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to him in the said house which he frequents, and But I must not omit the dearer part of mandirect that he be obliged to drink his tea and kind, I mean the ladies, to take up a whole paper coffee without sugar, and not receive from any upon grievances which concern the men only; person whatsoever anything above mere necessa- but shall humbly propose, that we change fools for an experiment only. A certain set of ladies complain they are frequently perplexed with a visitant, who affects to be wiser than they are; which character he hopes to preserve by an obstinate gravity, and great guard against discovering his opinion upon any occasion whatsoever. painful silence has hitherto gained him no farthe advantage, than that as he might, if he had behaved himself with freedom, been excepted against but as to this and that particular, he now offends in the whole. To relieve these ladies, my good friends and correspondents, I shall exchange my dancing outlaw for their dumb visitant, and assign the silent gentleman all the haunts of the dancer; in order to which, I have sent them by the pennypost the following letters for their conduct in their new conversations

As we in England are a sober people, and generally inclined rather to a certain bashfulness of behavior in public, it is amazing whence some fellows come whom one meets with in this town; they do not at all seem to be the growth of our island; the pert, the talkative, all such as have no sense of the observation of others, are certainly of foreign extraction. As for my own part, I am as much surprised when I see a talkative Englishman, as I should be to see the Indian pine grow ing on one of our quickset hedges. Where these creatures get sun enough, to make them such lively animals and dull men, is above my philoБорһу.

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SIR,

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"Your humble servant."

There are another kind of impertinents which a man is perplexed with in mixed company, and those are your loud speakers. These treat mankind as if they were all deaf; they do not express but declare themselves. Many of these are guilty! "I have, you may be sure, heard of your irregu of this outrage out of vanity, because they think larities without regard to my observations upon all they say is well; or they have their own per-you; but shall not treat you with so much rigor sons in such veneration, that they believe nothing as you deserve. If you will give yourself the which concerns them can be insignificant to any trouble to repair to the place mentioned in the body else. For these people's sake, I have often postscript to this letter at seven this evening, lamented that we cannot close our ears with as you will be conducted into a spacious room, wellmuch ease as we can our eyes. It is very uneasy lighted, where there are ladies and music. You that we must necessarily be under persecution. will see a young lady laughing next the window Next to these bawlers, is a troublesome creature to the street; you may take her out, for she loves who comes with the air of your friend and your you as well as she does any man, though she intimate, and that is your whisperer. There is never saw you before. She never thought in her one of them at a coffee-house which I myself fre- life, any more than yourself. She will not be quent, who observing me to be a man pretty well surprised when you accost her, nor concerned made for secrets, gets by me, and with a whisper when you leave her. Hasten from a place where tells me things which all the town knows. It is you are laughed at, to one where you will be no very hard matter to guess at the source of this admired. You are of no consequence, therefore impertinence, which is nothing else but a method go where you will be welcome for being so. or mechanic art of being wise. You never see any frequent in it, whom you can suppose to have any-"SIR, thing in the world to do. These persons are worse than bawlers, as much as a secret enemy is more dangerous than a declared one. I wish that my coffee-house friend would take this for an intimation, that I have not heard a word he has told me for these several years; whereas he now thinks me the most trusty repository of his secrets. The whisperers have a pleasant way of ending the close conversation with saying aloud, "Do not you think so?" Then whisper again, and then aloud," But you know that person;" then whisper again. The thing would be well enough, if they whispered to keep the folly of what they say among friends; but, alas, they do it to preserve the importance of their thoughts. I am sure I could name you more than one person whom no man living ever heard talk upon any subject in nature, or ever saw in his whole life with a book in his hand, that, I know not how, can whisper something like knowledge of what has and does pass in the world; which you would think he learned from some familiar spirit that did not think him worthy to receive the whole story. But in truth whisperers deal only in half accounts of what they entertain you with. A great help to their discourse is, "That the town says, and people begin to talk very freely, and they had it from persons too considerable to be named, what they will tell you when things are riper." My friend has winked upon me any day since I came to town last, and has communicated to me as a secret, that he designed in a very short time to tell me a man, who has left me entire mistress of a large

secret; but I shall know what he means, he now assures me, in less than a fortnight's time.

