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receive its objects without further precaution. During the time of this darkness, he bewailed himself in the most distressed manner; and accused all his friends, complaining that "some incantation had been wrought upon him, and some strange magic used to deceive him into an opinion that he had enjoyed what they called sight." He added, "that the impressions then let in upon his soul would certainly distract him, if he were not so at that present." At another time, he would strive to name the persons he had seen among the crowd after he was couched, and would pretend to speak, in perplexed terms of his own making, of what he, in that short time, observed. But on the sixth instant it was thought fit to unbind his head, and the young woman whom he loved was instructed to open his eyes accordingly, as well to endear herself to him by such a circumstance, as to moderate his ecstasies by the persuasion of a voice which had so much power over him as hers ever had. When this beloved young woman began to take off the binding of his eyes, she talked to him as follows:

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Mr. William, I am now taking the binding off, though when I consider what I am doing, I tremble with the apprehension, that, though I have from my very childhood loved you, dark as you were, and though you had conceived so strong a love for me, you will find there is such a thing as beauty, which may ensnare you into a thousand passions of which you are now innocent, and take you from me for ever. But, before I put myself to that hazard, tell me in what manner that love, you always professed to me, entered into your heart; for its usual admission is at the eyes." The young man answered, "Dear Lydia, if I am to lose by sight the soft pantings which I have always felt when I heard. your voice; if I am no more to distinguish the step of her I love when she approaches me, but to change that sweet and frequent pleasure for such an amazement as I knew the little time I lately saw; or if I am to have any thing besides, which may take from me the sense I have of what appeared most pleasing to me at that time, which apparition it seems was you; pull out these eyes, before they lead me to be ungrateful to you, or undo myself. I wished for them but to see you: pull them out, if they are to make me forget you."

Lydia was extremely satisfied with these assurances; and pleased herself with playing with his perplexities. In all his talk to her, he showed but very faint ideas of any thing which had not been received at the ears; and closed his protestation to her, by saying, that if he were to see Valentia and Barcelona, whom he supposed the most esteemed of all women, by the quar rel there was about them, he would never like any but Lydia.

Tatler, No. 58.

DANIEL DE FOE. 1661-1731.

DANIEL DE FOE, the author of that remarkable book of world-wide fame, "Robinson Crusoe," was born in London, 1661. Of his youthful years we know but little; but that his education was not neglected, and that he applied himself with assiduity to his studies, we may fairly infer from his subsequent success in the walks of literature. He first engaged in trade, but after a few years' trial of it, he found that that was not his sphere: his lively imagina tion, eager interest in politics, and fondness for literature, disqualified him for commercial matters. In 1700 he published his "True-Born Englishman," a pamphlet in answer to a libel on King William, with which his majesty was well pleased. From that time forth, he wrote with unwearied assiduity, and in 1704 first published his "Review," a periodical paper written exclusively by himself, and which he continued to publish twice or three times a week for nine years. This resembled, more than any other preceding work, the Tatler and Spectator; but borne down by a rude mass of temporary and uninteresting matter, connected with the news and politics of the day, it soon sunk into oblivion.

After the death of Queen Anne, in 1714, the continued attacks of his politi cal opponents so weighed upon his mind and depressed his spirits, that his health gave way, and he was for a time dangerously ill. When he recovered, he resolved to abandon his old field of political satire and invective, and to enter upon a new one; and accordingly he put forth the first part of his inimitable "Adventures of Robinson Crusoe," which no story has ever exceeded in popularity. The great success that attended this, induced him to write a second and a third part, which, however, are very inferior to the first. The multitude of books and pamphlets which he subsequently pub lished, we have not space to enumerate. Some of the most popular of these were, "The Adventures of Captain Singleton," "The Fortunes of Moll Flan ders," "The Memoirs of a Cavalier," A Tour through Great Britain, "A History of the Plague," and "The true Relation of the Apparition of one Mrs. Veal, the next Day after her Death." The last was afterwards subjoined to the editions of "Drelincourt on Death," and made that otherwise unsaleable book much sought after. One of his works had the following curious title: "Mars stript of his armor: a lashing caricature of the habits and manners of all kinds of military men, written on purpose to delight quiet trades-people, and cure their daughters of their passion for red-coats." He died on the 24th of April, 1731, in the seventy-first year of his age.

