account of my entertainment in this sober seasor of universal retreat, and to describe to you the employments of those who look with contempt on the pleasures and diversions of polite life, and employ all their powers of censure and invective upon the uselessness, vanity, and folly, of dress, visits, and conversation.

To secure to the old that influence which they are willing to claim, and which might so much contribute to the improvement of the arts of life, it is absolutely necessary that they give them selves up to the duties of declining years; and contentedly resign to youth its levity, its pleasures, its frolics, and its fopperies. It is a hopeless endeavour to unite the contrarieties of spring When a tiresome and vexatious journey of and winter; it is unjust to claim the privileges of four days had brought me to the house, where age, and retain the playthings of childhood. The invitation, regularly sent for seven years togeyoung always form magnificent ideas of the wis-ther, had at last induced me to pass the summer, dom and gravity of men, whom they consider as placed at a distance from them in the ranks of existence, and naturally look on those whom they find trifling with long beards with contempt and indignation, like that which women feel at the effeminacy of men. If dotards will contend with boys in those performances in which boys must always excel them; if they will dress crippled limbs in embroidery, endeavour at gayety with faltering voices, and darken assemblies of pleasure with the ghastliness of disease, they may well expect those who find their diversions obstructed will hoot them away; and that if they descend to competition, with youth, they must hear the insolence of successful rivals.

Lusisti satis, edisti satis, atque bibisti:
Tempus abire tibi est.

I was surprised, after the civilities of my first re-, ception, to find, instead of the leisure and tranquillity, which a rural life always promises, and, if well conducted, might always afford, a confused wildness of care, and a tumultuous hurry of diligence, by which every face was clouded, and every motion agitated. The old lady, who was my father's relation, was, indeed, very full of the happiness which she received from my visit, and according to the forms of obsolete breeding, in sisted that I should recompense the long delay of my company with a promise not to leave her till winter. But, amidst all her kindness and caresses, she very frequently turned her head aside, and whispered, with anxious earnestness, some order to her daughters, which never failed to send them out with unpolite precipitation. Sometimes her impatience would not suffer her to stay behind; she begged my pardon, she must leave me for a moment; she went, and returned and sat down again, but was again disturbed by some new care, dismissed her daughters with the same tre Another vice of age, by which the rising gene-pidation, and followed them with the same coun ration may be alienated from it, is severity and censoriousness, that gives no allowance to the failings of early life, that expects artfulness from childhood and constancy from youth, that is peremptory in every command, and inexorable to every failure. There are many who live merely to hinder happiness, and whose descendants can only tell of long life, that it produces suspicion, malignity, peevishness, and persecution: and yet even these tyrants can talk of the ingratitude of the age, curse their heirs for impatience, and wonder that young men cannot take pleasure in their father's company.

You've had your share of mirth, of meat and drink; "Tis time to quit the scene-'tis time to think.

ELPHINSTON.

tenance of business and solicitude.

However I was alarmed at this show of eager ness and disturbance, and however my curiosity was excited by such busy preparations as naturally promised some great event, I was yet too much a stranger to gratify myself with inquiries; but finding none of the family in mourning, pleased myself with imagining that I should rather see a wedding than a funeral.

I

formed that one of the young ladies, after whom At last we sat down to supper, when I was inthought myself obliged to inquire, was under a He that would pass the latter part of life with be neglected: soon afterward my relation began necessity of attending some affair that could not honour and decency, must, when he is young, to talk of the regularity of her family, and the consider that he shall one day be old; and re-inconvenience of London hours; and at last let member, when he is old, that he has once been young. In youth he must lay up knowledge for his support, when his powers of acting shall forsake him; and in age forbear to animadvert with rigour on faults which experience only can

correct.

me know that they had purposed that night to go to bed sooner than was usual, because they were to rise early in the morning to make cheesecakes. This hint sent me to my chamber, to which I was accompanied by all the ladies, who begged me to excuse some large sieves of leaves and flowers that covered two-thirds of the floor, for they intended to distil them when they were dry, and they had no other room that so conveniently received the rising sun.

