most obedient, most devoted servant." The two next were written after the day for our marriage was fixed :

"MADAM,

September 25th, 1671.

"If my vigilance, and ten thousand wishes for your welfare and repose, could have any force, you last night slept in security, and had every good an"It is the hardest thing in the world to be in love, gel in your attendance. To have my thoughts ever and yet attend business. As for me, all that speak fixed on you, to live in constant fear of every acci- to me find me out, and I must lock myself up, or dent to which human life is liable, and to send up other people will do it for me. A gentleman asked my hourly prayers to avert them from you; I say, me this morning, What news from Holland?' and Madam, thus to think, and thus to suffer, is what II answered, She is exquisitely handsome.' Anodo for her who is in pain at my approach, and calls ther desired to know when I had been last at Windall my tender sorrow impertinence. You are now sor; I replied, 'She designs to go with me.' Pr'ythee, before my eyes, my eyes that are ready to flow with allow me at least to kiss your hand before the aptenderness, but cannot give relief to my gushing pointed day, that my mind may be in some composheart, that dictates what I am now saying, and yearns ure. Methinks I could write a volume to you, but to tell you all its achings. How art thou, oh my all the language on earth would fail in saying how soul, stolen from thyself! how is all my attention much, and with what disinterested passion, broken! my books are blank paper, and my friends "I am ever yours. intruders. I have no hope of quiet but from your pity. To grant it would make more for your triumph. To give pain is the tyranny, to make happy the true empire of beauty. If you would consider aright, you would find an agreeable change in dismissing the attendance of a slave, to receive the complaisance of a companion. I bear the former in hopes of the latter condition. As I live in chains without murmuring at the power which inflicts them, so I could enjoy freedom without forgetting the mercy that gave it.

"I am, Madam,

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"Before the light this morning dawned upon the earth I awaked, and lay in expectation of its return, not that it could give any new sense of joy to me, but as I hoped it would bless you with its cheerful face, after a quiet which I wished you last night. If my prayers are heard, the day appeared with all the influence of a merciful Creator upon your person and actions. Let others, my lovely charmer, talk of a blind being that disposes their hearts; I contemn their low images of love. I have not a thought which relates to you, that I cannot with confidence beseech the All-seeing Power to bless me in. May be direct you in all your steps, and reward your innocence, your sanctity of manners, your prudent youth, and becoming piety, with the continuance of his grace and protection. This is an unusual lan

"DEAR CREATURE,

September 30, 1671, seven in the morning.

"Next to the influence of heaven, I am to thank you that I see the returning day with pleasure. To pass my evenings in so sweet a conversation, and have the esteem of a woman of your merit, has in it a particularity of happiness no more to be expressed than returned. But I am, my lovely creature, contented to be on the obliged side, and to employ all my days in new endeavours to convince you and all the world of the sense I have of your condescension in choosing,

"Madam, your most faithful,

October 20, 1671.

*

most obedient humble servant."* "He was, when he writ the following letter, as agreeable and pleasant a man as any in England: "MADAM, "I beg pardon that my paper is not finer, but I am forced to write from a coffee-house where I am attending about business. There is a dirty crowd of busy faces all around me talking of money, while all my ambition, all my wealth, is love: love, which animates my heart, sweetens my humour, enlarges my soul, and affects every action of my life. It is to my lovely charmer I owe that many noble ideas are continually affixed to my words and actions: it is the natural effect of that generous passion to create in the admirers some similitude of the object admired; thus, my dear, am I every day to improve from so sweet a companion. Look up, my fair one,

Richard Steele.

to that heaven which made thee such, and join with
me to implore its influence on our tender innocent
hours, and beseech the author of love to bless the
rites he has ordained, and mingle with our happiness
a just sense of our transient condition, and a resig-
nation to his will, which only can regulate our minds
to a steady endeavour to please him and each other.
"I am, for ever, your faithful servant."*
"I will not trouble you with more letters at this
time, but if you saw the poor withered hand which
sends you these minutes, I am sure you would smile
to think that there is one who is so gallant as to
speak of it still as so welcome a present, after forty
years' possession of the woman whom he writes to."

