heart burn within him, who reads it with due attention.

That admirable author having shewn the virtue of a good conscience in supporting a man under the greatest trials and difficulties of life, concludes with representing its force and efficacy in the hour of death.

The third and last instance, in which above all others this confidence towards God does most eminently shew and exert itself, is at the time of death. Which surely gives the grand opportunity of trying both the strength and worth of every principle. When a man shall be just about to quit the stage of this world, to put off his mortality, and to deliver up his last accounts to God; at which sad time his memory shall serve him for little else, but to terrify him with a frightful review of his past life, and his former extravagance stripped of all their pleasure, but retaining their guilt: what is it then. that can promise him a fair passage into the other world, or a comfortable appearance before his dreadful Judge when he is there? Not all the friends and interests, all the riches and honours under heaven can speak so much as a word for him, or one word of comfort to him in that condition; they may possibly reproach, but they cannot relieve him.

No, at this disconsolate time, when the busy tempter shall be more than usually apt to vex and trouble him, and the pains of a dying body to hinder and discompose him, and the settlement of worldly affairs to disturb and confound him; and in a word, all things conspire to make his sick bed grievous and uneasy; nothing can then stand up against all these ruins, and speak life in the midst of death, but a clear conscience.

And the testimony of that shall make the comforts of heaven descend upon his weary head, like refreshing dew, or shower upon a parched ground. It shall give him some lively earnests, and secret anticipations of his approaching joy. It shall bid his soul go out of the body undaunted, and lift up his head with confidence before saints and angels. Surely the comfort, which it conveys at this season, is something bigger than the capacities of mortality, mighty and unspeakable, and not to be understood until it comes to be felt.

And now, who would not quit all the pleasures and trash and trifles, which are apt to captivate the heart of man, and pursue the greatest rigours of piety, and austerities of a good life, to purchase to himself such a conscience, as at the hour of death, when all the friendship in the world shall bid him adieu, and the whole creation turns its back upon him, shall dismiss the soul and close his eyes with that blessed sentence, "well done, thou good and faithful servant, enter thou into the joy of thy Lord!"

N° 136. MONDAY, AUGUST 17, 1713.

Noctes atque dies patet atri janua Ditis.

VIRG. En. vi. 127.

The gates of death are open night and day.

DRYDEN.

SOME of our quaint moralists have pleased themselves with an observation, that there is but one way of coming into the world, but a thousand to go out of it. I have seen a fanciful dream written by a Spaniard, in which he introduces the person of death metamorphosing himself like another Proteus into innumerable shapes and figures. To represent the fatality of fevers and agues, with many other distempers and accidents that destroy the life of man, death enters first of all in a body of fire; a little after he appears like a man of snow, then rolls about the room like a cannon-ball, then lies on the table like a gilded pill; after this he transforms himself all of a sudden into a sword, then dwindles successively to a dagger, to a bodkin, to a crooked pin, to a needle, to a hair. The Spaniard's design by this allegory, was to shew the many assaults to which the life of man is exposed, and to let his reader see that there was scarce any thing in nature so very mean and inconsiderable, but that it was able to overcome him, and lay his head in the dust. I remember monsieur Pascal, in his reflections on Providence, has this observa

tion upon Cromwel's death. That usurper, says he, who had destroyed the royal family in his own nation, who had made all the princes of Europe tremble, and struck a terror into Rome itself, was at last taken out of the world by a fit of the gravel. An atom, a grain of sand, says he, that would have been of no significancy in any other part of the universe, being lodged in such a particular place, was an instrument of Providence to bring about the most happy revolutions, and to remove from the face of the earth this troubler of mankind. In short, swarms of distempers are every where hovering over us; casualties, whether at home or abroad, whether we wake or sleep, sit or walk, are planted about us in ambuscade; every element, every climate, every season, all nature is full of death.

There are more casualties incident to men than women, as battles, sea-voyages, with several dangerous trades and professions that often prove fatal to the practitioners. I have seen a treatise written by a learned physician on the distempers peculiar to those who work in stone or marble. It has been therefore observed by curious men, that upon a strict examination there are more males brought into the world than females. Providence, to supply this waste of the species, has made allowance for it by a suitable redundancy in the male sex. Those who have made the nicest calculations have found, I think, that taking one year with another, there are about twenty boys produced to nineteen girls. This observation is so well grounded, that I will at any time lay five to four, that there appear more male than female infants in every weekly bill of mortality. And what can be a more demonstra

tive argument for the superintendency of Providence?

There are casualties incident to every particular station and way of life. A friend of mine was once saying, that he fancied there would be something new and diverting in a country bill of mortality. Upon communicating this hint to a gentleman who was then going down to his seat, which lies at a considerable distance from London, he told me he would make a collection, as well as he could, of the several deaths that had happened in his country for the space of a whole year, and send them up to me in the form of such a bill as I mentioned. The reader will here see that he has been as good as his promise. To make it the more entertaining he has set down, among the real distempers, some imaginary ones, to which the country people ascribe the deaths of some of their neighbours. I shall extract out of them such only as seem almost peculiar to the country, laying aside fevers, apoplexies, smallpox, and the like, which they have in common with towns and cities.

Of a six-bar gate, fox-hunters

Of a quick-set hedge

Two duels, viz.

First, between a frying-pan and a pitch-fork
Second, between a joint-stool and a brown jug
Bewitched

Of an evil tongue

Crost in love

Broke his neck in robbing a henroost

Cut finger turned to a gangrene by an old

gentlewoman of the parish

Surfeit of curds and cream

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