side, and intend to sow all the place about | sion. As we are now in the beginning of with cowslips, which I hope you will like existence, so shall we always appear to as well as that I have heard you talk of by your father's house in the country. "Oh! Zelinda, what a scheme of delight have I drawn up in my imagination! What day-dreams do I indulge myself in! When will the six weeks be at an end, that lie between me and my promised happiness! How could you break off so abruptly in your last, and tell me you must go and dress for the play? If you loved as I do, you would find no more company in a crowd than I have in my solitude. I am, &c." 'On the back of this letter is written, in the hand of the deceased, the following piece of history: Mem. Having waited a whole week for an answer to this letter, I hurried to town, where I found the perfidious creature married to my rival. I will bear it as becomes a man, and endeavour to find out happiness for myself in that retirement which I had prepared in vain for a false, ungrateful woman. I am, &c.' 'Your readers will perhaps receive greater pleasure from this view of eternity than the former, since we have every one of us a concern in that which is to come: whereas a speculation on that which is past is rather curious than useful. 'Besides, we can easily conceive it possible for successive duration never to have an end; though, as you have justly observed, that eternity which never had a beginning is altogether incomprehensible; that is, we can conceive an eternal duration which may be, though we cannot an eternal duration which hath been; or, if I may use the the philosophical terms, we may apprehend a potential though not an actual eternity. ourselves as if we were for ever entering upon it. After a million or two of centu ries, some considerable things, already past, may slip out of our memory, which if it be not strengthened in a wonderful manner, may possibly forget that ever there was a sun or planets; and yet, notwithstanding the long race we shall then have run, we shall still imagine ourselves just starting from the goal, and find no proportion between that space which we know had a beginning, and what we are sure will never have an end 'But I shall leave this subject to your management, and question not but you will throw it into such lights as shall at once improve and entertain your reader. 'I have, enclosed, sent you a translation* of the speech of Cato on this occasion, which hath accidentally fallen into my hands, and which, for conciseness, purity, and elegance of phrase, cannot be suffi ciently admired. ACT V. SCEN. I. CATO solus, &c. Sic, sic se habere rem necesse prorsus est, Natura? Quorsum hæc dulcis expectatio; 'Quæ demigrabitur alia hinc in corpora? This notion of a future eternity, which is natural to the mind of man, is an unanswerable argument that he is a being designed for it; especially if we consider that he is capable of being virtuous or vicious here; that he hath faculties improvable to all eternity; and, by a proper or wrong employment of them, may be happy or miserable throughout that infinite duration. Our idea indeed of this eternity is not of an adequate or fixed nature, but is perpetually growing and enlarging itself toward the object, which is too big for human comprehen- | Durham. once schoolmaster, then provost of Eton, and dean of * This translation was by Mr. (afterwards Dr.) Bland, 'It must be so-Plato, thou reason'st wellElse whence this pleasing hope, this fond desire, This longing after immortality? Or whence this secret dread, and inward horror, "Through what variety of untry'd being, Through what new scenes and changes must we pass! The wide, th' unbounded prospect lies before me; But shadows, clouds, and darkness, rest upon it. Here will I hold. If there's a Power above us, (And that there is all Nature cries aloud Through all her works,) he must delight in virtue; The wrecks of matter and the crush of worlds.' No. 629.] Monday, December 6, 1714. -Since none the living dare implead Arraign them in the persons of the dead.-Dryden. NEXT to the people who want a place, there are none to be pitied more than those who are solicited for one. A plain answer with a denial in it is looked upon as pride, and a civil answer as a promise. Nothing is more ridiculous than the pretensions of people upon these occasions. Every thing a man hath suffered, whilst his enemies were in play, was certainly brought about by the malice of the opposite party. A bad cause would not have been lost, if such a one had not been upon the bench; nor a profligate youth disinherited, if he had not got drunk every night by toasting an outed ministry. I remember a tory, who, having been fined in a court of justice for a prank that deserved the pillory, desired upon the merit of it to be made a justice of the peace when his friends came into power; and shall never forget a whig criminal, who, upon being indicted for a rape, told his friends You see what a man suffers for sticking to his principles.' The truth of it is, the