inventions to keep people from sitting still, that frugality would never think of; and as this must consume a prodigious wealth, so avarice again knows innumerable tricks to rake it together, which frugality would scorn to make use of. Authors are always allowed to compare small things to great ones, especially if they ask leave first; but to compare great things to mean trivial ones is unsufferable, unless it be in burlesque; otherwise, I would compare the body politic (I confess the simile is very low) to a bowl of punch. Avarice should be the souring, and prodigality the sweetening of it. The water I would call the ignorance, folly, and credulity of the floating insipid multitude; whilst wisdom, honour, fortitude, and the rest of the sublime qualities of men, which, separated by art from the dregs of nature, the fire of glory has exalted and refined into a spiritual essence, should be an equivalent to brandy. I don't doubt but a Westphalian, Laplander, or any other dull stranger that is unacquainted with the wholesome composition, if he was to taste the several ingredients apart, would think it impossible they should make any tolerable liquor. The lemons would be too sour, the sugar too luscious, the brandy, he will say, is too strong ever to be drunk in any quantity, and the water he will call a tasteless liquor, only fit for cows and horses; yet experience teaches us that the ingredients I named, judiciously mixed, will make an excellent liquor, liked of and admired by men of exquisite palates.* [Pomp and Superfluity.] If the great ones of the clergy, as well as the laity, of any country whatever, had no value for earthly pleasures, and did not endeavour to gratify their appetites, why are envy and revenge, so raging among them, and all the other passions, improved and refined upon in courts of princes more than anywhere else; and why are their repasts, their recreations, and whole manner of living, always such as are approved of, coveted, and imitated by the most sensual people of the same country? If, despising all visible decorations, they were only in love with the embellishments of the mind, why should they borrow so many of the implements, and make use of the most darling toys, of the luxurious? Why should a lord treasurer, or a bishop, or even the Grand Signior, or the Pope of Rome, to be good and virtuous, and endeavour the conquest of his passions, have occasion for greater revenues, richer furniture, or a more numerous attendance as to personal service, than a private man? What virtue is it the exercise of which requires so much pomp and superfluity as are to be seen by all men in power? A man has as much opportunity to practise temperance that has but one dish at a meal, as he that is constantly served with three courses and a dozen dishes in each. One may exercise as much patience and be as full of self-denial on a few flocks, without curtains or tester, as in a velvet bed that is sixteen foot high. The virtuous possessions of the mind are neither charge nor burden: a man may bear misfortunes with fortitude in a garret, forgive injuries a-foot, and be chaste, though he has not a shirt to his back; and therefore I shall never believe but that an indifferent skuller, if he was intrusted with it, might carry all the learning and religion that one man can contain, as well as a barge with six oars, especially if it was but to cross from Lambeth to * This simile of Mandeville may have suggested the very humorous one in the Rejected Addresses,' where Cobbett is made to say-England is a large earthenware pipkin. John Bull is the beef thrown into it. Taxes are the hot water he boils in. Rotten boroughs are the fuel that blazes under this same pipkin. Parliament is the ladle that stirs the hodgepodge.' Westminster; or that humility is so ponderous a virtue, that it requires six horses to draw it. ANDREW FLETCHER OF SALTOUN. ANDREW FLETCHER, born in 1653, the son of a Scottish knight, succeeded early to the family estate of Saltoun, and represented the shire of Lothian in the Scottish parliament in the reign of Charles II. He opposed the arbitrary designs of the Duke of York, afterwards James II., and retired to Holland. His estate was confiscated; but he returned to England with the Duke of Monmouth in 1685. Happening, in a personal scuffle, to kill the mayor of Lynn, Fletcher again went abroad, and travelled in Spain. He returned at the period of the Revolution, and took an active part in Scottish affairs. His opinions were republican, and he was of a haughty unbending temper; brave as the sword he wore,' according to a contemporary, and bold as a lion: a sure friend, and an irreconcilable enemy: would lose his life readily to serve his country, and would not do a base thing to save it.' Fletcher opposed the union of Scotland with England in 1707, believing, with many zealous but narrow-sighted patriots of that day, that it would eclipse the glory of ancient Caledonia. He died in 1716. Fletcher wrote several political discourses. One of these, entitled An Account of a Conversation concerning a Right Regulation of Governments for the Common Good of Mankind, in a Letter to the Marquis of Montrose, the Earls of Rothes, Roxburgh, and Haddington, from London, the first of December, 1703, is forcibly