The ladies whom you visit, think a wise man the most impertinent creature living, therefore you cannot be offended that they are displeased with you. Why will you take pains to appear wise, where you would not be the more esteemed for being really so? Come to us; forget the gigglers; let your inclination go along with you whether you speak or are silent; and let all such women as are in a clan or sisterhood, go their own way; there is no room for you in that company who are of the common taste of the sex.

"For women born to be controll'd
Stoop to the forward and the bold;
Affect the haughty and the proud,
The gay, the frolic, and the loud."t

No. 149.]

TUESDAY, AUGUST 21, 1711
Cui in manu sit quem esse dementem velit,
Quem sapere, quem sanari, quem in morbum injici.
Quem contra amari, quem accersiri, quem expeti.
CECIL apud TULL

Who has it in her power to make men mad,
Or wise. or sick, or well: and who can choose
The object of her appetite at pleasure.
THE following letter, and my answer, shall take
up the present speculation :—

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'MR. SPECTATOR,

"I am the young widow of a country gentle

No postscript in the Spect., in f. † Waller.

race, without beneficence toward those below them, or respect toward those above them; and lead a despicable, independent, and useless life, without sense of the laws of kindness, good-nature, mutual offices, and the elegant satisfactions which flow from reason and virtue.

fortune, which he agreed to as an equivalent for | provements in purchase of an estate; but she the difference in our years. In these circumstances goes with her fortune, rather than her fortune it is not extraordinary to have a crowd of ad- with her. These make up the crowd or vulgar of mirers; which I have abridged in my own thoughts, the rich, and fill up the lumber of the human and reduced to a couple of candidates only, both young, and neither of them disagreeable in their persons according to the common way of computing, in one the estate more than deserves my fortune, in the other my fortune more than deserves the estate. When I consider the first, I own I am so far a woman I cannot avoid being delighted with the thoughts of living great; but then he seems to receive such a degree of courage from the knowledge of what he has, he looks as if he was going to confer an obligation on me; and the readiness he accosts me with, makes me jealous I am only hearing a repetition of the same things he had said to a hundred women before. When I consider the other, I see myself approached with so much modesty and respect, and such a doubt of himself, as betrays, methinks, an affection within, and a belief at the same time that he himself would be the only gainer by my consent. What an unexceptionable husband could I make out of both! but since that is impossible, I beg to be concluded by your opinion. It is absolutely in your power to dispose of Your most obedient servant,

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"MADAM,
"You do me great honor in your application
to me on this important occasion; I shall there-
fore talk to you with the tenderness of a father,
in gratitude for your giving me the authority of
bue. You do not seem to make any great distinc-
tion between these gentlemen as to their persons;
the whole question lies upon their circumstances
and behavior. If the one is less respectful because
he is rich, and the other more obsequious because
he is not so, they are in that point moved by the
same principle, the consideration of fortune, and
you must place them in each other's circumstances
before you can judge of their inclination. To
avoid confusion in discussing this point, I will
call the richer man Strephon, and the other Florio.
If you believe Florio with Strephon's estate would
behave himself as he does now, Florio is certainly
your man; but if you think Strephon, were he in
Florio's condition, would be as obsequious as
Florio is now, you ought for your own sake to
choose Strephon; for where the men are equal,
there is no doubt riches ought to be a reason for
preference. After this manner, my dear child, I
would have you abstract them from their circum-
stances; for you are to take it for granted, that he
who is very humble only because he is poor, is the
very same man in nature, with him who is haughty

because he is rich.

