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three of these dark undermining vermin, and in tend to make a string of them, in order to hang them up in one of my papers, as an example to all such voluntary moles.

No. 125.] TUESDAY, JULY 24, 1711.
Ne, pueri, ne tanta animis assuescite bella:
Neu patriæ validas in viscera vertite vires.

C.

VIRG., En. vi, 832
This thirst of kindred blood, my sons, detest,
Nor turn your force against your country's breast,
DRYDEN.

world after such a manner: though I must coufess I am amazed that the press should be only made use of in this way by news-writers, and the zealots of parties: as if it were not more advantageous to mankind, to be instructed in wisdom and virtue, than in politics; and to be made good fathers, husbands and sons, than counselors and statesmen. Had the philosophers and great men of antiquity, who took so much pains in order to instruct mankind, and leave the world wiser and better than they found it; had they, I say, been possessed of the art of printing, there is no question but they would have made such an advantage of it, in dealing out their lectures to the public. Our common prints would be of great use were they My worthy friend Sir Roger, when we are talk thus calculated to diffuse good sense through the ing of the malice of parties, very frequently tells bulk of a people, to clear up their understandings, us an accident that happened to him when he was animate their minds with virtue, dissipate the a school-boy which was at the time when the feuds sorrows of a heavy heart, or unbend the mind ran high between the Round-heads and Cavaliers. from its more severe employments, with innocent This worthy knight, being then but a stripling, amusements. When knowledge, instead of being had occasion to inquire which was the way to bound up in books, and kept in libraries and re- St. Anne's-lane; upon which the person whom tirements, is thus obtruded upon the public; when he spoke, instead of answering the question it is canvassed in every assembly, and exposed called him a young popish cur, and asked him upon every table, I cannot forbear reflecting upon who had made Anne a saint? The boy being in that passage in the Proverbs: Wisdom crieth some confusion, inquired of the next he met, without, she uttereth her voice in the streets; she which was the way to Anne's-laue; but was called crieth in the chief place of concourse, in the open-a prick-eared cur for his pains, and instead of beings of the gates. In the city she uttereth her words, saying, How long, ye simple ones, will ye love simplicity? And the scorners delight in their scorning? And fools hate knowledge?"

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The many letters which come to me from persons of the best sense in both sexes (for I may pronounce their characters from their way of writing) do not a little encourage me in the prosecution of this my undertaking: beside that my bookseller tells me, the demand for these my papers increases daily. It is at his instance that I shall continue my rural speculations to the end of this month; several having made up separate sets of them, as they have done of those relating to wit, to operas, to points of morality, or subjects

of humor.

I am not at all mortified, when sometimes I see my works thrown aside by men of no taste or learning. There is a kind of heaviness and ignorance that hangs upon the minds of ordinary men, which is too thick for knowledge to break through. Their souls are not to be enlightened.

Nox atra ca va circumvolat umbra.

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VIRG., En. ii, 300.

Black night inwraps them in her gloomy shade. To these I must apply the fable of the mole that, after having consulted many oculists for the bettering of his sight, was at last provided with a good pair of spectacles; but upon his endeavoring to make use of them, his mother told him very prudently, That spectacles, though they might help the eye of a man, could be of no use to a mole." It is not therefore for the benefit of moles that I publish these my daily essays. But beside such as are moles through ignorance, there are others who are moles through envy. As it is said in the Latin proverb, That one man is a wolf to another;" so, generally speaking, one author is a mole to another. It is impossible for them to discover beauties in one another's works; they have eyes only for spots and blemishes: they can indeed see the light, as it is said of the animals which are their namesakes, but the idea of it is painful to them; they immediately shut their eyes upon it, and withdraw themselves into a willful obscurity. I have already caught two or

* Newspapers.

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ing shown the way, was told that she had been a saint before he was born, and would be one after he was hanged. Upon this," says Sir Roger,

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I did not think fit to repeat the former question, but going into every lane of the neighborhood, asked what they called the name of that lane." By which ingenious artifice he found out the place he inquired after, without giving offense to any party. Sir Roger generally closes this narrative with reflections on the mischief that par ties do in the country; how they spoil good neighborhood, and make honest gentlemen hate one another; beside that they manifestly tend to the prejudice of the land-tax, and the destruction of the game.

There cannot be a greater judgment befall a country than such a dreadful spirit of division as rends a government into distinct people, and makes them greater strangers and more averse to one another, than if they were actually two different nations. The effects of such a division are pernicious to the last degree, not only with regard to those advantages which they give the common enemy, but to those private evils which they produce in the heart of almost every particular perThis influence is very fatal, both to men's morals and their understandings; it sinks the virtue of a nation, and not only so, but destroys even common sense.

son.