The scent of the plants hindered me from rest, and therefore I rose early in the morning with a resolution to explore my new habitation. I stole unperceived by my busy cousins into the garden, where I found nothing either more great or ele gant, than in the same number of acres cultivated for the market. Of the gardener I soon learned that his lady was the greatest manager in that part of the country, and that I was come hither at the time in which I might learn to make more pickles and conserves, than could be seen at any other house a hundred miles round.

It was not long before her ladyship gave me yet persuaded herself to discover, but seems ra sufficient opportunities of knowing her character, solved that secret shall perish with her, as some for she was too much pleased with her own ac-alchymists have obstinately suppressed the art of complishments to conceal them, and took occa- transmuting metals. sion, from some sweetmeats which she set next day upon the table, to discourse for two long hours upon robs and gellies; laid down the best methods of conserving, reserving, and preserving all sorts of fruit; told us with great contempt of the London lady in the neighbourhood, by whom these terms were very often confounded; and hinted how much she should be ashamed to set before company, at her own house, sweetmeats of so dark a colour as she had often seen at Mistress Sprightly's.

It is, indeed, the great business of her life, to watch the skillet on the fire, to see it simmer with the due degree of heat, and to snatch it off at the moment of projection; and the employments to which she has bred her daughters, are to turn rose-leaves in the shade, to pick out the seeds of currants with a quill, to gather fruit without bruising it, and to extract bean-flower water for the skin. Such are the tasks with which every day, since I came hither, has begun and ended, to which the early hours of life are sacrificed, and in which that time is passing away which never shall return.

I once ventured to lay my fingers on her book of receipts, which she left upon the table, having intelligence that a vessel of gooseberry wine had burst the hoops. But though the importance of the event sufficiently engrossed her care, to prevent any recollection of the danger to which her secrets were exposed, I was not able to make use of the golden moments; for this treasure of hereditary knowledge was so well concealed by the manner of spelling used by her grandmother, her mother, and herself, that I was totally unable to understand it, and lost the opportunity of con sulting the oracle, for want of knowing the lan guage in which its answers were returned.

It is, indeed, necessary, if I have any regard to her ladyship's esteem, that I should apply myselt to some of these economical accomplishments for I overheard her two days ago, warning her daughters, by my mournful example, against negligence of pastry, and ignorance in carving; for you saw, said she, that, with all her pretensions to knowledge, she turned the partridge the wrong way when she attempted to cut it, and, I believe scarcely knows the difference between paste rais

But to reason or expostulate are hopeless at-ed, and paste in a dish. tempts. The lady has settled her opinions, and maintains the dignity of her own performances with all the firmness of stupidity accustomed to be flattered. Her daughters having never seen any house but their own, believe their mother's excellence on her own word. Her husband is a mere sportsman, who is pleased to see his table well furnished, and thinks the day sufficiently successful, in which he brings home a leash of hares to be potted by his wife.

After a few days I pretended to want books, out my lady soon told me that none of her books would suit my taste; for her part she never loved to see young women give their minds to such follies, by which they would only learn to use hard words; she bred up her daughters to understand a house, and whoever should marry them, if they knew any thing of good cookery, would never repent it.

The reason, Mr. Rambler, why I have laid Lady Bustle's character before you, is a desire to be informed whether, in your opinion, it is wor thy of imitation, and whether I shall throw away the books which I have hitherto thought it my duty to read, for the lady's closet opened, the complete servant maid, and the court cook, and resign all curiosity after right and wrong, for the art of scalding damascenes, without bursting them, and preserving the whiteness of pickled mushrooms,

Lady Bustle has, indeed, by this incessant ap plication to fruits and flowers, contracted her cares into a narrow space, and set herself free from many perplexities with which other minds are disturbed. She has no curiosity after the events of a war, or the fate of heroes in distress; she can hear, without the least emotion, the ravage of a fire, or devastations of a storm; her neighbours grow rich or poor, come into the world or go out of it, without regard, while she is pressing the jelly-bag, or airing the store-room; but I cannot perceive that she is more free from disquiets than those whose understandings take a wider range. Her marigolds, when they are almost cured, are often scattered by the wind, and the rain sometimes falls upon fruit when it ought to be gathered dry. While her artificial wines are fermenting, her whole life is restless.

