INTRODUCTION. And one who hath had losses-go to. Much Ado about Nothing. WHEN honest Dogberry sums up and recites all the claims which he had to respectability, and which, as he opined, ought to have exempted him from the injurious appellation conferred on him by Master Gentleman Conrade, it is remarkable that he lays not more emphasis even upon his double gown, (a matter of some importance in a certain ci-devant capital which I wot of,) or upon his being "a pretty piece of flesh as any in Messina," or even upon the conclu sive argument of his being a rich fellow enough," than upon his being one that hath had losses. 66 Indeed, I have always observed your children of prosperity, whether by way of hiding their full glow of splendour from those whom fortune has treated more harshly, or whether that to have risen in spite of calamity is as honourable to their fortune as it is to å fortress to have undergone a siege,-however this be, I have observed that such per A sons never fail to entertain you with an account of the damage they sustain by the hardness of the times. You seldom dine at a wellsupplied table, but what the intervals between the Champagne, the Burgundy, and the Hock, are filled, if your entertainer be a monied man, with the fall of interest and the difficulty of finding investments for cash, which is therefore lying idle on his hands; or, if he be a landed proprietor, with a woeful detail of arrears and diminished rents. This hath its effects. The guests sigh and shake their heads in cadence with their landlord, look on the sideboard loaded with plate, sip once more the rich wines which flow around them in quick circulation, and think of the genuine benevolence, which, thus stinted of its means, still lavishes all that it yet possesses on hospitality; and, what is yet more flattering, on the wealth, which, undiminished by these losses, still continues, like the inexhaustible hoard of the generous Aboulcasem, to sustain, without impoverishment, such copious evacuations. This querulous humour, however, hath its limits, like to the conning of grievances, which all valetudinarians know is a most facinating pastime, so long as there is nothing to complain of but chronic complaints. But I never heard a man whose credit was actually verging to decay talk of the diminution of his funds; and my kind and intelligent physician assures me, that it is a rare |