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When you have gone thus far, as to consider the figure they make toward you; you will please, my dear, next to consider the appearance you make toward them. If they are men of discerning, they can observe the motives of your heart: and Florio can see when he is disregarded only upon account of fortune, which makes you to him a mercenary creature; and you are still the same thing to Strephon, in taking him for his wealth only; you are therefore to consider whether you had rather oblige, than receive an obligation.

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The marriage life is always an insipid, a vexatious, or a happy condition. The first is, when two people of no genius or taste for themselves meet together, upon such a settlement as has been thought reasonable by parents and conveyancers from an exact valuation of the land and cash of both parties. In this case the young lady's person is uo more regarded than the house and im

"The vexatious life arises from a conjunction of two people of quick taste and resentment, put together for reasons well known to their friends, in which especial care is taken to avoid (what they think the chief of evils) poverty, and insure to them riches, with every evil beside. These good people live in a constant constraint before company, and too great familiarity alone. When they are within observation, they fret at each other's carriage and behavior; when alone, they revile each other's person and conduct. In company they are in a purgatory, when only together in a hell.

The happy marriage is, when two persons meet and voluntarily make choice of each other without principally regarding or neglecting the circumstances of fortune or beauty. These may still love in spite of adversity or sickness: the former we may in some measure defend ourselves from, the other is the portion of our very make. When you have a true notion of this sort of passion, your humor of living great will vanish out of your imagination, and you will find love has nothing to do with state. Solitude, with the person beloved, has a pleasure, even in a woman's mind, beyond show or pomp. You are therefore to consider which of your lovers will like you best undressed; which will bear with you most when out of humor; and your way to this is to ask of yourself, which of them you value most for his own sake? and by that judge which gives the greatest instances of his valuing you for your self only.

"After you have expressed some sense of the humble approach of Florio, and a little distain at Strephon's assurance in his address, you cry out, What an unexceptionable husband could I make out of both!' It would therefore, methinks, be a good way to determine yourself. Take him in whom what you like is not transferable to another; for if you choose otherwise, there is no hopes your husband will ever have what you liked in his rival; but intrinsic qualities in one man may very probably purchase everything that is adventitious to another. In plainer terms; he whom you take for his personal perfections will sooner arrive at the gifts of fortune, than he whom you take for the sake of his fortune attain to personal perfections. If Strephon is not as accomplished and agreeable as Florio, marriage to you will never make him so; but marriage to you may make Florio as rich as Strephon. Therefore to make a sure purchase, employ fortune upon certainties, but do not sacrifice certainties to fortune. "I am, your most obedient, "Humble servant."

T.

No. 150.] WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 22, 1711.
Nil habet infelix paupertas durius in se
Quam quod ridiculos homines facit

Juv., Sat. iii, 152
Want is the scorn of every wealthy fool,

And wit in rags is turn'd to ridicule.-DRYDEX. As I was walking in my chamber the morning before I went last into the country, I heard the hawkers with great vehemence crying about a

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To the honor of our present age, it must be allowed, that some of our greatest geniuses for wit and business have almost entirely broken the neck of these absurdities.

paper, entitled, The Ninety-nine Plagues of an having mentioned the entire friendship between Empty Purse. I had indeed some time before them, concludes that, they had but one mind, observed that the orators of Grub-street had dealt one purse, one chamber, and one hat." The men very much in plagues. They have already pub- of business were also infected with a sort of sin lished in the same month, The Plagues of Matri-gularity little better than this. I have heard my mony, The Plagues of a Single Life, The Nine- father say, that a broad brimmed hat, short hair, teen Plagues of a Chambermaid, The Plagues of and unfolded handkerchief, were in his time abso a Coachman, The Plagues of a Footman, and The lutely necessary to denote a "notable man ;" and Plague of Plagues. The success these several that he had known two or three, who aspired to plagues met with, probably gave occasion to the the character of "very notable," wear shoe-strings above-mentioned poem on an empty purse. How- with great success. ever that be, the same noise so frequently repeated under my window, drew me insensibly to think on some of those inconveniences and mortifications which usually attend on poverty, and, in short, gave birth to the present speculation; for Victor, after having dispatched the most imafter my fancy had run over the most obvious and portant affairs of the commonwealth, has appearcommon calamities which men of mean fortunes ed at an assembly, where all the ladies have deare liable to, it descends to those little insults and clared him the genteelest man in the company; contempts which, though they may seem to dwin-and in Atticus, though every way one of the dle into nothing when a man offers to describe greatest geniuses the age has produced, one sees them, are perhaps in themselves more cutting and nothing particular in his dress or carriage to deinsuperable than the former. Juvenal, with a note his pretensions to wit and learning: so that great deal of humor and reason, tells us, that at present a man may venture to cock up his hat, nothing bore harder upon a poor man in his time, and wear a fashionable wig, without being taken than the continual ridicule which his habit and for a rake or a fool. dress afforded to the beaux of Rome:

Quid, quod materiam præbet causasque jocorum
Omnibus hic idem; si foeda et scissa lacerna,
Si toga sordidula est, et rupta calceus alter
Pelle patet, vel si consuto vulnere crassum
Atque recens linum ostendit non una cicatrix.
Juv., Sat. iii, 147.

Add that the rich have still a gibe in store,
And will be monstrous witty on the poor;
For the torn surtout and the tatter'd vest,
The wretch and all his wardrobe are a jest;
The greasy gown sullied with often turning,
Gives a good hint to say the man's in mourning;
Or if the shoe is ript, or patch is put,
He's wounded, see the plaster on his foot.-DRYDEN.

The medium between a fop and a sloven is what a man of sense would endeavor to keep; yet I remember Mr. Osborn advises his son to appear in his habit rather above than below his fortune; and tells him that he will find a handsome suit of clothes always procures some additional respect.† I have indeed myself observed that my banker ever bows lowest to me when I wear my full-bottomed wig; and writes me Mr." or "Esq." according as he sees me dressed.

I shall conclude this paper with an adventure which I was myself an eye-witness of very lately. I happened the other day to call in at a celebrated coffee-house near the Temple. I had not

It is on this occasion that he afterward adds been there long when there came in an elderly the reflection which I have chosen for my motto.

Want is the scorn of every wealthy fool,

man very meanly dressed, and sat down by me; he had a threadbare loose coat on, which it was plain And wit in rags is turn'd to ridicule.-DRYDEN. he wore to keep himself warm, and not to favor It must be confessed that few things make a his under suit, which seemed to have been at least man appear more despicable, or more prejudice its cotemporary; his short wig and hat were both his hearers against what he is going to offer, than answerable to the rest of his apparel. He was no an awkward or pitiful dress; insomuch that I fan-sooner seated than he called for a dish of tea; but cy, had Tully himself pronounced one of his ora- as several gentlemen in the room wanted other tions with a blanket about his shoulders, more things, the boys of the house did not think thempeople would have laughed at his dress than have selves at leisure to mind him. I could observe admired his eloquence. This last reflection made the old fellow was very uneasy at the affront, and me wonder at a set of men, who, without being at his being obliged to repeat his commands sev subjected to it by the unkindness of their fortunes, eral times to no purpose; until at last one of the are contented to draw upon themselves the ridicule lads presented him with some stale tea in a broken of the world in this particular. I mean such as dish, accompanied with a plate of brown sugar; take it into their heads that the first regular step which so raised his indignation, that after several to be a wit is to commence a sloven. It is certain obliging appellations of dog and rascal, he asked nothing has so much debased that which must him aloud before the whole company, "why he have been otherwise so great a character; and should be used with less respect than that fop I know not how to account for it, unless it may there?" pointing to a well-dressed young gentlepossibly be in complaisance to those narrow minds man who was drinking tea at the opposite table. who can have no notion of the same persons pos- The boy of the house replied with a good deal of sessing different accomplishments; or that it is a pertness, "that his master had two sorts of cussort of sacrifice which some men are contented to tomers, and that the gentleman at the other table make to calumny, by allowing it to fasten on one had given him many a sixpence for wiping his part of their character, while they are endeavoring shoes." By this time the young Templar, who to establish another. found his honor concerned in the dispute, and that the eyes of the whole coffee-house were upon him, had thrown aside a paper he held in his hand, and was coming toward us, while we at the table made what haste we could to get away from the impending quarrel, but we were all of us surprised to see him, as he approached nearer, put

Yet however unaccountable this foolish custom is, I am afraid it could plead a long prescription; and probably give too much occasion for the vulgar definition still remaining among us of a heathen philosopher.