De Foe was a very remarkable man. His power, as a writer, of seizing and retaining a strong hold upon the popular mind, has seldom been equalled. Of great originality, and of strong and clear conceptions, which he was able to embody in language equally perspicuous and forcible, he has the power of forging the handwriting of nature," and of giving to fiction all the appear ance of reality. By a particularity and minuteness of description which his skill prevents from being tedious, he increases the probability of his story, and

1 Lowndes gives the titles of ninety-seven different works that De Foe wrote, and his list is probably Incomplete. "The fertility of De Foe," says Sir Walter Scott, "was astonishing. He wrote on all occasions and on all subjects, and seemingly had little time for preparation on the subject in hand, but treated it from the stores which his memory retained of early reading, and such hints as he had caught up in society, not one of which seems to have been lost upon him." Read--an interesting life of De Foc in Sir Walter Scott's Prose Works.

gives to its reader a continually increasing interest in it; so that no author of imaginary tales has impressed so many persons with the belief that they have been reading a true, rather than a fictitious narrative. Of that most popular, delightful, and extraordinary of all his works, "Robinson Crusoe," which had lost none of its original attractions even at the distance of half a century, Dr. Johnson observed, "Nobody ever laid it down without wishing it were longer."

ROBINSON CRUSOE DISCOVERS THE FOOT-PRINT.

It happened one day about noon, going towards my boat, I was exceedingly surprised with the print of a man's naked foot on the shore, which was very plain to be seen in the sand: I stood like one thunder-struck, or as if I had seen an apparition; I listened. I looked round me, I could hear nothing, nor see any thing; I went up to a rising ground to look farther: I went up the shore. and down the shore, but it was all one, I could see no other impression but that one: I went to it again to see if there were any more, and to observe if it might not be my fancy; but there was no room for that, for there was exactly the very print of a foot, toes, heel, and every part of a foot. How it came thither I knew not, nor could in the least imagine. But after innumerable fluttering thoughts, like a man perfectly confused, and out of myself, I came home to my fortification, not feeling, as we say, the ground I went on, but terrified to the last degree, looking behind me at every two or three steps, mistaking every bush and tree, and fancying every stump at a distance to be a man; nor is it possible to describe how many various shapes an affrighted imagination represented things to me in; how many wild ideas were formed every moment in my fancy, and what strange, unaccountable whimsies came into my thoughts by the way.

When I came to my castle, for so I think I called it ever after this, I fled into it like one pursued; whether I went over by the ladder, at first contrived, or went in at the hole in the rock, which I called a door, I cannot remember; for never frighted hare fled to cover, or fox to earth, with more terror of mind than I to this retreat.

How strange a chequer-work of Providence is the life of man! And by what secret differing springs are the affections hurried about, as differing circumstances present! To-day we love what to-morrow we hate; to-day we seek what to-morrow we shun; to-day we desire what to-morrow we fear; nay, even tremble at the apprehensions of. This was exemplified in me at this time in the most lively manner imaginable; for I, whose only affliction was, that I seemed banished from human society, that I was alone, circumscribed by the boundless ocean, cut off from mankind, and condemned to what I call a silent life; that I was as one whom Heaven thought not worthy to be numbered among the living, or

Lo appear among the rest of his creatures; that to have seen one of my own species would have seemed to me a raising me from death to life, and the greatest blessing that Heaven itself, next to the supreme blessing of salvation, could bestow; I say, that I should now tremble at the very apprehensions of seeing a man, and was ready to sink into the ground, at but the shadow, or silent appearance of a man's having set his foot on the island!