written, and contains some strong appeals in favour of Scottish independence, as well as some just and manly sentiments. In this letter occurs a saying often quoted, and which has been (by Lord Brougham and others) erroneously ascribed to the Earl of Chatham: I knew a very wise man that believed that if a man were permitted to make all the ballads, he need not care who should make the laws of a nation.' The newspaper may now be said to have supplanted the ballad; yet, during the late war, the naval songs of Dibdin fanned the flame of national courage and patriotism. An excessive admiration of the Grecian and Roman republics led Fletcher to eulogise even the slavery that prevailed in those states. He represents their condition as happy and useful; and, as a contrast to it, he paints the state of the lowest class in Scotland in colours that, if true, show how frightfully disorganised the country was at that period. In his Second Discourse on the Affairs of Scotland, 1698, there occurs the following sketch: There are at this day in Scotland (besides a great many poor families very meanly provided for by the church boxes, with others who, by living on bad food, fall into various diseases) two hundred thousand people begging from door to door. These are not only no way advantageous, but a very grievous burden to so poor a country. And though the number of them be perhaps double to what it was formerly, by reason of this present great distress, yet in all times there have been about one hundred thousand of those vagabonds, who have lived without any regard or subjection either to the laws of the land, or even those of God and nature. No magistrate could ever be informed, or discover, which way one in a hundred of these wretches died, have been discovered among them; and they are or that ever they were baptised. Many murders not only a most unspeakable oppression to poor tenants (who, if they give not bread, or some kind of provision, to perhaps forty such villains in one day, are sure to be insulted by them), but they rob many poor people who live in houses distant 40 from any neighbourhood. In years of plenty, many thousands of them meet together in the mountains, where they feast and riot for many days; and at country weddings, markets, burials, and the like public occasions, they are to be seen, both men and women, perpetually drunk, cursing, blaspheming, and fighting together. These are such outrageous disorders, that it were better for the nation they were sold to the galleys or West Indies, than that they should continue any longer to be a burden and curse upon us.' JONATHAN SWIFT. and Government, his Letters on the Sacramental Test, Argument against the Abolition of Christianity, and Predictions for the Year 1708, by Isaac Bickerstafi, Esq. Various political tracts followed, the most conspicuous of which are, The Conduct of the Allies, published in 1712, and The Public Spirit of the Whigs, in 1714. The latter incensed the Duke of Argyle and other peers so much, that a proclamation offering a reward of £300 was issued for the discovery of the author. In 1713, Swift was rewarded with the deanery of St Patrick's in Dublin; but the destruction of all his hopes of further preferment followed soon after, on the accession of the House of Hanover to the throne, and the return of the Whig party The most powerful and original prose writer of to power. He withdrew to Ireland, a disappointed this period was DR SWIFT, the celebrated dean of man, full of bitterness against many of the men and St Patrick's. We have already noticed his poetry, things of his age. His feelings partly found vent which formed only a sort of interlude in the strangely in several works which he published on national mingled drama of his life. None of his works were subjects, and which rendered him exceedingly powritten for mere fame or solitary gratification. His pular-A Proposal for the Universal Use of Irish restless and insatiate ambition prompted him to Manufactures, and Letters by M. B. Drapier against wield his pen as a means of advancing his interests, Wood's patent for supplying Ireland with a copper or expressing his personal feelings, caprices, or re- coinage. His talents were in full vigour, and his sentment. In a letter to Bolingbroke, he says- mind, ever active, poured forth a vast number of All my endeavours, from a boy, to distinguish my-slight pieces on the topics of the day. In 1726 apself, were only for want of a great title and fortune, peared Gulliver's Travels, the most original and that I might be used like a lord by those who have extraordinary of all his productions. A few of his an opinion of my parts-whether right or wrong, it friends-Pope, Bolingbroke, Gay, and Arbuthnotis no great matter; and so the reputation of wit or were in the secret as to the authorship of this satigreat learning does the office of a blue ribbon, or of rical romance; but it puzzled the world in no ordia coach and six horses.' This was but a poor and nary degree, and this uncertainty tended to increase sordid ambition, and it is surprising that it bore the interest and attraction of the work. While such fruit. The first work of any importance by courtiers and politicians recognised in the adventures Swift was a political tract, written