I have seen the speech of a Terræ filius, spoken in King Charles the Second's reign; in which he describes two very eminent men, who were perhaps the greatest scholars of their age; and after

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on an air of deference and respect. To whom reflection, that he could not believe such a one the the old man said, "Hark you, sirrah, I will pay off your extravagant bills once more, but will take effectual care for the future, that your prodigality shall not spirit up a parcel of rascals to insult your father.

Though I by no means approve either the impudence of the servants or the extravagance of the son, I cannot but think the old gentleman was in some measure justly served for walking in masquerade, I mean in appearing in a dress so much beneath his quality and estate.-X.

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Where pleasure prevails, all the greatest virtues will lose their power.

woman that upon trial he found her. What has he got by his conquest, but to think meanly of her for whom a day or two before he had the highest honor? And of himself for perhaps wrong. ing the man whom of all men living he himself would least willingly have injured?

Pleasure seizes the whole man who addicts himself to it, and will not give him leisure for any good office in life which contradicts the gayety of the present hour. You may indeed observe in people of pleasure a certain complacency and absence of all severity, which the habit of a loose unconcerned life gives them; but tell the man of pleasure your secret wants, cares, or sorrows, and you will find that he has given up the delicacy of his passions to the cravings of his appetites. He little knows the perfect joy he loses, for the disappointing gratifications which he pursues. He looks at Pleasure as she approaches, and comes to him with the recommendation of warm wishes, gay looks, and graceful motion; but he does not observe how she leaves his presence with disorder, impotence, downcast shame, and conscious imperfection. She makes our youth inglorious, our age shameful.

I KNOW no one character that gives reason a greater shock, at the same time that it presents a good ridiculous image to the imagination, than that of a man of wit and pleasure about the town. This description of a man of fashion, spoken by Some with a mixture of scorn and ridicule, by others with great gravity as a laudable distinc- Will Honeycomb gives us twenty intimations tion, is in everybody's mouth that spends any in an evening of several hags whose bloom was time in conversation. My friend, Will Honey-given up to his arms; and would raise a value to comb, has this expression very frequently; and I himself for having had, as the phrase is, "very never could understand by the story which fol- good women." Will's good women are the comlows upon his mention of such a one, but that his fort of his heart, and support him, I warrant, by man of wit and pleasure was either a drunkard the memory of past interviews with persons of too old for wenching, or a young lewd fellow with their condition! No, there is not in the world an some liveliness, who would converse with you, occasion wherein vice makes so fantastical a fig receive kind offices of you, at the same time de- ure, as at the meeting of two old people who have bauch your sister, or lie with your wife. Accord- been partners in unwarrantable pleasure. To tell ing to this description, a man of wit, when he a toothless old lady that she once had a good set, could have wenches for crowns apiece which he or a defunct wencher that he was the admired liked quite as well, would be so extravagant as thing of the town, are satires instead of applauses; to bribe servants, make false friendships, fight re- but, on the other side, consider the old age of lations; I say, according to him, plain and sim- those who have passed their days in labor, indusple vice was too little for a man of wit and plea- try, and virtue, their decays make them but ap sure; but he would leave an easy and accessible pear the more venerable, and the imperfections of wickedness, to come at the same thing with only their bodies are beheld as a misfortune to humar the addition of certain falsehood and possible society that their make is so little durable. murder. Will thinks the town grown very dull, in that we do not hear so much as we used to do of these coxcombs, whom (without observing it) he describes as the most infamous rogues in nature, with relation to friendship, love, or conversation.