sufferings of a man in a party are of a very doubtful nature. When they are such as have promoted a good cause, and fallen upon a man undeservedly, they have a right to be heard and recompensed beyond any other pretensions. But when they rise out of rashness or indiscretion, and the pursuit of such measures as have rather ruined than promoted the interest they aim at, which hath alway VOL. II, 54 been the case of many great sufferers, they only serve to recommend them to the children of violence or folly. I have by me a bundle of memorials presented by several cavaliers upon the restoration of king Charles II. which may serve as so many instances to our present purpose. Among several persons and pretensions recorded by my author, he mentions one of a very great estate, who, for having roasted an ox whole, and distributed a hogshead upon king Charles's birth-day, desired to be provided for as his majesty in his great wisdom should think fit. Another put in to be prince Henry's governor, for having dared to drink his health in the worst of times. A third petitioned for a colonel's commission, for having cursed Oliver Cromwell, the day before his death, on a public bowling-green. But the most whimsical petition I have met with is that of B. B., esq. who desired the honour of knighthood, for having cuck oled Sir T. W. a notorious roundhead. There is likewise the petition of one who, having let his beard grow from the martyrdom of king Charles the first, until the restoration of king Charles the second, de sired in consideration thereupon to be made a privy-counsellor. I must not omit a memorial setting forth that the memorialist had, with great despatch, carried a letter from a certain lord to a certain lord, wherein, as it afterwards appeared, measures were concerted for the restoration, and without which he verily believes that happy revolution had never been effected; who thereupon humbly prays to be made postmaster-general. A certain gentleman, who seems to write with a great deal of spirit, and uses the words gallantry and gentleman-like very often in his petition, begs that (in consideration of his having worn his hat for ten years past in the royal cavalier-cock, to his great danger and detriment) he may be made a captain of the guards. I shall close my account of this collection of memorials with the copy of one petition at length, which I recommend to reader as a very valuable piece. my • The Petition of E. H. Esq. 'HUMBLY SHOWETH, "That your petitioner's father's brother's uncle, colonel W. H. lost the third finger of his left hand at Edgehill fight. That your petitioner, notwithstanding the smallness of his fortune (he being a younger brother,) always kept hospitality, and drank confusion to the roundheads in half a score bumpers every Sunday in the year, as several honest gentlemen (whose names are underwritten) are ready to testify. That your petitioner is remarkable in his country, for having dared to treat Sir P. P. a cursed sequestrator, and three "You have, I presume, already preventmembers of the assembly of divines, with, brawn and minced pies upon new-year's day. That your said humble petitioner hath been five times imprisoned in five several county-gaols, for having been a ringleader in five different riots; into which his zeal for the royal cause hurried him, when men of greater estates had not the courage to rise. 'That he, the said E. H. hath had six duels and four-and-twenty boxing matches in defence of his majesty's title; and that he received such a blow upon the head at a bonfire in Stratford-upon-Avon, as he hath been never the better for from that day to this. That your petitioner hath been so far from improving his fortune, in the late damnable times, that he verily believes, and hath good reason to imagine, that if he had been master of an estate, he had infallibly been plundered and sequestered. Your petitioner, in consideration of his said merits and sufferings, humbly requests that he may have the place of receiver of the taxes, collector of the customs, clerk of the peace, deputy lieutenant, or whatsoever else he shall be thought qualified for. And your petitioner shall ever pray, &c.' HAVING no spare time to write any thing of my own, or to correct what is sent me by others, I have thought fit to publish the following letters: 'Oxford, Nov. 22. 'SIR,-If you would be so kind to me, as to suspend that satisfaction which the learned world must receive in reading one of your speculations, by publishing this endeavour, you will very much oblige and improve one, who has the boldness to hope that he may be admitted into the number of your correspondents. I have often wondered to hear men of good sense and good nature profess a dislike to music, when at the same time they do not scruple to own that it has the most agreeable and improving influences over their minds: it seems to me an unhappy contradiction, that those persons should have an indifference for an art which raises in them such a variety of sublime pleasures. 