may improve for his intellectual pleasure and his spiritual advantage.

But to return to Joseph Addison, who used to sleep in one of those rooms, and to say his lessons in the old school-we catch the next glimpse of him down Fulham way. Faulkner, the historian of Fulham, who wrote in 1811, describes at the eastern extremity of the parish, situated by a small creek running to the Thames, a building called Sandford Manor-house, formerly of some note from having been the residence of the notorious Nell Gwynn. "The mansion is of venerable appearance; and immediately in front are four walnut-trees, affording an agreeable shade, that are said to have been planted by royal hands; and the fruit is esteemed of a peculiarly fine quality." According to the authority just quoted, Addison was residing in this house in the year 1708. He had, in 1693, left Oxford, whither he went from the Charter-house; he had, from 1699 to 1702, pursued his travels on the Continent, of which his "Dialogue on Medals" and his "Cato" are mementoes; he had passed two years in retirement, and then devoted himself to political business; and at the time to which we now refer, had reached the office of under-secretary of state. Two letters, stated by Mr. Faulkner to have been written from Sandford Manor-house, are interesting memorials of the state of the neighbourhood round about Fulham then, and of the intense relish for rural scenes and pleasures, and the minute observation of natural objects which always distinguished the author of the "Spectator." The letters are addressed to the young Earl of Warwick, to whom he subsequently became stepfather. He has been represented as the youthful nobleman's tutor, but it would appear that he never sustained such a relation. In the first letter, he gives a particular account of a curious bird's-nest found near the house, about which nis neighbours were divided in opinion, some taking it for a nest of skylarks, some of canary birds, but he judging the inmates to

be tomtits. In the second letter he says:-"I can't forbear being troublesome to your lordship while I am in your neighbourhood. The business of this is to invite you to a concert of music which I have found on a tree in a neighbouring wood. It begins precisely at six in the evening, and consists of a blackbird, a thrush, a robin redbreast, and a bullfinch. There is a lark that by way of overture sings and mounts till she is almost out of hearing, and afterwards falls down leisurely, and drops to the ground, as soon as she has ended her song. The whole is concluded by a nightingale, that has a much better voice than Mrs. Tofts, and something of Italian manners in its diversions. If your lordship will honour me with your company, I will promise to entertain you with much better music and more agreeable scenes than you ever met with at the opera, and will conclude with a charming description of a nightingale out of our friend Virgil:

'So close in poplar shades her children gone,

The mother nightingale laments alone,

Whose nest some prying churl had found, and thenco
By stealth convey'd the unfeather'd innocents;
But she supplies the night with mournful strains,
And melancholy music fills the plains." "

The letter places our elegant essayist distinctly before us, on a bright May evening, with upturned ear, beneath some lofty elm or oak, charmed with the beautiful oratorio of the birds in the wood at Fulham. One sees in every line the simple unaffected tastes of the man-so much more charmed with the grove than the opera, so decidedly preferring the nightingale to Mrs. Tofts; nor can we fail to recognise the amiable and benevolent feelings which prompted Addison to strive after reclaiming the youth of vitiated predilections, by the inspiration of a love for purer pleasures.

But the lover of nature had a wonderfully keen eye for the

observation of men and manners, of which every volume of the "Spectator" abounds in examples. As a companion sketch to the one just given, of Addison listening to the birds in a wood, we may draw from the "Spectator" one representing him as he listens with equal interest, but of another kind, to the stir and bustle of the Royal Exchange. "I have often been pleased to hear disputes adjusted between an inhabitant of Japan and an alderman of London, or to see a subject of the Great Mogul entering into a league with one of the Czar of Muscovy. I am infinitely delighted in mixing with these several ministers of commerce as they are distinguished by their different walks and different languages; sometimes I am jostled among a body of Armenians, sometimes I am lost in a crowd of Jews, and sometimes make one in a group of Dutchmen. I am a Dane, Swede, or Frenchman, at different times; or rather, fancy myself like the old philosopher, who upon being asked what countryman he was, replied that he was a citizen of the world." We can see him in the Old Exchange, as we remember it before the last fire, looking with a keen eye from under that flowing wig and cocked hat of his, upon British and foreign merchants. He himself paints a bit of back-ground for his own portrait, where he says:-"When I have been upon the 'Change, I have often fancied one of our old kings standing in person where he is represented in effigy, and looking down upon the wealthy concourse of people with which that place is every day filled." The old effigies are restored as we listen to the Spectator's reflections, and we muse on the shade of the man who, perhaps rudely pushed aside by some burly citizen, full of the consciousness of being a millionaire, is about by his quiet pen to immortalize the whole scene, though he alone of all the group will remain capable of being individualized by posterity.