When pleasure is made the chief pursuit of life, it will necessarily follow that such monsters as these will arise from a constant application to such blandishments as naturally root out the force of reason and reflection, and substitute in their place a general impatience of thought, and a constant pruriency of inordinate desire.

Pleasure, when it is a man's chief purpose, disappoints itself; and the constant application to it palls the faculty of enjoying it, though it leaves the sense of our inability for that we wish, with a disrelish of everything else. Thus the intermediate seasons of the man of pleasure are more heavy than one would impose upon the vilest criminal. Take him when he is awaked too soon after a debauch, or disappointed in following a worthless woman without truth, and there is no man living whose being is such a weight of vexation as his is. He is an utter stranger to the pleasing reflections in the evening of a well-spent day, or the gladness of heart or quickness of spirit in the morning after a profound sleep or indolent slumbers. He is not to be at ease any longer than he can keep reason and good sense without his curtains; otherwise he will be haunted with the

But to return more directly to my man of wit and pleasure. In all orders of men, wherever this is the chief character, the person who wears it is a negligent friend, father, and husband, and entails poverty on his unhappy descendants. Mortgages, diseases, and settlements, are the legacies a man of wit and pleasure leaves to his family. All the poor rogues that make such lamentable speeches after every sessions at Tyburn, were, in their way, men of wit and pleasure before they fell into the adventures which brought them thither.

Irresolution and procrastination in all a man's affairs, are the natural effects of being addicted to pleasure. Dishonor to the gentleman, and bankruptcy to the trader, are the portion of either whose chief purpose of life is delight. The chief cause that this pursuit has been in all ages received with so much quarter from the soberer part of mankind, has been, that some men of great talents have sacrificed themselves to it. The shining qualities of such people have given a beauty to whatever they were engaged in, and a mixture of wit has recommended madness. For let any man who knows what it is to have passed much time in a series of jollity, mirth, wit, or humorous entertainments, look back at what he was all that while a-doing, and he will find that he has been at one instant sharp to some man he is sorry to have offended; impertinent to some one it was cruelty to treat with such freedom, ungracefully

noisy at such a time, unskillfully open at such a time; unmercifully calumnious at such a time; and, from the whole course of his applauded satisfactions, unable in the end to recollect any circumstance which can add to the enjoyment of his own mind alone, or which he would put his character upon with other men. Thus it is with those who are best made for becoming pleasures; but how monstrous is it in the generality of mankind who pretend this way, without genius or inclination toward it! The scene, then, is wild to an extravagance: this is, as if fools should mimic madmen. Pleasure of this kind is the intemperate meals and loud jollities of the common rate of country gentlemen, whose practice and way of enjoyment is to put an end as fast as they cau, to that little particle of reason they have when they are sober. These men of wit and pleasure dispatch their senses as fast as possible, by drinking until they cannot taste, smoking until they cannot see, and roaring until they cannot hear.-T.

No. 152.] FRIDAY, AUGUST 24, 1711.

Like leaves on trees the race of man is found.

POPE'S HOM.

THERE is no sort of people whose conversation is so pleasant as that of military men, who derive their courage and magnanimity from thought and reflection. The many adventures which attend their way of life makes their conversation so full of incidents, and gives them so frank an air in speaking of what they have been witnesses of, that no company can be more amiable than that of men of sense who are soldiers. There is a certain irregular way in their narrations or discourse, which has something more warm and pleasing than we meet with among men who are used to adjust and methodize their thoughts.