A furious party spirit, when it rages in its full violence, exerts itself in civil war and bloodshed; and when it is under its greatest restraints natur ally breaks out in falsehood, detraction, calumny, and a partial administration of justice. In 1 word, it fills a nation with spleen and rancor, and extinguishes all the seeds of good-nature, compassion, and humanity.

Plutarch says very finely, "that a man should not allow himself to hate even his enemies; because," says he, if you indulge this passion on some occasions, it will rise of itself in others; if you hate your enemies, you will contract such a vicious habit of mind, as by degrees will break out upon those who are your friends, or those who are indifferent to you." I might here observe how admirably this precept of morality (which derives the malignity of hatred from the passion itself, and not from its object) answers to that great rule which was dictated to the world about a

hundred years before this philosopher wrote; but | instead of that, I shall only take notice, with a real grief of heart, that the minds of many good meu among us appear soured with party principles, and alienated from one another in such a inanner as seems to me altogether inconsistent with the dictates e.ther of reason or religion. Zeal for a public cause is apt to breed passions in the hearts of virtuous persons, to which the regard of their own private interest would never have betraved them.

For my own part, I could heartily wish that all honest men would enter into an association, for the support of one another against the endeavors of those whom they ought to look upon as their common enemies, whatsoever side they may be long to. Were there such an honest body of neu tral forces, we should never see the worst of men in great figures of life, because they are useful to a party; nor the best unregarded, because they are above practicing those methods which would be grateful to their faction. We should then single every criminal out of the herd, and hunt hin down, however formidable and overgrown he might appear: on the contrary, we should shelter distressed innocence, and defend virtue, however beset with contempt or ridicule, envy or defamation. In short, we should not any longer regard our fellow-subjects as whigs or tories, but should make the man of merit our friend, and the villain our enemy.-C

If this party-spirit has so ill an effect on our morals, it has likewise a very great one upon our judgments. We often hear a poor insipid paper or pamphlet cried up, and sometimes a noble piece deprecated, by those who are of a different principle from the author. One who is actuated by this spirit is almost under an incapacity of discerning either real blemishes or beauties. A man of merit in a different principle, is like an object seen in two different mediums, that appears crooked or broken, however straight and entire it may be in itself. For this reason there is scarce a No. 126.] WEDNESDAY, JULY 25, 1711. person of any figure in England, who does not go Tros Rutulusve fuat, nullo discrimine habebo. by two contrary characters, as opposite to one VIRG. En., x, 108. another as light and darkness. Knowledge and Rutulians, Trojans, are the same to me.-DRYDEN. learning suffer in a particular manner from this Ix my yesterday's paper I proposed, that the strange prejudice, which at present prevails among honest men of all parties should enter into a kind all ranks and degrees in the British nation. As of association for the defense of one another, and men formerly became eminent in learned societies the confusion of their common enemies. As it is by their parts and acquisitions, they now dis- designed this neutral body should act with a retinguished themselves by the warinth and violence gard to nothing but truth and equity, and divest with which they espouse their respective parties.-themselves of the little heats and prepossessions Books are valued upon the like considerations. that cleave to parties of all kinds, I have prepared An abusive, scurrilous style passes for satire, and for them the following form of an association, a dull scheme of party notions is called fine writing. which may express their intentions in the most There is one piece of sophistry practiced by plain and simple manner: both sides-and that is, the taking any scandalous story that has been ever whispered or invented of a private man for a known undoubted truth, and raising suitable speculations upon it. Calumnies that have never been proved, or have been often refuted, are the ordinary postulatums of these infamous scribblers, upon which they proceed as upon first principles granted by all men, though in their hearts they know they are false, or at best very doubtful. When they have laid these foundations of scurrility, it is no wonder that their superstructure is every way answerable to them. If this shameless practice of the present age en dures much longer, praise and reproach will cease to be motives of action in good men.

There are certain periods of time in all governments, when this inhuman spirit prevails. Italy was long torn in pieces by the Guelfs and Ghibellines, and France by those who were for and against the League: but it is very unhappy for a man to be born in such a stormy and tempestuous season. It is the restless ambition of artful men that thus breaks a people into factions, and draws several well-meaning persons to their interest by a specious concern for their country. How many honest minds are filled with uncharitable and barbarous notions, out of their zeal for the public good? What cruelties and outrages would they not commit against men of an adverse party, whom, they would honor and esteem, if, instead of considering them as they are represented, they knew them as they are? Thus are persons of the greatest probity seduced into shameful errors and prejudices, and made bad men even by that noblest of principles, "the love of their country." I cannot here forbear mentioning the famous Spanish proverb, "If there were neither fools nor knaves in the world, all people would be of one mind."