in 1701, to vin- of Gulliver many satirical allusions to the court and dicate the Whig patriots, Somers, Halifax, and politics of England-to Walpole, Bolingbroke, the Portland, who had been impeached by the House of Prince of Wales, the two contending parties in the Commons. The author was then of the ripe age of state, and various matters of secret history-the thirty-four; for Swift, unlike his friend Pope, came great mass of ordinary readers saw and felt only the but slowly to the maturity of his powers. The wonder and fascination of the narrative. The ap treatise was entitled A Discourse of the Contests and pearance, occupations, wars, and pursuits of the tiny Dissensions between the Nobles and Commons of Athens | Lilliputians—the gigantic Brobdingnagians-the and Rome. It is plainly written, without irony or fearful, misanthropic picture of the Yahoos-with eloquence. One sentence (the last in the fourth the philosophic researches at Laputa-all possessed chapter) closes with a fine simile. Although,' he novelty and attraction for the mere unlearned reader, says, most revolutions of government in Greece who was alternately agitated with emotions of surand Rome began with the tyranny of the people, prise, delight, astonishment, pity, and reprobation. yet they generally concluded in that of a single per- The charm of Swift's style, so simple, pure, and unson: so that an usurping populace is its own dupe; a affected, and the apparent earnestness and sincerity mere underworker, and a purchaser in trust for with which he dwells on the most improbable cirsome single tyrant, whose state and power may ad- cumstances, are displayed in full perfection in Gulvance to their own ruin, with as blind an instinct liver, which was the most carefully finished of all as those worms that die with weaving magnificent his works. Some tracts on ecclesiastical questions, habits for beings of a superior nature to their own.' and the best of his poetry, were afterwards produced. Swift's next work was his Battle of the Books, written His other prose works were, A History of the Four to support his patron, Sir William Temple, in his Last Years of Queen Anne (not published till long dispute as to the relative merits of ancient and after his death), Polite Conversation, a happy satire modern learning. The Battle of the Books' exhi- on the frivolities of fashionable life, and Directions bits all the characteristics of Swift's style, its per-for Servants, a fragment which also appeared after sonal satire, and strong racy humour. These qualities were further displayed in his Tale of a Tub, written about the same time, and first published in 1704. The object of his powerful satire was here of a higher cast; it was to ridicule the Roman Catholics and Presbyterians, with a view of exalting the High Church of England party. His three heroes, Peter, Martin, and Jack, represent Popery, the Church of England, and the Protestant dissenters; and their adventures, if not very decorous, are at least irresistibly ludicrous. How any clergyman could write and publish in such a strain on religious subjects, must ever remain a marvel. But Swift published anonymously. He soon grew dissatisfied with the Whigs, and his next publications united him with the Tory party. In 1708 appeared his Sentiments of a Church of England Man, in Respect to Religion his death, and on which he bestowed considerable pains. It exemplifies the habit of minute observation which distinguished Swift, and which sometimes rendered him no very agreeable inmate of a house. Various editions of Swift's works have been published, but the best and most complete is that by Sir Walter Scott, in nineteen volumes. His rank as a writer has long since been established. In originality and strength he has no superior, and in wit and irony-the latter of which he was born to introduce, Refined it first, and showed its usehe shines equally pre-eminent. He was deficient in purity of taste and loftiness of imagination. The frequency with which he dwells on gross and disgusting images, betrays a callousness of feeling that wholly debarred him from the purer regions of at least put the senate to the trouble of another securromance. He could Laugh and shake in Rabelais' easy chair though it was still, as Coleridge has remarked, the soul of Rabelais dwelling in a dry place.' Of the serious air' of Cervantes, which Pope has also bestowed on his friend, the traces are less frequent and distinct. We can scarcely conceive him to have ever read the 'Faery Queen' or ' Midsummer Night's Dream.' The palpable and familiar objects of life were the sources of his inspiration; and in fictitious narrative, he excels, like Richardson and Defoe, by painting and grouping minute particulars, that impart to his most extravagant conceptions an air of sober truth and reality. Always full of thought and observation, his clear perspicuous style never tires in the perusal. When exhausted by the works of imaginative writers, or the ornate periods of statesmen and philosophers, the plain, earnest, and manly pages of Swift, his strong sense, keen observation, and caustic wit, are felt to be a legacy of inestimable value. He was emphatically a master in English literature, and as such, with all his faults, is entitled to our