and to laugh at them brutally for being fathers and for being poor. He does mention, in the Journal to Stella,1 a sick child, to be sure, a child of Lady Masham, that was ill of the small-pox; but then it is to confound the brat for being ill, and the mother for attending to it when she should have been busy about a court intrigue in which the Dean was deeply engaged. In treating of the good the humorists have done, of the love and kindness they have taught and left behind them, it is not of this one I dare speak. Heaven help the lonely misanthrope! be kind to that multitude of sins, with so little charity to cover them.

Being so gay, so bright, so popular, such a grand seigneur, Congreve was kind to those about him, generous to his dependants, serviceable to his friends. Society does not like a man so long as it likes Congreve, unless he is likable: it finds out a quack very soon; it scorns a poltroon or a curmudgeon. We may be certain that this man was brave, good-tempered, and liberal. So, very likely, is Monsieur Pirouette, of whom we spoke: he cuts his capers, he grins, bows, and dances to his fiddle. In private he may have a hundred virtues: in public he teaches dancing. His business is cotillons, not ethics.

As much may be said of those charming and lazy epicureans, Gay and Prior,-sweet lyric singers, comrades of Anacreon, and disciples of love and the bottle. "Is there any moral shut within the bosom of a rose ?" sings our great Tennyson. Does a nightingale preach

3 Stella. The real name of this | long correspondence in the form of lady, with whom Swift kept up a a Journal, was Esther Johnson.

from a bough, or a lark from his cloud? Not knowingly; yet we may be grateful, and love larks and roses, and the flower-crowned minstrels too, who laugh and who sing.

SECOND READING.

Of Addison's contributions to the charity of the world, I have spoken before in trying to depict that noble figure; and say now, as then, that we should thank him as one of the greatest benefactors of that vast and immeasurably spreading family which speaks our common tongue. Wherever it is spoken, there is no man that does not feel and understand and use the noble English word "gentleman." And there is no man that teaches us to be gentlemen better than Joseph Addison,- gentle in our bearing through life; gentle and courteous to our neighbor; gentle in dealing with his follies and weaknesses; gentle in treating his opposition; deferential to the old; kindly to the poor and those below us in degree (for people above us and below us we must find, in whatever hemisphere we dwell, whether kings or presidents govern us); and in no republic or monarchy that I know of is a citizen exempt from the tax of befriending poverty and weakness, of respecting age, and of honoring his father and mother.

It has just been whispered to me, I have not been three months in the country, and of course can not venture to express an opinion of my own, that, in regard to paying this latter tax of respect and honor to

age, some very few of the republican youths are occasionally a little remiss. I have heard of young sons of freedom publishing their Declaration of Independence before they could well spell it, and cutting the connection between father and mother before they had learned to shave. My own time of life having been stated by various enlightened organs of public opinion at almost any figure from forty-five to sixty, I cheerfully own that I belong to the Fogy interest, and ask leave to rank in, and plead for, that respectable class.

Now, a gentleman can but be a gentleman, in Broadway or the backwoods, in Pall Mall1 or California; and where and whenever he lives, thousands of miles away in the wilderness, or hundreds of years hence, I am sure that reading the writings of this true gentleman, this true Christian, this noble Joseph Addison, must do him good. He may take Sir Roger de Coverley 2 to the diggings with him, and learn to be gentle and good-humored and urbane and friendly in the midst of that struggle in which his life is engaged. I take leave to say that the most brilliant youth of this city may read over this delightful memorial of a bygone age, of fashions long passed away, of manners long since changed and modified, of noble gentlemen, and a great and a brilliant and polished society, and find in it much to charm and polish, to refine and instruct him, a courteousness which can be out of place at no time and under no flag; a politeness and simplicity; a truthful manhood; a gentle respect and deference

1 Pall Mall, a noted street in London.

2 Sir Roger de Coverley. See page 110 of this Reader.

which may be kept as the unbought grace of life, and cheap defense of mankind, long after its old artificial distinctions, after periwigs and small-swords, and ruffles and red-heeled shoes, and titles and stars and garters, have passed away.

I will tell you when I have been put in mind of two of the finest gentlemen books bring us any mention of, I mean our books (not books of history, but books of humor); I will tell you when I have been put in mind of the courteous gallantry of the noble knight Sir Roger de Coverley of Coverley Manor, of the noble hidalgo Don Quixote1 of La Mancha: here in your own omnibus-carriages and railway-cars, when I have seen a woman step in, handsome or not, welldressed or not, and a workman in hobnail shoes, or a dandy in the height of the fashion, rise up and give her his place. I think Mr. Spectator, with his short face, if he had seen such a deed of courtesy, would have smiled a sweet smile to the doer of that gentleman-like action, and have made him a low bow from under his great periwig, and have gone home and written a pretty paper about him.

I am sure Dick Steele would have hailed him, were he dandy or mechanic, and asked him to a tavern to share a bottle, or perhaps half a dozen. Mind, I do not set down the five last flasks to Dick's score for virtue, and look upon them as works of the most questionable supererogation.

1 hidalgo Don Quixote. Hidal-course the famous Don Quixote so is a title of a Spanish noble. delightfully portrayed by CervanThe character referred to is of tes.

go

Steele, as a literary benefactor to the world's charity, must rank very high indeed, not merely from his givings, which were abundant, but because his endowments are prodigiously increased in value since he bequeathed them, as the revenues of the lands bequeathed to our Foundling Hospital at London, by honest Captain Coram, its founder, are immensely enhanced by the houses since built upon them. Steele was the founder of sentimental writing in English; and how the land has been since occupied! and what hundreds of us have laid out gardens and built up tenements on Steele's ground! Before his time, readers or hearers were never called upon to cry, except at a tragedy; and compassion was not expected to express itself otherwise than in blank verse, or for personages much lower in rank than a dethroned monarch, or a widowed or a jilted empress.

He stepped off the high-heeled cothurnus,1 and came down into common life; he held out his great hearty arms, and embraced us all; he had a bow for all women, a kiss for all children, a shake of the hand for all men, high or low; he showed us heaven's sun shining every day on quiet homes, - not gilded palace-roofs only, or court possessions, or heroic warriors fighting for princesses and pitched battles. He took away comedy from behind the fine lady's alcove, or the screen where the libertine was watching her. He ended all that wretched business of wives jeering at their husbands; of rakes laughing wives, and husbands too, to scorn. That miserable, rouged, tawdry, sparkling, hollow

1 cothurnus, or cothurn, a kind | performance of tragedy; a busof high shoe anciently used in the kin.