Such is the uneven state of human life; and it afforded me a great many curious speculations afterwards, when I had a little recovered my first surprise. I considered that this was the station of life the infinitely wise and good providence of God had deter mined for me; that as I could not foresee what the ends of divine wisdom might be in all this, so I was not to dispute his sovereignty, who, as I was his creature, had an undoubted right by creation to govern and dispose of me absolutely as he thought fit; and who, as I was a creature who had offended him, had likewise a judicial right to condemn me to what punishment he thought fit; and that it was my part to submit to bear his indignation, because I had sinned against him.

I then reflected, that God, who was not only righteous, but omnipotent, as he had thought fit thus to punish and afflict me, so he was able to deliver me; that if he did not think fit to do it, it was my unquestioned duty to resign myself absolutely and entirely to his will: and, on the other hand, it was my duty also to hope in him, pray to him, and quietly to attend the dictates and directions of his daily providence.

These thoughts took me up many hours, days, nay, I may say, weeks and months; and one particular effect of my cogitations on this occasion I cannot omit; viz., one morning early, lying in my bed, and filled with thoughts about my danger from the appearance of savages, I found it discomposed me very much; upon which those words of the Scripture came into my thoughts, Call upon me in the day of trouble, and I will deliver thee, and thou shalt glorify me.

Upon this, rising cheerfully out of my bed, my heart was not only comforted, but I was guided and encouraged to pray earnestly to God for deliverance. When I had done praying, I took up my Bible, and, opening it to read, the first words that presented to me, were, Wait on the Lord, and be of good courage, and he shall strengthen thy heart: Wait, I say, on the Lord. It is impossible to express the comfort this gave me; and in return, I thankfully laid down the book, and was no more sad, at least, not on that occasion.

In the middle of these cogitations, apprehensions, and reflec tions, it came into my thoughts one day, that all this might be a mere chimera of my own, and that this foot might be the print of

my own foot, when I came on shore from my boat: this cheered me up a little too, and I began to persuade myself it was all a delusion; that it was nothing else but my own foot; and why might not I come that way from the boat, as well as I was going that way to the boat? Again, I considered also, that I could by no means tell for certain where I had trod, and where I had not; and that if at last this was only the print of my own foot, I had played the part of those fools, who strive to make stories of spectres and apparitions, and then are themselves frighted at them more than anybody else.

Now I began to take courage, and to peep abroad again; for I had not stirred out of my castle for three days and nights, so that I began to starve for provision; for I had little or nothing within doors, but some barley-cakes and water. Then I knew that my goats wanted to be milked too, which usually was my evening diversion; and the poor creatures were in great pain and inconvenience for want of it; and indeed it almost spoiled some of them, and almost dried up their milk.

Heartening myself, therefore, with the belief, that this was nothing but the print of one of my own feet, (and so I might be truly said to start at my own shadow,) I began to go abroad again, and went to my country-house to milk my flock; but to see with what fear I went forward, how often I looked behind me, how I was ready, every now and then, to lay down my basket, and run for my life; it would have made any one have thought I was haunted with an evil conscience, or that I had been lately most terribly frighted; and so indeed I had.

However, as I went down thus two or three days, and having seen nothing, I began to be a little bolder, and to think there was really nothing in it but my own imagination. But I could not persuade myself fully of this, till I should go down to the shore again, and see this print of a foot, and measure it by my own, and see if there was any similitude or fitness, that I might be assured it was my own foot. But when I came to the place first, it appeared evidently to me, that when I laid up my boat, I could not possibly be on shore anywhere thereabouts. Secondly, when I came to measure the mark with my own foot, I found my foot not so large by a great deal. Both these things filled my head with new inaginations, and gave me the vapors again to the highest degree; so that I shook with cold, like one in an ague; and I went home again, filled with the belief, that some man or men had been on shore there; or, in short, that the island was inhabited, and I might be surprised before I was aware; and what course to take for my security, I knew not. O what ridiculous resolutions men take, when possessed with fear! It deprives them of the use of those means which reason offers for their relief,

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