reverence. The satirical vein of Swift is well exemplified in his Argument against Abolishing Christianity,' the very title of which is a specimen of grave irony. It runs as follows:- An Argument to prove that the Abolishing of Christianity in England may, as things now stand, be attended with some inconveniences, and perhaps not produce those many good effects proposed thereby.' Two specimens of this tract are presented. [Inconveniences from a Proposed Abolition of I am very sensible how much the gentlemen of wit and pleasure are apt to murmur and be shocked at the sight of so many daggle-tail parsons, who happen to fall in their way, and offend their eyes; but, at the same time, those wise reformers do not consider what an advantage and felicity it is for great wits to be always provided with objects of scorn and contempt, in order to exercise and improve their talents, and divert their spleen from falling on each other, or on themselves; especially when all this may be done without the least imaginable danger to their persons. And to urge another argument of a parallel nature: if Christianity were once abolished, how could the free-thinkers, the strong reasoners, and the men of profound learning, be able to find another subject so calculated in all points whereon to display their abilities? What wonderful productions of wit should we be deprived of from those whose genius, by continual practice, hath been wholly turned upon raillery and invectives against religion, and would, therefore, be never able to shine or distinguish themselves on any other subject? We are daily complaining of the great decline of wit among us, and would we take away the greatest, perhaps the only topic we have left? Who would ever have suspected Asgill for a wit or Toland for a philosopher, if the inexhaustible stock of Christianity had not been at hand to provide them with materials? What other subject through all art or nature could have produced Tindal for a profound author, or furnished him with readers? It is the wise choice of the subject that alone adorneth and distinguisheth the writer. For had a hundred such pens as these been employed on the side of religion, they would immediately have sunk into silence and oblivion. ing vote. I desire I may not be misunderstood; I am far from presuming to affirm or think that the church is in danger at present, or as things now stand, but we know not how soon it may be so, when the Christian religion is repealed. As plausible as this project seems, there may a dangerous design lurk under it. Nothing can be more notorious than that the atheists, deists, socinians, anti-trinitarians, and other subdivisions of free-thinkers, are persons of little zeal for the present ecclesiastical establishment. Their declared opinion is for repealing the sacramental test; they are very indifferent with regard to ceremonies; nor do they hold the jus divinum of episcopacy. Therefore this may be intended as one politic step towards altering the constitution of the church established, and setting up presbytery in its stead; which I leave to be farther considered by those at the helm. And therefore if, notwithstanding all I have said, it shall still be thought necessary to have a bill brought in for repealing Christianity, I would humbly offer an amendment, that, instead of the word Christianity, may be put religion in general; which I conceive will much better answer all the good ends proposed by the projectors of it. For as long as we leave in being a God and his Providence, with all the necessary consequences which curious and inquisitive men will be apt to draw from such premises, we do not strike at the root of the evil, although we should ever so effectually annihilate the present scheme of the Gospel. For of what use is freedom of thought, if it will not produce freedom of action, which is the sole end, how remote soever in appearance, of all objections against Christianity? And therefore the free-thinkers consider it a sort of edifice, wherein all the parts have such a mutual dependence on each other, that if you happen to pull out one single nail, the whole fabric must fall to the ground. [Arguments for the Abolition of Christianity Treated.] It is likewise urged, that there are by computation in this kingdom above ten thousand parsons, whose revenues, added to those of my lords the bishops, would suffice to maintain at least two hundred young gentlemen of wit and pleasure, and free-thinking, enemies to priestcraft, narrow principles, pedantry, and prejudices, who might be an ornament to the court and town; and then, again, so great a number of able [bodied] divines might be a recruit to our fleet and arinies. This, indeed, appears to be a consideration of some weight; but then, on the other side, several things deserve to be considered likewise: as, first, whether it may not be thought necessary that in certain tracts of country, like what we call parishes, there should be one man at least of abilities to read and write. Then it seems a wrong computation, that the revenues of the church throughout this island would be large enough to maintain two hundred young gentlemen, or even half that number, after the present refined way of living, that is, to allow each of them such a rent as, in the