the dress fo fhort in such a year. In a word, all his converfation and knowledge have been in the female world. As other men of his age will take notice to you what fuch a minister said upon fuch and fuch an occafion, he will tell you when the Duke of Monmouth danced at court, fuch a woman was then fmitten, another was taken with him at the head of his troop in the Park. In all these im -portant 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 prefent Lord fucha-one. If you fpeak of a young commoner that faid a lively thing in the Houfe, he ftarts up, He has good blood in his veins, Tom Mirabell begot him; that rogue cheated me in that affair; that · young fellow's mother ufed 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 speak at all, but speaks of him as of that fort of man who is ufually called a well-bred Fine Gentleman. To conclude his character, where women are not concerned, he is an honest worthy man. I cannot tell whether I am to account him whom I am next to fpeak of, as one of our company; for he visits us but seldom, 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 moft exact good breeding. He has the misfortune to be of a very weak conftitution, and confequently cannot accept of fuch cares and bufinefs as preferments in his function would oblige him to: he is therefore among divines what a chamber-counfellor 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 in troduces 1. troduces the fubject he speaks upon; but we are fo far gone in years, that he obferves, when he is among us, an earnestness to have him fall on some divine topic, which he always treats with much au thority, as one who has no interefts 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. No. 3. SATURDAY, MARCH 3. Et quoi quifque ferè ftudio devinctus adhaeret, } R LUCR. 1. iv. ver. 959. -What ftudies please, what most delight, And fill men's thoughts, they dream them o'er at night. CREECH. IN N one of my late rambles, or rather fpeculations, I looked into the great hall where the bank is kept, and was not a little pleased to see the directors, fecretaries, and clerks, with all the other meinbers of that wealthy corporation, ranged in their feveral ftations, according to the parts they act in that juft and regular economy. This revived in my memory the many discourses 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 interefts, and party principles. The thoughts of the day gave my mind employment for the whole night, fo that I fell infenfibly into a kind of methodical dream, which difpofed all my contemplations into a vifion or allegory, or what elfe the reader fhall pleafe to call it. Methought Methought I returned to the great hall, where I had been the morning before, but, to my furprise, inftead of the company that I left there, I faw 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, inftead 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 smiled with a fecret pleasure, as she looked upon them; but, at the fame time, fhewed 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 conftitution, or that fhe was troubled with vapours, as I was afterwards told by one who I found was none of her well-wishers, fhe changed colour, and ftartled at every thing fhe heard. She was likewife (as I afterwards found) a greater valetudinàrian than any I had ever met with, even in her own fex, and fubject to such momentary confumptions, that, in the twinkling of an eye, fhe 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 distem. per 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 conftitution. 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 fhe heard, to which he was exceedingly attentive, fhe changed colour, and discovered many fymptoms 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 ceiling. The floor, on her right hand and on her left, was covered with vaft fums of gold that rofe up in pyramids on either fide of her but this I did not fo much wonder at, when I heard upon inquiry, that fhe had the fame virtue in her touch, which the poets tell us a Lydian king was formerly poffeffed of; and that she could convert whatever the pleafed into that precious me tal. After a little dizziness, and confufed 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 diffociable manner, and mingled together in a kind of dance. It would be tedious to defcribe their habits and perfons, for which reafon I fhall only inform my reader, that the firft couple was Tyranny and Anarchy, the second were Bigotry and Atheism, the third the Genius of a commonwealth, and a young man of about twenty-two years of age, whofe name I could not learn. He had a fword in his right hand, which in the dance he often brandifhed at the act of fettlement; and a citizen, who ftood by me, whispered in my ear, that he faw a fpunge 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 eclipfe one another. The Reader will eafily fuppofe, by what has been before faid, that the Lady on the throne would have been almoft frighted to diftraction, had the feen but any one of thefe fpectres; what then must have been her condition when the faw them all in a body? She fainted and died away at the fight. Et neque jam color eft misto candore rubori; Her blooming cheeks affume a palid teint, There was as great a change in the hill of money-bags, and the heaps of money; the former Thrinking, and falling into fo many empty bags, that I now found not above a tenth part of them had been filled with money. The reft that took up the fame 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 bero received as a prefent from Eolus. The great heaps. of gold on either fide the throne, now appeared to be only heaps of paper, or little piles of notched fticks, bound up together in bundles, like Bath-faggots. Whilt I was lamenting this fudden defolation that had been made before me, the whole scene vanished. In the room of the frightful fpectres, 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 fecond was Moderation leading in Religion; and the third a perfon whom I had never feen, with the Genius of |