Viz: by Jesus Christ. See Luke, vi, 27-32, etc.

"We whose names are hereunto subscribed do solemnly declare, that we do in our consciences believe two and two make four; and that we shall adjudge any man whatsoever to be our enemy who endeavors to persuade us to the contrary. We are likewise ready to maintain with the hazard of all that is near and dear to us, that six is less than seven in all times and in all places; and that ten will not be more three years hence than it is at present. We do also firmly declare, that it is our resolution as long as we live to call black black, and white white. And we shall upon all occasions oppose such persons that upon any day of the year shall call black white, or white black, with the utmost peril of our lives and fortunes."

Were there such a combination of honest men, who without any regard to places would endeavor to extirpate all such furious zealots as would sacrifice one half their country to the passion and interest of the other; as also such infamous hypo crites that are for promoting their own advantage under color of the public good; with all the pro fligate immoral retainers to each side, that have nothing to recommend them but an implicit submission to their leaders: 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.

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 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 de

stroyer.

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 goodbreeding, 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 monied interest. 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 a 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 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 a hard lodging. For these reasons, all the while I was upon the road I dreaded entering into a 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 the 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 ol cerved a stranger among them of a better prescice and genteeler behavior than ordi

nary; but was much surprised that, notwithstand ing 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 the 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 toward 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 in these our divisions; and therefore cannot but bewail, as in their first principles, the miseries and calamities of our children.-C

No. 127.] THURSDAY, JULY 26, 1711. -Quantum est in rebus inane!-PERS. Sat., i, 1. How much of emptiness we find in things! Ir is our custom at Sir Roger's, upon the com. ing in of the post, to sit about a pot of coffee, and hear the old knight read Dyer's Letter; which he does with his spectacles upon his nose, and in an audible voice, smiling very often at those little strokes of satire which are so frequent in the writings of that author. I afterward communicate to the knight such packets as I receive under the quality of Spectator. The following letter chancing to please him more than ordinary, I shall publish it at his request.

"MR. SPECTATOR,

"You hav. diverted the town almost a whole month at the expense of the country; it is now high time that you should give the country their revenge. Since your withdrawing from this place, the fair sex are run into great extravagances. Their petticoats, which began to heave and swell before you left us, are now blown up into a most enormous concave, and rise every day more and more. In short, Sir, since our women know themselves to be out of the eye of the Spec tator, they will be kept within no compass. You praised them a little too soon, for the modesty of their head-dresses; for as the humor of a sick person is often driven out of one limb into another, their superfluity of ornaments, instead of being entirely banished, seems only fallen from their heads upon their lower parts. What they have lost in height they make up in breadth, and contrary to all rules of architecture, widen the foun dations at the same time that they shorten the superstructure. Were they, like Spanish jennets, to impregnate by the wind, they could not have thought on a more proper invention. But as we do not hear any particular use in this petticoat, or that it contains anything more than what was supposed to be in those of scantier make, we are wonderfully at a loss about it.

"The women give out in defense of these wide

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"I find several speculative persons are of opinion that our sex has of late years been very saucy, and that the hoop-petticoat is made use of to keep us at a distance. It is most certain that a woman's honor cannot be better intrenched than after this manner in circle within circle, amidst such a variety of outworks and lines of circumvallation. A female who is thus invested in whalebone, is sufficiently secured against the ap proaches of an ill-bred fellow, who might as well think of Sir George Etherege's way of making Love in a Tub,' as in the midst of so many hoops.

"Among these various conjectures there are men of superstitious tempers, who look upon the hooppetticoat as a kind of prodigy. Some will have it that it portends the downfall of the French king, and observe that the farthingal appeared in England a little before the ruin of the Spanish monarchy. Others are of opinion that it foretells battle and bloodshed, and believe it of the same prognostication as the tail of a blazing star. For my part, I am apt to think it is a sign that multitudes are coming into the world rather than going

out of it.

"The first time I saw a lady dressed in one of these petticoats, I could not forbear blaming her in my own thoughts for walking abroad when she was so near her time,' but soon recovered myself out of my error, wheu I found all the modish part of the sex 'as far gone' as herself. It is generally thought some crafty women have thus betrayed their companions into hoops, that they might make them accessory to their own concealments, and by that means escape the censure of the world: as wary generals have sometimes dressed two or three dozen of their friends in their own habit, that they might not draw upon themselves any particular attacks from the enemy. The strutting petticoat smooths all distiuctions, levels the mother with the daughter, and sets maids and matrons, wives and widows, upon the same bottom. In the meanwhile, I cannot but be troubled to see so many well-shaped innocent virgins bloated up, and waddling up and down like big-bellied wo

men.