'However, though some few, by their own or the unreasonable prejudices of others, may be led into a distaste for those musical societies which are erected merely for entertainment, yet sure I may venture to say, that no one can have the least reason for disaffection to that solemn kind of melody which consists of the praises of our Creator, ed me in an argument upon this occasion, which some divines have successfully advanced upon a much greater, that musical sacrifice and adoration has claimed a place in the laws and customs of the most differ ent nations; as the Grecians and Romans of the profane, the Jews and Christians of the sacred world, did as unanimously agree in this as they disagreed in all other parts of their economy. 'I know there are not wanting some who are of opinion that the pompous kind of music which is in use in foreign churches, is the most excellent, as it most affects our senses. But I am swayed by my judgment to the modesty which is observed in the musical part of our devotions. Methinks there is something very laudable in the cus tom of a voluntary before the first lesson; by this we are supposed to be prepared for the admission of those divine truths which we are shortly to receive. We are then to cast all worldly regards from off our hearts, all tumults within are then becalmed, and there should be nothing near the soul but peace and tranquillity. So that in this short office of praise the man is raised above himself, and is almost lost already amidst the joys of futurity. 'I have heard some nice observers frequently commend the policy of our church in this particular, that it leads us on by such easy and regular methods that we are perfectly deceived into piety. When the spirits begin to languish, (as they too often do with a constant series of petitions,) she takes care to allow them a pious respite, and relieves them with the raptures of an anthem. Nor can we doubt that the sublimest poetry, softened in the most moving strains of music, can never fail of humbling or exalting the soul to any pitch of 'devotion. Who can hear the terrors of the Lord of Hosts described in the most expressive melody, without being awed into a veneration? Or who can hear the kind and endearing attributes of a merciful father, and not be softened into love towards him? 'As the rising and sinking of the passions,, the casting soft or noble hints into the soul, is the natural privilege of music in general, so more particularly of that kind which is employed at the altar. Those impressions which it leaves upon the spirits are more deep and lasting, as the grounds from which it receives its authority are founded more upon reason. It diffuses a calmness all around us, it makes us drop all those vain or immodest thoughts which would be a hinderance to us in the performance of that great duty of thanksgiving, which, as we are informed by our Almighty Benefactor, is the most acceptable return which can be made for those infinite stores of blessings which he daily condescends to pour down upon his creatures. When we make use of this pathetical method of addressing ourselves to him, we can scarce contain from raptures! The heart is warmed with a sublimity of goodness! We are all piety and all love! others designed for this fraternity are sometimes placed upon trial to receive them. The folly as well as rudeness of this 'How do the blessed spirits rejoice and practice is in nothing more conspicuous wonder to behold unthinking man pros-than this, that all that follows in the ser trating his soul to his dread Sovereign in such a warmth of piety as they themselves might not be ashamed of, I shall close these reflections with a passage taken out of the third book of Milton's Paradise Lost, where those harmonious beings are thus nobly described: "Then crown'd again, their golden harps they took, mon is lost; for, whenever our sparks take alarm, they blaze out and grow so tumultuous that no after-explanation can avail, it being impossible for themselves or any near them to give an account thereof. If any thing really novel is advanced, how averse soever it may be to their way of thinking, to say nothing of duty, men of less levity than these would be led by a natural cu riosity to hear the whole. 'Laughter, where things sacred are transacted, is far less pardonable than whining at a conventicle; the last has at least a sem blance of grace, and where the affectation is unseen, may possibly imprint wholesome lessons on the sincere; but the first has no excuse, breaking through all the rules of order and decency, and manifesting a re missness of mind in those important matters which require the strictest composure and steadiness of thought: a proof of the greatest folly in the world. 