There are, however, some things in the culinary science too sublime for youthful intellects, mysteries into which they must not be initiated till the years of serious maturity, and which are referred to the day of marriage, as the supreme qualification for connubial life. She makes an orange pudding, which is the envy of all the neighbourhood, and which she has hitherto found means of mixing and baking with such secrecy, that the ingredient to which it owes its flavourness and anxiety. has never been discovered. She indeed, conducts this great affair with all the caution that human policy can suggest. It is never known beforehand when this pudding will be produced; she takes the ingredients privately into her own closet, employs her maids and daughters in diferent parts of the house, orders the oven to be heated for a pie, and places the pudding in it with her own hands, the mouth of the oven is then stopped, and all inquiries are vain.

Her sweetmeats are not always bright, and the maid sometimes forgets the just proportions of salt and pepper, when venison is to be baked. Her conserves mould, her wines sour, and pickles mother; and, like all the rest of mankind, she is every day mortified with the defeat of her schemes, and the disappointment of her hopes.

With regard to vice and virtue she seems a kind of neutral being. She has no crime but luxury, nor any virtue but chastity; she has no desire The composition of the pudding she has, how-to be praised but for her cookery; nor wishes any ever, promised Clarinda, that if she pleases her ill to the rest of mankind, but that whenever they in marriage, she shall be told without reserve. aspire to a feast, their custards may be whevish, But the art of making English capers she has not and their pie-crusts tough.

M

AMONG the various methods of consolation, to which the miseries inseparable from our present state have given occasion, it has been, as I have already remarked, recommended by some writers to put the sufferer in mind of heavier pressures, and more excruciating calamities, than those of which he has himself reason to complain.

It is, perhaps, not immediately obvious, how it can lull the memory of misfortune, or appease the throbbings of anguish, to hear that others are more miserable; others, perhaps, unknown or wholly indifferent, whose prosperity raises no envy, and whose fall can gratify no resentment. Some topics of comfort arising, like that which gave hope and spirit to the captive of Sesostris, from the perpetual vicissitudes of life, and mutability of human affairs, may as properly raise the dejected as depress the proud, and have an immediate tendency to exhilarate and revive. But how can it avail the man who languishes in the gloom of sorrow without prospect of emerging into the sunshine of cheerfulness, to hear that others are sunk yet deeper in the dungeon of misery, shackled with heavier chains, and surrounded with darker desperation?

The solace arising from this consideration, seems indeed the weakest of all others, and is perhaps never properly applied, but in cases where there is no place for reflections of more speedy and pleasing efficacy. But even from such calamities life is by no means free; a thousand ills incurable, a thousand losses irreparable, a thousand difficulties insurmountable, are known, or will be known, by all the sons of men. Native deformity cannot be rectified, a dead friend cannot return, and the hours of youth trifled away in folly, or lost in sickness, cannot be restored.

This has, in all ages, been directed and practised; and, in conformity to this custom, Lipsius, the great modern master of the Stoic philosophy, has, in his celebrated treatise on steadiness of has been found useful to take a survey of the Under the oppression of such melancholy, it mind, endeavoured to fortify the breast against world, to contemplate the various scenes of dis too much sensibility of misfortune, by enumerat- tress in which mankind are struggling round us, ing the evils which have in former ages fallen and acquaint ourselves with the terribiles visu forupon the world, the devastation of wide-extended mæ, the various shapes of misery, which make regions, the sack of cities, and massacre of na-havoc of terrestrial happiness, range all corners tions. And the common voice of the multitude uninstructed by precept, and unprejudiced by authority, which, in questions that relate to the heart of man, is, in my opinion, more decisive than the learning of Lipsius, seems to justify the efficacy of this procedure; for one of the first comforts which one neighbour administers to another, is a relation of the like infelicity, combined with circumstances of greater bitterness.

almost without restraint, trample down our hopes at the hour of harvest, and, when we have built our schemes to the top, ruin their foundations.