modern form of speech, would make them easy. * * Another advantage proposed by the abolishing of Christianity, is the clear gain of one day in seven, which is now entirely lost, and consequently the kingdom one-seventh less considerable in trade, business, and pleasure; besides the loss to the public of so many stately structures now in the hands of the clergy, which might be converted into play-houses, market-houses, exchanges, common dormitories, and other public edifices. I hope I shall be forgiven a hard word if I call this cavil. I readily own there hath been an old custom, time out of mind, for people to assemble in the Nor do I think it wholly groundless, or my fears altogether imaginary, that the abolishing of Christi-a anity may, perhaps, bring the church in danger, or churches every Sunday, and that shops are still fre- which are the constant practice of all men alive. quently shut up, in order, as it is conceived, to pre- But this objection is, I think, a little unworthy so serve the memory of that ancient practice; but how refined an age as ours. Let us argue this matter this can prove a hindrance to business or pleasure, is calmly: I appeal to the breast of any polite freehard to imagine. What if the men of pleasure are thinker, whether, in the pursuit of gratifying a preforced, one day in the week, to game at home instead dominant passion, he hath not always felt a wonder of the chocolate house? are not the taverns and cof- ful incitement by reflecting it was a thing forbidden; feehouses open! can there be a more convenient sea- and therefore we see, in order to cultivate this taste, son for taking a dose of physic is not Sunday the the wisdom of the nation hath taken special care that chief day for traders to sum up the accounts of the the ladies should be furnished with prohibited silks, week, and for lawyers to prepare their briefs? But I and the men with prohibited wine. And indeed it would fain know how it can be pretended that the were to be wished that some other prohibitions were churches are misapplied? where are more appoint- promoted, in order to improve the pleasures of the ments and rendezvouses of gallantry where more town; which, for want of such expedients, begin alcare to appear in the foremost box with greater ad-ready, as I am told, to flag and grow languid, giving vantage of dress? where more meetings for business? way daily to cruel inroads from the spleen. where more bargains driven of all sorts? and where so many conveniences or incitements to sleep? There is one advantage, greater than any of the foregoing, proposed by the abolishing of Christianity: that it will utterly extinguish parties among us, by removing those factious distinctions of high and low church, of Whig and Tory, Presbyterian and Church of England, which are now so many grievous clogs upon public proceedings, and are apt to dispose men to prefer the gratifying themselves, or depressing their adversaries, before the most important interest of the state. I confess, if it were certain that so great an advantage would redound to the nation by this expedient, I would submit, and be silent; but will any man say, that if the words drinking, cheating, lying, stealing, were by act of parliament ejected out of the English tongue and dictionaries, we should all awake next morning chaste and temperate, honest and just, and lovers of truth? Is this a fair consequence? Or if the physicians would forbid us to pronounce the words gout, rheumatism, and stone, would that expedient serve like so many talismans to destroy the diseases themselves? Are party and faction rooted in men's hearts no deeper than phrases borrowed from religion, or founded upon no firmer principles and is our own language so poor, that we cannot find other terms to express them? Are envy, pride, avarice, and ambition, such il nomenclators, that they cannot furnish appellations for their owners? Will not heydukes and mamalukes, mandarines and pashaws, or any other words formed at pleasure, serve to distinguish those who are in the ministry from others who would be in it if they could? What, for instance, is easier than to vary the form of speech, and, instead of the word church, make it a question in politics, whether the Monument be in danger? Because religion was nearest at hand to furnish a few convenient phrases, is our invention so barren we can find no other? Suppose, for argument sake, that the Tories favoured Margarita, the Whigs Mrs Tofts, and the Trimmers Valentini, would not Margaritians, Toftians, and Valentinians be very tolerable marks of distinction? The Prasini and Veniti, two most virulent factions in Italy, began (if I remember right) by a distinction of colours in ribbons; and we might contend with as good a grace about the dignity of the blue and the green, which would serve as properly to divide the court, the parliament, and the kingdom between them, as any terms of art whatsoever borrowed from religion. And therefore I think there is little force in this objection against Christianity, or prospect of so great an advantage as is proposed in the abolishing of it. It is again objected, as a very absurd ridiculous custom, that a set of men should be suffered, much less employed and hired, to bawl one day in seven against the