2 • the dress so short in such a year. In a word, all his conversation and knowledge have been in the female world: As other men of his age will take notice to you what such a minifter faid upon fuch and fuch an occafion, he will tell you when the Duke of Monmouth danced at court, fuch a woman was then smitten, another was taken with him at the head of his troop in the Park. In all these important relations, he has ever about the fame time received a kind glance or a blow of a fan from fome celebrated beauty, mother of the present Lord fucha-one. If you fpeak of a young commoner that faid a lively thing in the House, he starts up, He ' has good blood in his veins, Tom Mirabell begot him, that rogue cheated me in that affair; that young fellow's mother used me more like a dog 'than any woman I ever made advances to. This way of talking of his very much enlivens the converfation among us of a more sedate turn; and I find there is not one of the company, but myself, who rarely fpeak at all, but fpeaks of him as of that fort of man who is usually called a well-bred Fine Gentleman. To conclude his character, where women are not concerned, he is an honest worthy 6 man. I cannot tell whether I am to account him whom I am next to fpeak of, as one of our company; for he vifits us but feldom, but, when he does, it adds to every man elfe a new enjoyment of himself. He is a clergyman, a very philofophic man, of general learning, great fanctity of life, and the most exact good breeding. He has the misfortune to be of a very weak constitution, and confequently cannot accept of fuch cares and business as preferments in his function would oblige him to: He is therefore among divines what a chamber-counsellor is among lawyers. The probity of his mind, and the integrity of his life, create him followers, as being eloquent or loud advances others. He feldom introduces troduces the fubject he speaks upon; but we are fo far gone in years, that he observes when he is among us, an earnestness to have him fall on fome divine topic, which he always treats with much authority, as one who has no interests in this world, as one who is haftening to the object of all his wishes, and conceives hope from his decays and infirmities. These are my ordinary companions. R No 3. SATURDAY, MARCH 3. Et quoi quisque ferè studio devinctus adhaeret, LUCR. 1. iv. ver. 959. -What studies please, what most delight, IN one of my late rambles, or rather speculations, I looked into the great hall where the bank is kept, and was not a little pleased to fee the directors, fecretaries, and clerks, with all the other members of that wealthy corporation, ranged in their several stations, according to the parts they act in that just and regular oeconomy. This revived in my memory the many difcourses which I had both read and heard concerning the decay of public credit, with the methods of restoring it, and which in my opinion have always been defective, because they have always been made with an eye to feparate interests, and party principles. The thoughts of the day gave my mind employment for the whole night, so that I fell insensibly into a kind of methodical dream, which disposed all my contemplations into a vision or allegory, or what else the reader shall please to call it. Methought 1 Methought I returned to the great hall, where I had been the morning before, but, to my furprise, instead of the company that I left there, I saw towards the upper end of the hall, a beautiful virgin, feated on a throne of gold. Her name (as they told me) was Public Credit. The walls, instead of being adorned with pictures and maps, were hung with many acts of parliament written in golden letters. At the upper end of the hall was the Magna Charta, with the act of uniformity on the right hand, and the act of toleration on the left. At the lower end of the hall was the act of fettlement, which was placed full in the eye of the virgin that fat upon the throne. Both the fides of the hall were covered with fuch acts of parliament as had been made for the establishment of public funds. The Lady feemed to fet an unfpeakable value upon these several pieces of furniture, infomuch that the often refreshed her eye with them, and often fmiled with a fecret pleasure, as she looked upon them; but, at the fame time, shewed a very particular uneafinefs, if the faw any thing approaching that might hurt them. She appeared indeed infinitely timorous in all her behaviour: And, whether it was from the delicacy of her constitution, or that the was troubled with vapours, as I was afterwards told by one who I found was none of her well-wishers, sne changed colour, and startled at every thing the heard. She was likewife (as I afterwards found) a greater valetudinarian than any I had ever met with, even in her own fex, and subject to fuch momentary confumptions, that, in the twinkling of an eye, she would fall away from the most florid complexion, and the most healthful state of body, and wither into a skeleton. Her recoveries were often as fudden as her decays, infomuch that she would revive in a moment out of a wasting distemper into a habit of the highest health and vigour. I had very foon an opportunity of obferving these VOL. I. quick + B quick turns and changes in her constitution. There fat at her feet a couple of fecretaries, who received every hour letters from all parts of the world, which the one or the other of them was perpetually reading to her; and, according to the news the heard, to which she was exceedingly attentive, she changed colour, and discovered many symptoms of health or fickness. Behind the throne was a prodigious heap of bags of money, which were piled upon one another fo high that they touched the cieling. The floor, on her right hand and on her left, was covered with vait fums of gold that rose up in pyramids on either fide of her: But this I did not fo much wonder at, when I heard upon enquiry, that the had the fame virtue in her touch, which the poets tell us a Lydian king was formerly poffefsed of; and that she could convert whatever the pleased into that precious metal. After a little dizzinefs, and confused hurry of thought, which a man often meets with in a dream, methought the hall was alarmed, the doors flew open, and there entered half a dozen of the most hideous phantoms that I had ever feen (even in a dream) before that time. They came in two by two, though matched in the most dissociable manner, and mingled together in a kind of dance. It would be tedious to defcribe their habits and perfons, for which reason I shall only inform my reader, that the first couple was Tyranny and Anarchy, the fecond were Bigotry and Atheism, the third the genius of a commonwealth, and a young man of about twenty-two years of age, whose name I could not learn. He had a sword in his right hand, which in the dance he often brandished at the act of fettlement; and a citizen, who stood by me, whispered in my ear, that he saw a spunge in his left hand. The dance of fo many jarring natures put me in mind of the fun, moon, and earth, in the the Rehearsal, that danced together for no other end but to eclipse one another. The Reader will easily suppose, by what has been before faid, that the Lady on the throne would have been almost frighted to distraction, had fhe feen but any one of these spectres; what then muft have been her condition when she saw them all in a body? She fainted and died away at the fight. Et neque jam color est misto candore rubori; Her spirits faint, There was as great a change in the hill of money-bags, and the heaps of money; the former shrinking, and falling into fo many empty bags, that I now found not above a tenth part of them had been filled with money. The rest that took up the same space, and made the fame figure as the bags that were really filled with money, had been blown up with air, and called into my memory the bags full of wind, which Homer tells us his here received as a present from Æolus. The great heaps of gold on either fide the throne, now appeared to be only heaps of paper, or little piles of notched sticks, bound up together in bundles, like Bathfaggots. Whilst I was lamenting this fudden desolation that had been made before me, the whole scene vanished: In the room of the frightful spectres, there now entered a fecond dance of apparitions very agreeably matched together, and made up of very amiable phantoms. The first pair was Liberty with Monarchy at her right hand: The second was Moderation leading in Religion; and the third a perfon whom I had never feen, with the Genius of Great B2 Y |