The first effect of this meditation is, that it furnishes a new employment for the mind, and engages the passions on remoter objects; as kings have sometimes freed themselves from a subject too haughty to be governed, and too powerful to But this medicine of the mind is like many re- till his popularity has subsided or his pride been be crushed, by posting him in a distant province, medies applied to the body, of which, though we repressed. The attention is dissipated by varie see the effects, we are unacquainted with the ty, and acts more weakly upon any single part, manner of operation, and of which, therefore, as that torrent may be drawn off to different chan some, who are unwilling to suppose any thing nels, which, pouring down in one collected body, out of the reach of their own sagacity, have been cannot be resisted. This species of comfort is, inclined to doubt whether they have really those therefore, unavailing, in severe paroxysms of corvirtues for which they are celebrated, and whether poreal pain, when the mind is every instant calltheir reputate is not the mere gift of fancy, pre-ed back to misery, and in the first shock of any judice, and credulity.

encroaching melancholy, and a settled habit of sudden evil; but will certainly be of use against gloomy thoughts.

Consolation, or comfort, are words which, in their proper acceptation, signify some alleviation of that pain to which it is not in our power to afford the proper and adequate remedy; they im- with opportunities of making comparisons in our It is further advantageous, as it supplies us ply rather an augmentation of the power of bear-own favour. We know that very little of the ing than a diminution of the burden. A prisoner is relieved by him that sets him at liberty, but receives comfort from such as suggest considerations by which he is made patient under the inconvenience of confinement. To that grief which arises from a great loss, he only brings the true remedy who makes his friend's condition the same as before; but he may be properly termed a comforter, who by persuasion extenuates the pain of poverty, and shows in the style of Hesiod, that half is more than the whole.

pain, or pleasure, which does not begin and end in our senses, is otherwise than relative; we are rich or poor, great or little, in proportion to the number that excel us, or fall beneath us, in any of these respects; and, therefore, a man, whose uneasiness arises from reflection on any misfortune that throws him below those with whom he was once equal, is comforted by finding that he is not yet the lowest.

There is another kind of comparison, less tending towards the vice of envy, very well illustrated

by an old poet, whose system will not afford Against other evils the heart is often hardened many reasonable motives to content. "It is," by true or by false notions of dignity and reputasays he, "pleasing to look from shore upon the tion; thus we see dangers of every kind faced tumults of a storm, and to see a ship struggling with willingness, because bravery in a good or with the billows; it is pleasing, not because the bad cause is never without its encomiasts and adpain of another can give us delight, but because mirers. But in the prospect of poverty, there is we have a stronger impression of the happiness nothing but gloom and melancholy; the mind of safety." Thus, when we look abroad, and and body suffer together; its miseries bring no behold the multitudes that are groaning under alleviations; it is a state in which every virtue is evils heavier than those which we have experi- obscured, and in which no conduct can avoid reenced, we shrink back to our own state, and in- proach; a state in which cheerfulness is insen. stead of repining that so much must be felt, learn sibility, and dejection sullenness, of which the to rejoice that we have not more to feel. hardships are without honour, and the labours without reward.

By this observation of the miseries of others, fortitude is strengthened, and the mind brought to a more extensive knowledge of her own powers. As the heroes of action catch the flame from one to another, so they, to whom Providence has allotted the harder task of suffering with calmness and dignity, may animate themselves by the remembrance of those evils which have been laid on others, perhaps naturally as weak as themselves, and bear up with vigour and resolution against their own oppressions, when they see it possible that more severe afflictions may be borne.

Of these calamities there seems not to be wanting a general conviction; we hear on every side the noise of trade, and see the streets thronged with numberless multitudes, whose faces are clouded with anxiety, and whose steps are hurried by precipitation, from no other motive than the hope of gain; and the whole world is put in motion, by the desire of that wealth, which is chiefly to be valued as it secures us from poverty; for it is more useful for defence than acquisition, and is not so much able to procure good as to exclude evil.

seem to rush upon poverty with the same eagerness with which others avoid it, who see their revenues hourly lessened, and the estates which they inherit from their ancestors mouldering away, without resolution to change their course of life; who persevere against all remonstrances, and go forward with full career, though they see before them the precipice of destruction.