In 1710, Addison was living in St. James's-place. He had lodgings there, and, according to Pope, the essayist's old school

fellow and literary coadjutor, Steele, together with Budgell, Philips, Carey, Davenant, and Colonel Brett, used to drop in and take breakfast with him. The "Tatler" and the "Spectator" had then been recently established, and were exciting no small interest in all reading circles, royalty even looking out for the new number to be served up with the provisions of the breakfast table. The new number of the periodical, fresh from the press, and lying before them, would of course be the subject of conversation among the wits who met in St. James's-place, to enjoy Addison's hospitality, including, as the party did, some who were contributors; nor would they be so regardless of the number sold as not to touch at times on that point. It is rather curious in these days of large circulation for such productions, to be told by Dr. Johnson relative to the "Tatler" and the "Spectator:"-" I once heard it observed that the sale may be calculated by the product of the tax related in the last number to produce more than twenty pounds a week, and therefore stated at one and twenty pounds, or three pounds ten shillings a day; this, at a half-penny a paper, will give 1680 for the daily number." The Doctor speaks of this as no great sale; and intimates that the circulation of the "Spectator" at the time of its periodical issue, was likely to grow less, if, as Swift says was the case, the public were wearied by incessant allusions to "the fair sex."

Following the shade of Addison, we are plunged into the midst of the fashionable society of the metropolis, both literary and political. In those days, taverns were to them what West-end clubs are to the same classes now. Between the Temple gates and Temple Bar was a famous place of this description, bearing the hideous name of the Devil's Tavern. Child's Bank adjoins the site on which it stood. Ben Jonson and the wits of his day had made it their rendezvous. His "Leges Convivales" were written for the regulation of their proceedings, and the Latin law of "insipida poemata

nulla recitantur" (insipid poems are not to be repeated) is supposed to mean that the rare Ben Jonson considered his own productions would certainly be otherwise, and that he ought to have the business of recitation pretty much to himself. In 1710, we meet with our great essayist in this tavern with the ugly appellation. He is in the midst of political excitement; for a general election is raging throughout the land, full of all sorts of excesses, such as Hogarth afterwards delineated in one of his admirable pictures. "I dined to-day," (Oct. 12,) Swift tells us in a letter to Stella, "with Dr. Garth and Mr. Addison, at the Devil Tavern, near Temple Bar: and it is well I dine every day, else I should be longer making out my letters; for we are yet in a very dull state, only inquiring every day after new elections, where the Tories carry it among the new members six to one. Mr. Addison's election has passed easy and undisputed, and I believe if he had a mind to be chosen king, he would hardly be refused."

So Addison was then in the zenith of popularity; and though a Whig, when Whigs were at a discount, could hold up his head aloft among Tory rivals. The pictorial scene of Addison, Garth, and Swift, in an oak parlour, round a table covered with smoking viands, is prosaic and conceivable enough; but some may think there must have been rare discourse between such a trio-wonderful scintillations, brisk repartees, keen satire, shrewd remarks: only experience teaches that such men in private are often commonplace like other people-that the learned do not always appear so very learned, or wits so very witty. In a snug little party of intimate friends, Addison was likely to be at ease and communicative. Pope tells us his conversation had a charm in it he had never found in any other man's; but before strangers he was stiff and silent. Chesterfield declared him the most timorous and awkward man he ever saw, and Addison himself was conscious enough of the difference between the power he had over his pen and his tongue.