"Should this fashion get among the ordinary people, our public ways would be so crowded, that we should want street-room. Several congregations of the best fashion find themselves already very much straitened; and if the mode increase, I wish it may not drive many ordinary women into meetings and conventicles. Should our sex at the same time take it into their heads to wear trunk breeches (as who knows what their indignation at this female treatment may drive them to?) a man and his wife would fill a whole pew. "You know, Sir, it is recorded of Alexander the Great, that in his Indian expedition he buried several suits of armor, which by his directions were made much too big for any of his soldiers, in order to give posterity an extraordinary idea of him, and make them believe he had commanded

See his play so called, act iv, scene 6, where Dufoy, a

Frenchman, is thrust into a tub without a bottom, which he

carries about the stage on his shoulders, his head coming

through a hole at the top.

i Viz: in 1558.

an army of giants. I am persuaded that if one of the present petticoats happens to be hung up in any repository of curiosities, it would lead into the same error the generations that lie some removes from us; unless we can believe our posterity will think so disrespectfully of their greatgrandmothers, that they made themselves monstrous to appear amiable.

"When I survey this new-fashioned rotunda in. all its parts, I cannot but think of the old philosopher, who after having entered into an Egyptian temple, and looked about for the idol of the place, at length discovered a little black monkey enshrined in the midst of it, upon which he could not forbear crying out, to the great scandal of the worshipers, What a magnificent place is here for such a ridiculous inhabitant!'

66

Though you have taken a resolution, in one of your papers, to avoid descending to particularities of dress, I believe you will not think it be-low you, on so extraordinay an occasion, to unhoop the fair sex, and cure this unfashionable tympany that is got among them. I am apt to think the petticoat will shrink of its own accord. at your first coming to town; at least a touch of your pen will make it contract itself like the sensitive plant, and by that means oblige several who are either terrified or astonished at this portentous novelty, and among the rest, Your humble servant," etc.

C.

No. 128.] THURSDAY, JULY 27, 1711.
--Concordia discors.-LUCAN., i, 98.
-Harmonious discord.

WOMEN in their nature are much more gay and joyous than men; whether it be that their blood is more refined, their fibers more delicate, and their animal spirits more light and volatile; or whether, as some have imagined, there may not be a kind of sex in the very soul, I shall not pretend to determine. As vivacity is the gift of women, gravity is that of men. They should each of them therefore keep a watch upon the particular bias which nature has fixed in their minds, that it may not draw too much, and lead them out of the paths of reason. This will certainly happen, if the one in every word and action af fects the character of being rigid and severe, and the other of being brisk and airy. Men should beware of being captivated by a kind of savage philosophy, women by a thoughtless gallantry Where these precautions are not observed, the man often degenerates into a cynic, the woman into a coquette; the man grows sullen and morose, the woman impertinent and fantastical.

By what I have said, we may conclude, men and women were made as counterparts to one another, that the pains and anxieties of the husband might be relieved by the sprightliness and good humor of the wife. When these are rightly tempered, care and cheerfulness go hand in hand; and the family, like a ship that is duly trimmed, wants neither sail nor ballast.

Natural historians observe (for while I am in the country, I must fetch my allusions from thence) that only the male birds have voices; that their songs begin a little before breeding-time, and end a little after: that while the hen is covering her eggs, the male generally takes his stand upon a neighboring bough within her hearing: and by that means amuses and diverts her with his songs during the whole time of her sitting.

till a brood of young ones arises from it: so that This contract among birds lasts no longer than in the feathered kind, the cares and fatigues of the

married state, if I may so call it, lie principally ¦ upon the female. On the contrary, as, in our species, the man and the woman are joined together for life, and the main burden rests upon the former, nature has given all the little arts of soothing and blandishment to the female, that she may cheer and animate her companion in a constant and assiduous application to the making a provision for his family, and the educating of their common children. This however is not to be taken so strictly, as if the same duties were not often reciprocal, and incumbent on both parties; but only to set forth what seems to have been the general intention of nature, in the different inclinations and endowments which are bestowed on the different sexes.