There is still another reason why, to many minds, the relation of other men's infelicity may Yet there are always some whose passions or give a lasting and continual relief. Some, not follies lead them to a conduct opposite to the gewell instructed in the measures by which Provi-neral maxims and practice of mankind; some who dence distributes happiness, are perhaps misled by divines, who, as Bellarmine makes temporal prosperity one of the characters of the true church, have represented wealth and ease as the certain concomitants of virtue, and the unfailing result of the Divine approbation. Such sufferers are dejected in their misfortunes, not so much for what they feel, as for what they dread; not because they cannot support the sorrows, or endure the wants, of their present condition, but because they consider them as only the beginnings of more sharp and more lasting pains. To these mourners it is an act of the highest charity to represent the calamities which not only virtue has suffered, but virtue has incurred; to inform them that one evidence of a future state, is the uncertainty of any present reward for goodness; and to remind them, from the highest authority, of the distresses and penury of men of whom the world was not worthy.

It is not my purpose in this paper, to expostu late with such as ruin their fortunes by expensive schemes of buildings and gardens, which they carry on with the same vanity that prompted them to begin, choosing, as it happens in a thousand other cases, the remote evil before the lighter, and deferring the shame of repentance till they incur the miseries of distress. Those for whom I intend my present admonitions, are the thoughtless, the negligent, and the dissolute, who having, by the viciousness of their own inclinations, or the seducements of alluring companions, been engaged in habits of expense, and accustomed to move in a certain round of pleasures disproportioned to their condition, are without power to extricate themselves from the enchantments of customs, avoid the thought because they know it will be painful, and continue from day to day, and from month to month, to anticipate their re venues, and sink every hour deeper into the gulfs of usury and extortion.

Husband thy possessions. THERE is scarcely among the evils of human life any so generally dreaded as poverty. Every This folly has less claim to pity, because it canother species of misery, those, who are not much not be imputed to the vehemence of sudden pas accustomed to disturb the present moment with sion; nor can the mischief which it produces be reflection, can easily forget, because it is not al- extenuated as the effect of any single act, which ways forced upon their regard; but it is impos- rage, or desire, might execute before there could sible to pass a day or an hour in the confluxes of be time for an appeal to reason. These men are men, without seeing how much indigence is ex-advancing towards misery by soft approaches, posed to contumely, neglect, and insult; and, in its lowest state, to hunger and nakedness; to injuries against which every passion is in arms, and

to wants which nature cannot sustain.

Lucretius.-C.

and destroying themselves, not by the violence of a blow, which when once given, can never be recalled, but by a slow poison, hourly repeated, and obstinately continued.

This conduct is so absurd when it is examined by the unprejudiced eye of rational judgment, that nothing but experience could evince its pos

sibility; yet absurd as it is, the sudden fall of some families, and the sudden rise of others, prove it to be common; and every year sees many wretches reduced to contempt and want, by their costly nacrifices to pleasure and vanity.

It is the fate of almost every passion, when it nas passed the bounds which nature prescribes, to counteract its own purpose. Too much rage hinders the warrior from circumspection, too much eagerness of profit hurts the credit of the trader, too much ardour takes away from the lover that easiness of address with which ladies are delight ed. Thus extravagance, though dictated by vanity, and incited by voluptuousness, seldom procures ultimately either applause or pleasure." If praise be justly estimated by the character of those from whom it is received, little satisfaction will be given to the spendthrift by the encomiums which he purchases. For who are they that animate him in his pursuits, but young men, thoughtless and abandoned like himself, unacquainted with all on which the wisdom of nations has impressed the stamp of excellence, and devoid alike of knowledge and of virtue! By whom is his profusion praised, but by wretches who consider him as subservient to their purposes, sirens that entice him to shipwreck, and Cyclops that are gaping to devour him?

excesses, wantoned in greater abundance, and
indulged his appetites with more profuseness?
It appears evident that frugality is necessary
even to complete the pleasure of expense; for it
may be generally remarked of those who squan-
der what they know their fortune not sufficient
to allow, that in their most jovial expense, there
always breaks out some proof of discontent and
impatience; they either scatter with a kind of wild
desperation, and affected lavishness, as criminals
brave the gallows when they cannot escape it,
or pay their money with a peevish anxiety, and
endeavour at once to spend idly, and to save
meanly: having neither firmness to deny their
passions, nor courage to gratify them, they mur-
mur at their own enjoyments, and poison the
bowl of pleasure by reflection on the cost.