lawfulness of those methods most in use towards the pursuit of greatness, riches, and pleasure, 1 Singers then in vogue. [Ludicrous Image of Fanaticism.] [From a Discourse on the Operation of the Spirit."] It is recorded of Mahomet, that upon a visit he was going to pay in Paradise, he had an offer of several vehicles to conduct him upwards; as, fiery chariots, winged horses, and celestial sedans; but he refused them all, and would be borne to heaven on nothing but his ass. Now, this inclination of Mahomet, as singular as it seems, hath since been taken up by a great number of devout Christians, and doubtless with good reason. For, since that Arabian is known to have borrowed a moiety of his religious system from the Christian faith, it is but just he should pay reprisals to such as would challenge them; wherein the good people of England, to do them all right, have not been backward. For though there is not any other nation in the world so plentifully provided with carriages for that journey, either as to safety or ease, yet there are abundance of us who will not be satis fied with any other machine besides this of Mahomet. A Meditation upon a Broomstick, according to the style and manner of the Hon. Robert Boyle's Meditations. This single stick, which you now behold ingloriously lying in that neglected corner, I once knew in a flourishing state in a forest; it was full of sap, full of leaves, and full of boughs; but now in vain does the busy art of man pretend to vie with nature, by tying that withered bundle of twigs to its sapless trunk; it is now at best but the reverse of what it was, a tree turned upside down, the branches on the earth, and the root in the air; it is now handled by every dirty wench, condemned to do her drudgery, | and, by a capricious kind of fate, destined to make her things clean, and be nasty itself; at length, worn out to the stumps in the service of the maids, it is either thrown out of doors, or condemned to the last use of kindling a fire. When I beheld this, I sighed, and said within myself, Surely mortal man is a broomstick! nature sent him into the world strong and lusty, in a thriving condition, wearing his own hair on his head, the proper branches of this reasoning vegetable, until the axe of intemperance has lopped off his green boughs, and left him a withered trunk; he then flies to art, and puts on a periwig, valuing himself upon an unnatural bundle of hairs, all covered with powder, that never grew on his head; but now, should this our broomstick pretend to enter the scene, proud of those birchen spoils it never bore, and all covered with dust, though the sweepings of the finest lady's chamber, we should be apt to ridicule and despise its vanity. Partial judges that we are of our own excellences, and other men's defaults! But a broomstick, perhaps you will say, is an emblem of a tree standing on its head: and pray, what is man but a topsy-turvy creature, his animal faculties perpetually mounted on his rational, his head where his heels should be-grovelling on the earth! and yet, with all his faults, he sets up to be a universal reformer and corrector of abuses, a remover of grievances; rakes into every slut's corner of nature, bringing hidden corruptions to the light, and raises a mighty dust where there was none before, sharing deeply all the while in the very same pollutions he pretends to sweep away. His last days are spent in slavery to women, and generally the least deserving; till, worn to the stumps, like his brother besom, he is either kicked out of doors, or made use of to kindle flames for others to warm themselves by. [Adventures of Gulliver in Brobdingnag.] [Thrown amongst a people described as about ninety feet high, Gulliver is taken in charge by a young lady connected with the court, who had two boxes made in which to keep him and carry him about.] I should have lived happy enough in that country, if my littleness had not exposed me to several ridiculous and troublesome accidents, some of which I shall venture to relate. Glumdalclitch often carried me into the gardens of the court in my smaller box, and would sometimes take me out of it, and hold me in her hand, or set me down to walk. I remember, before the dwarf left the queen, he followed us one day into those gardens, and my nurse having set me down, he and I being close together, near some dwarf apple trees, I must need show my wit by a silly allusion between him and the trees, which happens to hold in their language as it doth in ours. Whereupon the malicious rogue watching his opportunity, when I was walking under one of them, shook it directly over my head, by which a dozen apples, each of them near as large as a Bristol barrel, came tumbling about my ears; one of them hit me on the back as I chanced to stoop, and knocked me down flat on my face; but I received no other hurt, and the dwarf was pardoned at my desire, because I had given the provocation. Another day Glumdalclitch left me on a smooth grass-plat to divert myself, while she walked at some distance with her governess. In the meantime there suddenly fell such a violent shower of hail, that I was immediately by the force of it struck to the ground; and when I was down, the hail-stones gave me such cruel bangs all over the body, as