But whatever was the reason that man and woman were made with this variety of temper, if we observe the conduct of the fair sex, we find that they choose rather to associate themselves with a person who resembles them in that light and volatile humor which is natural to them, than to such as are qualified to moderate and counterbalance it. It has been an old complaint, that the coxcomb carries it with them before the man of sense. When we see a fellow loud and talkative, full of insipid life and laughter, we may venture to pronounce him a female favorite. Noise and flutter are such accomplishments as they cannot withstand. To be short, the passion of an ordinary woman for a man is nothing else than self-love diverted upon another object. She would have the lover a woman in everything but the sex. I do not know a finer piece of satire on this part of womankind, than those lines of Mr. Dryden:

Our thoughtless sex is caught by outward form, And empty noise; and loves itself in man. This is a source of infinite calamities to the sex, as it frequently joins them to men who, in their own thoughts, are as fine creatures as themselves; or if they chance to be good-humored, serve only to dissipate their fortunes, inflame their follies, and aggravate their indiscretions.

The same female levity is no less fatal to them after marriage than before. It represents to their imaginations the faithful, prudent husband, as an honest, tractable, and domestic animal; and turns their thoughts upon the fine, gay gentleman that laughs, sings, and dresses so much more agreeably.

As this irregular vivacity of temper leads astray the hearts of ordinary women in the choice of their lovers and the treatment of their husbands, it operates with the same pernicious influence to ward their children, who are taught to accomplish themselves in all those sublime perfections that appear captivating in the eye of their mother. She admires in her son what she loved in her gallant; and by that means contributes all she can to perpetuate herself in a worthless progeny.

The younger Faustina was a lively instance of this sort of women. Notwithstanding she was married to Marcus Aurelius, one of the greatest, wisest, and best of the Roman emperors, she thought a common gladiator much the prettier gentleman; and had taken such care to accomplish her son Commodus according to her own notions of a fine man, that when he ascended the throne of his father, he became the most foolish and abandoned tyrant that ever was placed at the head of the Roman empire, signalizing himself in nothing but the fighting of prizes, and knocking out men's brains. As he had no taste of true glory, we see him in several medals and statues, which are still extant of him, equipped like a Hercules, with a club and a lion's skin.

I have been led into this speculation by the characters I have heard of a country gentleman and his lady, who do not live in my miles from Sir Roger. The wife is an old coquette that is always hankering after the diversions of the town; the husband a morose rustic, that frowns and frets at the name of it. The wife is overrun with affectation, the husband sunk into brutality, The lady cannot bear the noise of the larks and nightingales, hates your tedious summer-days, and is sick at the sight of shady woods and purling streams; the husband wonders how any one can be pleased with the fooleries of plays and operas, and rails from morning till night at essenced fops and tawdry courtiers. The children are educated in these different notions of their parents. The sons follow their father about his grounds, while the daughters read volumes of love-letters and romances to their mother. By this means it comes to pass that the girls look upon their father as a clown, and the boys think their mother no better than she should be.

How different are the lives of Aristus and Aspasia! The innocent vivacity of the one is tempered and composed by the cheerful gravity of the other. The wife grows wise by the discourses of the husband, and the husband good-humored by the conversations of the wife. Aristus would not be so amiable were it not for his Aspasia, nor Aspasia so much esteemed were it not for her Aristus. Their virtues are blended in their children, and diffuse through the whole family a perpetual spirit of benevolence, complacency, and satisfaction.-C.

No. 129.] SATURDAY, JULY 28, 1711. Vertentem sese frustra sectabere canthum, Cum rota posterior curras et in axe secundo. PERS. Sat., V, 71. Thou, like the hindmost chariot-wheels art curst, Still to be near, but ne'er to be the first.—DRYDEN, GREAT masters in painting never care for draw. ing people in the fashion: as very well knowing that the head-dress or periwig, that now prevails, and gives a grace to their portraitures at present, will make a very odd figure and perhaps look monstrous in the eyes of posterity. For this reason they often represent an illustrious person in a Roman habit, or some other dress that never varies. I could wish for the sake of my country friends, that there was such a kind of everlasting drapery to be made use of by all who live at a certain distance from the town, and that they would agree upon such fashions as should never be liable to changes and innovations. For want of this standing dress, a man who takes a journey into the country is as much surprised as one who walks in a gallery of old family pictures, and finds as great a variety of garbs and habits in the persons he converses with. Did they keep to one constant dress they would sometimes be in the fashion, which they never are as matters are managed at present. If instead of running after the mode, they would continue fixed in one certain habit, the mode would sometime or other overtake them, as a clock that stands still is sure to peint right once in twelve hours. In this case, there fore, I would advise them, as a gentleman did his friend who was hunting about the whole town after a rambling fellow-If you follow him you will never find him, but if you plant yourself at the corner of any one street, I will engage it will not be long before you see him.

I have already touched upon this subject in a speculation which shows how cruelly the country are led astray in following the town; and equip

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