"MADAM,

per

June 23, 1711. "I heartily beg your pardon for my omission to write yesterday. It was no failure of my tender regard for you; but having been very much plexed in my thoughts on the subject of my last, made me determine to suspend speaking of it until I came myself. But, my lovely creature, know it is not in the power of age, or misfortune, or any other accident which hangs over human life, to take from me the pleasing esteem I have for you, or the memory of the bright figure you appeared in, when you gave your hand and heart to,

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Madam, your most grateful husband,
and obedient servant."*+

No. 143. TUESDAY, AUGUST 14, 1711.
Non est vivere, sed valere, vita.-MARTIAL, Epig. lxx. 6.
For life is only life, when blest with health.

served) they who resolve to be merry, seldom are so; it will be much more unlikely for us to be wellpleased, if they are admitted who are always complaining they are sad. Whatever we do, we should keep up the cheerfulness of our spirits, and never let them sink below an inclination at least to be well pleased. The way to this, is to keep our bodies in exercise, our minds at ease. That insipid state wherein neither are in vigour, is not to be accounted any part of our portion of being. When we are in the satisfaction of some innocent pleasure, or pursuit of some laudable design, we are in the possession of life, of human life. Fortune will give us disappointments enough, and nature is attended with infirmities enough, without our adding to the unhappy side of our account by our spleen or ill-humour. Poor Cottilus, among so many real evils, a chronical distemper and a narrow fortune, is never heard to complain. That equal spirit of his, which any man may have, that, like him, will conquer pride, vanity, and affectation, and follow nature, is not to be broken, because it has no points to contend for. To be anxious for nothing but what nature demands as necessary, if it is not the way to an estate, is the way to what men aim at by getting an estate. This temper will preserve health in the body, as well as tranquillity in the mind. Cottilus sees the world in a hurry, with the same scorn that a sober person sees a man drunk. Had he been contented with what he ought to have been, how could, says he, such a one have met with such a disappointment? If another had valued his mistress for what he ought to have loved her, he had not been in her power. If her virtue had had a part of his passion, her levity had been his cure; she could not then have been

false and amiable at the same time.

Uranius is so

It is an unreasonable thing some men expect of their acquaintance. They are ever complaining that they are out of order, or displeased, or they know Since we cannot promise ourselves constant health, not how, and are so far from letting that be a reason best support in the decay of it. Uranius nas arrived let us endeavour at such a temper as may be our for retiring to their own homes, that they make it their argument for coming into company. What has at that composure of soul, and wrought himself up any body to do with accounts of a man's being indis- to such a neglect of every thing with which the geposed, but his physician? If a man laments in comnerality of mankind is enchanted, that nothing but pany, where the rest are in humour enough to enjoy those too he will tell his intimate friends he has a acute pains can give him disturbance, and against themselves, he should not take it ill if a servant is ordered to present him with a porringer of caudle or secret which gives him present ease. posset-drink, by way of admonition that he go home thoroughly persuaded of another life, and endeato bed. That part of life which we ordinarily un- looks upon pain but as a quickening of his pace to a vours so sincerely to secure an interest in it, that he derstand by the word conversation, is an indulgence to the sociable part of our make; and should incline home, where he shall be better provided for than in us to bring our proportion of good-will or good-hu-views which others are apt to give themselves, he his present apartment. Instead of the melancholy mour among the friends we meet with, and not to will tell you that he has forgot he is mortal, nor will trouble them with relations which must of necessity he think of himself as such. He thinks at the time oblige them to a real or feigned affliction. Cares, of his birth he entered into an eternal being; and distresses, diseases, uneasinesses, and dislikes of our the short article of death he will not allow an interown, are by no means to be obtruded upon our friends. If we would consider how little of this vi- ruption of life; since that moment is not of half the cissitude of motion and rest, which we call life, is duration as his ordinary sleep. Thus is his being spent with satisfaction, we should be more tender of one uniform and consistent series of cheerful diverour friends than to bring them little sorrows which sions and moderate cares, without fear or hope of fudo not belong to them. There is no real life but turity. Health to him is more than pleasure to cheerful life; therefore valetudinarians should be another man, and sickness less affecting to him than sworn, before they enter into company, not to say a indisposition is to others. word of themselves until the meeting breaks up. It is not here pretended that we should be always sit- this manner, none but idiots can pass it away with ting with chaplets of flowers round our heads, or be any tolerable patience. Take a fine lady who is of crowned with roses in order to make our entertain-a delicate frame, and you may observe, from the ment agreeable to us; but if (as it is usually ob-hour she rises, a certain weariness of all that passes

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I must confess, if one does not regard life after

about her. I know more than one who is much too nice to be quite alive. They are sick of such strange frightful people they meet; one is so awkward, and another so disagreeable, that it looks like a penance to breathe the same air with them. You see this is

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