Among these men there is often the vociferation of merriment, but very seldom the tranquillity of cheerfulness; they inflame their imaginations to a kind of momentary jollity, by the help of wine and riot, and consider it as the first business of the night to stupify collection, and lay that reason asleep which disturbs their gayety and calls upon them to retreat from ruin."

But this poor broken satisfaction is of short continuance, and must be expiated by a long series of misery and regret. In a short time the creditor Every man whose knowledge, or whose vir- grows impatient, the last acre is sold, the pastue, can give value to his opinion, looks with sions and appetites still continue their tyranny, scorn, or pity, neither of which can afford much with incessant calls for their usual gratifications, gratification to pride, on him whom the panders and the remainder of life passes away in vain re-⚫ of luxury have drawn into the circle of their influ-pentance, or impotent desire. ence, and whom he sees parcelled out among the different ministers of folly, and about to be torn

Truditur dies die,

to pieces by tailors and jockeys, vintners and No. 54.] SATURDAY, SEPT. 22, 1750.
attorneys, who at once rob and ridicule him, and
who are secretly triumphing over his weakness,
when they present new incitements to his appe-
tite, and heighten his desires by counterfeited
applause.

Such is the praise that is purchased by prodi-
gality. Even when it is yet not discovered to be
false, it is the praise only of those whom it is re-
proachful to please, and whose sincerity is cor-
rupted by their interest; men who live by the
riots which they encourage, and who know that
whenever their pupil grows wise, they shall lose
their power.
Yet with such flatteries, if they
could last, might the cravings of vanity, which is
seldom very delicate, be satisfied; but the time is
always hastening forward when this triumph,
poor as it is, shall vanish, and when those who
now surround him with obsequiousness and coin-
pliments, fawn among his equipage, and animate
his riots, shall turn upon him with insolence, and
reproach him with the vices promoted by them-
selves.

And as little pretensions has the man who squanders his estate, by vain or vicious expenses to greater degrees of pleasure than are obtained by others. To make any happiness sincere, it is necessary that we believe it to be lasting; since whatever we suppose ourselves in danger of losing, must be enjoyed with solicitude and uneasiness, and the more value we set upon it, the more must the present possession be embittered. How can he then be envied for his felicity, who knows that its continuance cannot be expected, and who is conscious that a very short time will give him up to the grip of poverty, which will be harder to be borne, as he has given way to more

Novaque pergunt interire luna

Tu secanda marmora
Locas sub ipsum furus; et sepulchri
Immemer, struis domos.

HOR

Day presses on the heels of day,
And moons increase to their decay;
But you, with thoughtless pride elate,
Unconscious of impending fate,
Command the pillar'd dome to rise,
When lo! thy tomb forgotten lies.-FRANCIS

SIR,

TO THE RAMBLER

I HAVE lately been called, from a mingied lite of business and amusement, to attend the last hours of an old friend; an office which has filled me, if not with melancholy, at least with serious reflections, and turned my thoughts towards the contemplation of those subjects, which though of the utmost importance, and of indubitable certainty, are generally secluded from our regard, by the jollity of health, the hurry of employment, and even by the calmer diversions of study and speculation; or if they become accidental topics of conversation and argument, yet rarely sink deep into the heart, but give occasion only to some subtilties of reasoning, or elegances of declamation, which are heard, applauded, and forgotten.

It is, indeed, not hard to conceive how a man accustomed to extend his views through a long concatenation of causes and effects, to trace things from their origin to their period, and com pare means with ends, may discover the weakness of human schemes; detect the fallacies by