What is there in ambition,

same vanity as I am. but to make other people's wills depend upon yours? This indeed is not to be aimed at by one who has a genius no higher than to think of being a very good housewife in a country gentleman's family. The care of poultry and pigs are great enemies to the countenance; the vacant look of a fine lady is not to be preserved, if she admits any thing to take up her thoughts but her own dear person. But I interrupt you too long from your cares, and myself from my conquests.

I am, Madam,

Your most humble servant."

'Give me leave, Mr. Spectator, to add her friend's answer to this epistle, who is a very discreet ingeni+

ous woman.

"DEAR GATTY,

"I TAKE your raillery in very good part, and am obliged to you for the free air with which you speak of your own gaieties. But this is but a barren superficial pleasure; for, indeed, Gatty, we are made for man; and in serious sadness I must tell you, whether you yourself know it or no, all these gallantries tend to no other end but to be a wife and a mother as fast as you can.

T.

I am, Madam,

Your most obedient servant.'

N°516. WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 22, 1712.

Immortale odium, et nunquam sanabile vulnus :
Inde furor vulgo, quod numina vicinorum
Odit uterque locus; quum solos credit babendos
Esse deos, quos ipse colat.-

JUV. Sat. xv. 34

-A grutch, time out of mind, begun,
And mutually bequeath'd from sire to son:
Religious spite and pious spleen bred first
The quarrel which so long the bigots nurst:
Each calls the other's god a senseless stock:
His own divine.

TATE.

Of all the monstrous passions and opinions which have crept into the world, there is none so wonderful as that those, who profess the common name of Christians, should pursue each other with rancour and hatred for differences in their way of following the example of their Saviour. It seems so natural that all who pursue the steps of any leader should form themselves after his manner, that it is impossible to account for effects so different from what we might expect from those who profess themselves followers of the highest pattern of meekness and charity, but by ascribing such effects to the ambition and corruption of those who are so audacious, with souls full of fury, to serve at the altars of the God of Peace.

The massacres to which the church of Rome has animated the ordinary people are dreadful instances of the truth of this observation; and whoever reads the history of the Irish rebellion, and the cruelties which ensued thereupon, will be sufficiently convinced to what rage poor ignorants may be worked up by those who profess holiness, and become in

cendiaries, and under the dispensation of grace, promote evils abhorrent to nature.

The subject and catastrophe, which deserve so well to be remarked by the protestant world, will, I doubt not, be considered, by the reverend and learned prelate that preaches to-morrow before many of the descendants of those who perished on that lamentable day, in a manner suitable to the occasion, and worthy his own great virtue and eloquence.

I shall not dwell upon it any further, but only transcribe out of a little tract, called the Christian Hero, published in 1701, what I find there in honour of the renowned hero, William III., who rescued that nation from the repetition of the same disasters. His late majesty, of glorious memory, and the most christian king, are considered at the conclusion of that treatise as heads of the protestant and Romancatholic world in the following manner.

'There were not ever, before the entrance of the Christian name into the world, men who have maintained a more renowned carriage, than the two great rivals who possess the full fame of the present age, and will be the theme and examination of the future. They are exactly formed by nature for those ends to which heaven seems to have sent them amongst us. Both animated with a restless desire of glory, but pursue it by different means, and with different motives. To one it consists in an extensive undisputed empire over his subjects, to the other in their rational and voluntary obedience. One's happiness is founded in their want of power, the other's in their want of desire to oppose him. The one enjoys the summit of fortune with the luxury of a Persian, the other with the moderation of a Spartan. One is made to oppress, the other to relieve the oppressed. The one is satisfied with the pomp and ostentation of power to prefer and debase his

inferiors; the other delighted only with the cause and foundation of it to cherish and protect them. To one therefore religion is but a convenient disguise, to the other a vigorous motive of action.

'For, without such ties of real and solid honour, there is no way of forming a monarch, but after the Machiavelian scheme, by which a prince must ever seem to have all virtues, but really be master of none; he is to be liberal, merciful, and just, only as they serve his interests; while, with the noble art of hypocrisy, empire would be to be extended, and new conquests be made by new devices, by which prompt address his creatures might insensibly give law in the business of life, by leading men in the entertainment of it.

Thus, when words and show are apt to pass for the substantial things they are only to express, there would need no more to enslave a country but to adorn a court; for while every man's vanity makes him believe himself capable of becoming luxury, enjoyments are a ready bait for sufferngs and the hopes of preferment invitations to servitude; which slavery would be coloured with all the agreements, as they call it, imaginable. The noblest arts and artists, the finest pens and most elegant minds, jointly employed to set it off with the various embellishments of sumptuous entertainments, charming assemblies, and polished discourses, and those apostate abilities of men, the adored monarch might profusely and skilfully encourage, while they flatter his virtue, and gild his vice at so high a rate, that he, without scorn of the one, or love of the other, would alternately and occasionally use both: so that his bounty should support him in his rapines, his mercy in his cruelties.

Nor is it to give things a more severe look than is natural, to suppose such must be the consequences

of a prince's having no other pursuit than that of his own glory; for if we consider an infant born into the world, and beholding itself the mightiest thing in it, itself the present admiration and future prospect of a fawning people, who profess themselves great or mean, according to the figure he is to make amongst them, what fancy would not be debauched to believe they were but what they professed themselves his mere creatures, and use them as such, by purchasing with their lives a boundless renown, which he, for want of a more just prospect, would place in the number of his slaves, and the extent of his territories? Such undoubtedly would be the tragical effects of a prince's living with no religion, which are not to be surpassed but by his having a false one.

'If ambition were spirited with zeal, what would follow, but that his people should be converted into an army, whose swords can make right in power, and solve controversy in belief? And if men should be stiff-necked to the doctrine of that visible church, let them be contented with an oar and a chain, in the midst of stripes and anguish, to contemplate on Him whose yoke is easy and whose burden is light.

With a tyranny begun on his own subjects, and indignation that others draw their breath independent of his frown or smile, why should he not proceed to the seizure of the world? And if nothing but the thirst of sway were the motive of his actions, why should treaties be other than mere words, or solemn national compacts be any thing but an halt in the march of that army, who are never to lay down their arms until all men are reduced to the necessity of hanging their lives on his wayward will; who might supinely, and at leisure, expiate his own sins, by other men's sufferings, while he daily meditates new slaughter and conquests?