all such furious zealots as would sacrifice one half of their country to the passion and interest of the other; as also such infamous hypocrites that1 are for promoting their own advantage under color of the public good; with all the profligate, immoral retainers to each side, that have nothing to recommend them but an implicit submission to their leaders; 2-we should soon see that furious party spirit extinguished, which may in time expose us to the derision. and contempt of all the nations about us.

A member of this society that would thus carefully employ himself in making room for merit, by throwing down the worthless and depraved part of mankind from those conspicuous stations of. life to which they have been sometimes advanced, and all this without any regard to his private interest, would be no small benefactor to his country.

3

I remember to have read in Diodorus Siculus an account of a very active little animal, which I think he calls the ichneumon, that makes it the whole business of his life to break the eggs of the crocodile, which he is always in search after. This instinct is the more remarkable because the ichneumon never feeds upon the eggs he has broken, nor in any other way finds his account in them. Were it not for the incessant labors of this industrious animal, Egypt, says the historian, would be overrun with crocodiles; for the Egyptians are so far from destroying those pernicious creatures that they worship them as gods.

If we look into the behavior of ordinary partisans, we shall find them far from resembling this disinterested animal, and rather acting after the example of the wild Tartars, who are ambitious of destroying a man of the most extraordinary parts and accomplishments, as thinking that upon his decease the same talents, whatever post they qualified him for, enter of course into his destroyer.

1 As.

2 The "bosses" of to-day. Bibliothecae Historicae, book i., § 35.

As in the whole train of my speculations I have endeavored, as much as I am able, to extinguish that pernicious spirit of passion and prejudice which rages with the same violence in all parties, I am still the more desirous of doing some good in this particular because I observe that the spirit of party reigns more in the country than in the town. It here contracts a kind of brutality and rustic fierceness to which men of a politer conversation are wholly strangers. It extends itself even to the return of the bow and the hat; and at the same time that the heads of parties preserve toward one another an outward show of good breeding, and keep up a perpetual intercourse of civilities, their tools that are dispersed in these outlying parts will not so much as mingle together at a cock-match. This humor fills the country with several periodical meetings of Whig jockeys and Tory fox-hunters, not to mention the innumerable curses, frowns, and whispers it produces at a quarter sessions.

I do not know whether I have observed, in any of my former papers, that my friends Sir Roger de Coverley and Sir Andrew Freeport are of different principles; the first of them inclined to the landed and the other to the moneyed interest.1 This humor is so moderate in each of them that it proceeds no farther than to an agreeable raillery, which very often diverts the rest of the club. I find, however, that the knight is a much stronger Tory in the country than in town, which, as he has told me in my ear, is absolutely necessary for the keeping up his interest. In all our journey from London to his house we did not so much as bait at a Whig inn; or if by chance the coachman stopped at a wrong place, one of Sir Roger's servants would ride up to his master full speed, and whisper to him that the master of the house was against such an one in the last election. This often betrayed us into hard beds and bad cheer; for we were not so inquisitive about the inn as the

'Which was the Whig and which the Tory?

innkeeper, and, provided our landlord's principles were sound, did not take any notice of the staleness of his provisions. This I found still the more inconvenient because the better the host was, the worse generally were his accommodations; the fellow knowing very well that those who were his friends would take up with coarse diet and an hard lodging. For these reasons, all the while I was upon the road I dreaded entering into an house of any one that Sir Roger had applauded for an honest man.

Since my stay at Sir Roger's in the country, I daily find more instances of this narrow party-humor. Being upon a bowling-green at a neighboring market-town the other day (for that is the place where the gentlemen of one side meet once a week), I observed a stranger among them of a better presence and genteeler behavior than ordinary; but was much surprised that, notwithstanding he was a very fair better, nobody would take him up. But, upon inquiry, I found that he was one who had given a disagreeable vote in a former parliament, for which reason there · was not a man upon that bowling-green who would have so much correspondence with him as to win his money of him.

Among other instances of this nature, I must not omit one which concerns myself. Will Wimble was the other day relating several strange stories, that he had picked up nobody knows where, of a certain great man, and upon my staring at him, as one that was surprised to hear such things in the country, which had never been so much as whispered in the town, Will stopped short in the thread of his discourse, and after dinner asked my friend Sir Roger in his ear if he was sure that I was not a fanatic.

It gives me a serious concern to see such a spirit of dissension in the country; not only as it destroys virtue and common sense, and renders us in a manner barbarians

1 There is a lack of euphony from a repetition of "better," as well as some confusion of thought from its use in a different sense.

towards one another, but as it perpetuates our animosities, widens our breaches, and transmits our present passions and prejudices to our posterity. For my own part, I am. sometimes afraid that I discover the seeds of a civil war 1 in these our divisions, and therefore cannot but bewail, as in their first principles, the miseries and calamities of our children. C.

'What was the last civil war in England before Addison wrote ? Did the American Revolution arise from any such cause as Addison feared?

XXIV.

GYPSIES.

[Spectator No. 130. Monday, July 30, 1711. Addison.]

Semperque recentes

Convectare juvat praedas, et vivere rapto.

2

VIRGIL.

As I was yesterday riding out in the fields with my friend Sir Roger, we saw at a little distance from us a troop of gypsies. Upon the first discovery of them, my friend was in some doubt whether he should not exert the justice of the peace1 upon such a band of lawless vagrants; but not having his clerk with him, who is a necessary counsellor on these occasions, and fearing that his poultry might fare the worse for it, he let the thought drop; but at the same time gave me a particular account of the mischiefs they do in the country, in stealing people's goods and spoiling their servants. "If a stray piece of linen hangs upon an hedge," says Sir Roger, "they are sure to have it; if the hog loses his way in the fields, it is ten to one but he becomes their prey; our geese cannot live in peace for them; if a man prosecutes them with severity, his hen-roost is sure to pay for it. They generally straggle into these parts about this time of the year, and set the heads of our servant-maids so agog for husbands that we do not expect to have any business done as it should be whilst they are in the country. I have an honest dairymaid who crosses their hands with a piece of silver every summer, and never fails being promised the handsomest young fellow in the parish for her pains. Your friend, the butler, has been fool enough to be seduced by them; 2 Why?

Exercise his authority as justice of the peace.