if I had been pelted with tennis-balls; however, I made a shift to creep on all fours, and shelter myself by lying flat on my face, on the lee-side of a border of lemon thyme, but so bruised from head to foot, that I could not go abroad in ten days. Neither is this at all to be wondered at, because nature in that country observing the same proportion through all her operations, a hail-stone is near eighteen hundred times as large as one in Europe, which I can assert upon experience, having been so curious to weigh and measure them. But a more dangerous accident happened to me in the same garden, when my little nurse, believing she had put me in a secure place, which I often intreated her to do, that I might enjoy my own thoughts, and having left my box at home to avoid the trouble of carrying it, went to another part of the garden with her governess and some ladies of her acquaintance. While she was absent, and out of hearing, a small white spaniel belonging to one of the chief gardeners, having got by accident into the garden, happened to range near the place where I lay; the dog, following the scent, came directly up, and taking me in his mouth ran straight to his master, wagging his tail, and set me gently on the ground. By good fortune he had been so well taught, that I was carried between his teeth without the least hurt, or even tearing my clothes. But the poor gardener, who knew me well, and had a great kindness for me, was in a terrible fright; he gently took me up in both his hands, and asked me how I did; but I was so amazed and out of breath, that I could not speak a word. In a few minutes I came to myself, and he carried me safe to my little nurse, who by this time had returned to the place where she left me, and was in cruel agonies when I did not appear, nor answer when she called : she severely reprimanded the gardener on account of his dog. But the thing was hushed up, and never known at court; for the girl was afraid of the queen's anger, and truly, as to myself, I thought it would not be for my reputation that such a story should go about. This accident absolutely determined Glumdalclitch never to trust me abroad for the future out of her sight. I had been long afraid of this resolution, and therefore concealed from her some little unlucky adventures that happened in those times when I was left by myself. Once a kite, hovering over the garden, made a stoop at me, and if I had not resolutely drawn my hanger, and run under a thick espalier, he would have certainly carried me away in his talons. Another time, walking to the top of a fresh mole-hill, I fell to my neck in the hole, through which that animal had cast up the earth, and coined some lie, not worth remembering, to excuse myself for spoiling my clothes. I cannot tell whether I were more pleased or mortified to observe in those solitary walks that the smaller birds did not appear to be at all afraid of me, but would hop about me, within a yard's distance, looking for worms and other food with as much indifference and security as if no creature at all were near them. I remember, a thrush had the confidence to snatch out of my hand, with his bill, a piece of cake that Glumdalclitch had just given me for my breakfast. When I attempted to catch any of these birds, they would boldly turn against me, endeavouring to peck my fingers, which I durst not venture within their reach; and then they would hop back unconcerned to hunt for worms or snails, as they did before. But one day I took a thick cudgel, and threw it with all my strength so luckily at a linnet, that I knocked him down, and seizing him by the neck with both my hands, ran with him in triumph to my nurse. However, the bird, who had only been stunned, recovering himself, gave me so many boxes with his wings on both sides of my head and body, though I held him at arm's length, and was out of the reach of his claws, that I was twenty times thinking to let him go. But I was soon relieved by one of our servants, who wrung off the bird's neck, and I had him next day for dinner by the queen's command. This linnet, as near as I can remember, seemed to be somewhat larger than an England swan. The queen, who often used to hear me talk of my sea-voyages, and took all occasions to divert me when I was melancholy, asked me whether I understood how to handle a sail or an oar, and whether a little exercise of rowing might not be convenient for my health? I answered, that I understood both very well; for although my proper employment had been to be surgeon or doctor to the ship, yet often upon a pinch I was forced to work like a common mariner. But I could not see how this could be done in their country, where the smallest wherry was equal to a first-rate man-of-war among us, and such a boat as I could manage would never live in any of their rivers. Her majesty said if I would contrive a boat, her own joiner should make it, and she would provide a place for me to sail in. The fellow was an ingenious workman, and, by my instructions, in ten days finished a pleasure-boat, with all its tackling, able conveniently to hold eight Europeans. When it was finished, the queen was so delighted, that she ran with it in her lap to the king, who ordered it to be put in a cistern full of water with |