of worthy actions and service of mankind, they can put it to habitual hazard. The event of our designs, say they, as it relates to others, is uncertain; but as it relates to ourselves it must be prosperous, while we are in the pursuit of our duty, and within the terms upon which Providence has ensured our happiness, whether we die or live. All that nature has prescribed must be good; and as death is near to us, it is absurdity to fear it. Fear loses its purpose when we are sure it cannot preserve us, and we should draw resolution to meet it from the impossibility to escape it. Without a resignation to the necessity of dying, there can be no capacity in man to attempt anything that is glorious: but when they have once attained to that perfection, the pleasures of a life spent in martial adventures are as great as any of which the human mind is capable. The force of reason gives a certain beauty mixed with conscience of well-doing and thirst of glory to all which before was terrible and ghastly to the imagination. Add to this, that the fellowship of danger, the common good of mankind, the general cause, and the manifest virtue you may observe in so many men who made no figure until that day, are so many incentives to destroy the little considerations of their own persons. Such are the heroic part of soldiers, who are qualified for leaders. As to the rest whom I before spoke of, I know not how it is, but they arrive at a certain habit of being void of thought, insomuch that on occasion of the most imminent danger they are still in the same indiffe rence. Nay, I remember an instance of a gay Frenchman, who was led on in battle by a supe rior officer (whose conduct it was his custom to speak of always with contempt and raillery), and in the beginning of the action received a wound he was sensible was mortal; his reflection on this occasion was, I wish I could live another hour, to see how this blundering coxcomb will get clear of this business.'

I was this evening walking in the fields with my friend Captain Sentry, and I could not, from "I remember two young fellows who rode in the many relations which I drew him into of what the same squadron of a troop of horse, who were passed when he was in the service, forbear express- ever together; they ate, they drank, they intrigued; ing my wonder, that the "fear of death," which in a word, all their passions and affections seemed we, the rest of mankind, arm ourselves against to tend the same way, and they appeared servicewith so much contemplation, reason, and philoso- able to each other in them. We were in the dusk phy, should appear so little in camps, that com- of the evening to march over a river, and the mon men march into open breaches, meet opposite troop these gentlemen belonged to were to be battalions, not only without reluctance, but with transported in a ferry-boat, as fast as they could. alacrity. My friend answered what I said in the One of the friends was now in the boat, while the following manner: "What you wonder at may other was drawn up with others by the water-side, very naturally be the subject of admiration to all waiting the return of the boat. A disorder hapwho are not conversant in camps; but when a pened in the passage by an unruly horse; and a man has spent some time in that way of life, he gentleman who had the rein of his horse negliobserves a certain mechanic courage which the gently under his arm, was forced into the water ordinary race of men become masters of from act by his horse's jumping over. The friend on the ing always in a crowd. They see indeed many shore cried out, Who is that drowned, trow?' He drop, but then they see many more alive; they was immediately answered, Your friend Harry observe themselves escape very narrowly, and Thompson.' He very gravely replied, 'Ay, he they do not know why they should not again. had a mad horse.' This short epithet from such Beside which general way of loose thinking, they a familiar, without more words, gave me, at that usually spend the other part of their time in time under twenty, a very moderate opinion of the pleasures upon which their minds are so entirely friendship of companions. Thus is affection and bent, that short labors or dangers are but a cheap every other motive of life in the generality rooted purchase of jollity, triumph, victory, fresh quar-out by the present busy scene about them; they ters, new scenes, and uncommon adventures. lament no man whose capacity can be supplied by Such are the thoughts of the executive part of an another; and where men converse without deliarmy, and indeed of the gross of mankind in general; but none of these men of mechanical courage have ever made any great figure in the profession of arms. Those who are formed for command, are such as have reasoned themselves, out of a consideration of greater good than length of days, into such a negligence of their being, as to make it their first position, that it is one day to be resigned; and since it is, in the prosecution

cacy, the next man you meet will serve as well as he whom you have lived with half your life. To such the devastation of countries, the misery of inhabitants, the cries of the pillaged, and the silent sorrow of the great unfortunate, are ordinary ob

The Frenchman here alluded to was the Chevalier de

Flourilles, a lieutenant-general under the Prince of Conde, at the battle of Senelf, in 1674.

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