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• that to each of them poverty is the greatest of all evils,' yet are their manners widely ditferent. Shame of poverty makes Laertes launch into unnecessary equipage, vain expence, and lavish entertainments. Fear of poverty makes Irus allow him-self only plain necessaries, appear without a servant, sell his own corn, attend his labourers, and be him. self a labourer. Shame of poverty makes Laertes go every day a step nearer to it; and fear of poverty stirs up Irus to make every day some further progress from it.

These different motives produce the excesses which men are guilty of in the negligence of and provision for themselves. Usury, stock-jobbing, extortion, and oppression, have their seed in the dread of want; and vanity, riot, and prodigality, from the shame of it; but both these excesses are infinitely below the pursuit of a reasonable creature. After we have taken care to command so much as is ne. cessary for maintaining ourselves in the order of men suitable to our character, the care of superfluities is a vice no less extravagant, than the neglect of necessaries would have been before. .

Certain it is, that they are both out of nature, when she is followed with reason and good sense. It is from this reflection that I always read Mr. Cowley with the greatest pleasure. His magnanimity is as much above that of other considerable men, as his understanding, and it is a true distinguishing spirit in the elegant author* who published his works, to dwell so much upon the temper of his mind, and the moderation of his desires. By this means he has rendered his friend as amiable as famous. That state of life which bears the face of poverty with Mr. Cowley's great vulgar +, is admirably described; and it is no small satisfaction to those of the same turn of desire, that he produces

the authority of the wisest men of the best age of the world, to strengthen his opinion of the ordinary pursuits of mankind.

It would methinks be no ill maxim of life, if, according to that ancestor of Sir Roger whom I lately mentioned, every man would point to himself what sum he would resolve not to exceed. He might by this means cheat himself into a tranquillity on this side of that expectation, or convert what he should get above it to nobler uses than his own pleasures or necessities. This temper of mind would exempt a man from an ignorant envy of restless men above him, and a more inexcusable contempt of happy men below him.

This would be sailing by some compass, living with some design; but to be eternally bewildered in prospects of future gain, and putting on unnecessary armour against improbable blows of fortune, is a mechanic being which has not good sense for its direction, but is carried on by a sort of acquired instinct towards things below our consideration, and unworthy our esteem.

It is possible that the tranquillity I now enjoy at Sir: Roger's may have created in me this way of thinking, which is so abstracted from the common relish of the world: but as I am now in a pleasing arbour surrounded with a beautiful landscape, I find

a no inclination so strong as to continue in these man--sions, so remote from the ostentatious scenes of life; and am at this present writing, philosopher enough to conclude with Mr. Çowley

· If e'er ámbition did my fancy cheat
With any wish so mean as to be great;
Continue, Heav'n, still from me to remove
The humble biessings of that life I love.'

STEELE

T."

N° 115. THURSDAY, JULY 12, 1711.

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Ut sit mens sana in corpore sano.

JUV. Sat. 10. v. 356. A healthy body and a mind at ease. Bodily labour is of two kinds, either that which a man submits to for his livelihood, or that which he undergoes for his pleasure. The latter of them generally changes the name of labour for that of exercise, but differs only from ordinary labour as it rises from another motive..

A country life abounds in both these kinds of labour, and for that reason gives a man a greater stock of health, and consequently a more perfect enjoyment of himself, than any other way of life. I consider the body as a system of tubes and glands, or, to use a more rustic phrase, a bundle of pipes and strainers, fitted to one another after so wonderful a manner as to make a proper engine for the soul to work with. This description does not only comprehend the bowels, bones, tendons, veins, nerves, and arteries, but every muscle and every ligature, which is a composition of fibres, that are so many imperceptible tubes or pipes interwoven on all sides with invisible glands or strainers.

This general idea of a human body, without considering it in the niceties of anatomy, lets us see how absolutely necessary labour is for the right preservation of it. There must be frequent motions and agitations, to mix, digest, and separate the juices contained in it, as well as to clear and cleanse that infinitude of pipes and strainers of which it is composed, and to give their solid parts a more firm and lasting tone. Labour or exercise ferments the humours, casts them into their proper channels, throws off redundancies, and helps nature in those secret distributions, without which the body cannot subsist in its vigour, nor the soul act with cheerful

I might here mention the effects which this has upon all the faculties of the mind, by keeping the understanding clear, the imagination untroubled, and refining those spirits that are necessary for the proper exertion of our intellectual faculties, during the present laws of union between soul and body. it is to a neglect in this particular that we must ase' cribe the spleen, which is so frequent in men of studious and sedentary tempers, as well as the vapours to which those of the other sex are so often subject.

Had not exercise been absolutely necessary for our well-being, nature would not have made the body so proper for it, by giving such an activity to the limbs, and such a pliancy to every part, as necessarily produce those compressions, extensions, contortions, dilatations, and all other kinds of mo. tions that are necessary for the preservation of such a system of tubes and glands as has been before mentioned. And that we might not want inducements to engage us in such an exercise of the body. as is proper for its welfare, it is so ordered, that nothing valuable can be procured without it. Not to mention riches and honour, even food and raiment are not to be come at without the toil of the hands and sweat of the brows. Providence furnishes materials, but expects that we should work them up ourselves. The earth must be laboured before it gives its increase; and when it is forced into its several products, how many hands must they pass through before they are fit for use! Manufactures, trade, and agriculture, naturally employ more than nineteen parts of the species in twenty, and as for those who are not obliged to labour, by the condition in which they are born, they are more miserable than the rest of mankind, unless they indulge themselves in that voluntary labour which goes by the name of exercise.

My friend Sir Roger has been an indefatigable man in business of this kind, and has hurg several parts of his house with the trophies of his former labours. The walls of his great hall are covered

with the horns of several kinds of deer that he has killed in the chase, which he thinks the most valuable furniture of his house, as they afford him frequent topics of discourse, and shew that he has not been idle. At the lower end of the hall is a large otter's skin stuffed with hay, which his mother ordered to be hung up in that manner, and the knight looks upon with great satisfaction, because it seems he was but nine years old when his dog killed him. A little rooin adjoining to the hall is a kind of are senal filled with guns of several sizes and inventions, with which the knight has made great havock in the woods, and destroyed many thousands of pheasants, partridges, and woodcocks. His stable-doors are patched with noses that belonged to foxes of the knight's own hunting down. Sir Roger shewed me one of them that for distinction sake has a brass nail struck through it, which cost him above fif. teen hours riding, carried him through half a dozen counties, killed him a brace of geldings, and lost above half his dogs. This the knight looks upon as one of the greatest exploits of his life. The perverse widow *, whom I have given some account of, was the death of several foxes; for Sir Roger has told me that in the course of his amours he patched the western door of his stable. Whenever the widow was cruel, the foxes were sure to pay for it. In proportion as his passion for the widow abated, and old age came on, he left off fox-hunting; but a hare is not yet safe that sits within ten miles of his house.

There is no kind of exercise which I would so recommend to my readers of both sexes, as this of riding, as there is none which so much conduces to health, and is every way accommodated to the body, according to the idea which I have given of it. Doctor Sydenham is very lavish in its praises and if the English reader will see the mechanical effects of it described at length, he may find them in a book published not many years since, under