'MR. SPECTATOR,-The town cannot be unacquainted that in divers parts of it there are vociferous sets of men who are called Rattling Clubs; but what shocks me most is, they have now the front to invade the church and institute these societies, there, as a clan of them have in late times done, to such a degree of insolence as has given the partition where they reside, in a church I shall not here enter upon the veneranear one of the city gates, the denomination tion due to the sanctity of the place, the of the rattling pew. These gay fellows,reverence owing the minister, or the refrom humble lay professions, set up for spect that so great an assembly as a whole critics, without any tincture of letters or parish may justly claim. I shall only tell reading, and have the vanity to think they them, that, as the Spanish cobbler, to recan lay hold of something from the parson claim a profligate son, bid him have some which may be formed into ridicule. regard to the dignity of his family, so they as gentlemen (for we who are citizens assume to be such one day in a week) are bound for the future to repent of, and abstain from, the gross abuses here mentioned, whereof they have been guilty in contempt of heaven and earth, and contrary to the laws in this case made and provided. I am, sir, your very humble servant, Simplex munditiis R. M.' Hor. Od. v. Lib. 1. 5. Elegant by cleanliness. It is needless to observe that the gentlemen, who every Sunday have the hard province of instructing these wretches in a way they are in no present disposition to take, have a fixed character for learning and eloquence, not to be tainted by the weak efforts of this contemptible part of their audiences. Whether the pulpit is taken by these gentlemen, or any strangers their friends, the way of the club is this: if any sentiments are delivered too sublime for their conception; if any uncommon topic No. 631.] Friday, December 10, 1714. is entered on, or one in use new modified with the finest judgment and dexterity; or, any controverted point be never so elegantly handled; in short, whatever surpasses the narrow limits of their theology, or is not suited to their taste, they are all immediately upon the watch, fixing their eyes upon each other with as much warmth as our gladiators of Hockley-in-the-Hole, and waiting like them for a hit: if one touches, all take fire, and their noddles instantly meet in the centre of the pew: then, as by beat of drum, with exact discipline, they rear up into a full length of stature, and with odd looks and gesticulations confer together in so loud and clamorous a manner, continued to the close of the discourse, and during the after-psalm, as is not to be silenced bit by the bells. Nor does this suffice them, without aiming to propagate their noise through all the church, by signals given to the adjoining seats, where I HAD occasion to go a few miles out of town, some days since, in a stage-coach, where I had for my fellow travellers a dirty beau, and a pretty young quaker woman. Having no inclination to talk much at that time, I placed myself backward, with a design to survey them, and pick a speculation out of my two companions. Their different figures were sufficient of themselves to draw my attention. The gentleman was dressed in a suit, the ground whereof had been black, as I perceived from some few spaces that had escaped the powder, which was incorporated with the greatest part of his coat: his periwig, which cost no small sum, was after so slovenly a manner cast over his shoulders, that it seemed not to have been combed since the year 1712; his live in the neighbourhood of good examples, fly from the first appearances of what is shocking. It fares with us much after the same manner as our ideas. Our senses, which are the inlets to all the images conveyed to the mind, can only transmit the impression of such things as usually sur round them. So that pure and unsullied thoughts are naturally suggested to the mind, by those objects that perpetually encompass us when they are beautiful and elegant in their kind. linen, which was not much concealed, was į daubed with plain Spanish from the chin to the lowest button; and the diamond upon his finger (which naturally dreaded the water) put me in mind how it sparkled amidst the rubbish of the mine where it was first discovered. On the other hand, the pretty quaker appeared in all the elegance of cleanliness. Not a speck was to be found upon her. A clear, clean, oval face, just edged about with little thin plaits of the purest cambric, received great advantages from the shade of her black hood; In the east, where the warmth of the as did the whiteness of her arms from that climate makes cleanliness more immesober-coloured stuff in which she had cloth-diately necessary than in colder countries, ed herself. The plainness of her dress was very well suited to the simplicity of her phrases; all which, put together, though they could not give me a great opinion of her religion, they did of her innocence. This adventure occasioned my throwing together a few hints upon cleanliness, which I shall consider as one of the half-virtues, as Aristotle calls them, and shall recommend it under the three following heads: as it is a mark of politeness; as it produces love; and as it bears analogy to purity of mind. First, It is a mark of politeness. It is universally agreed upon, that no one unadorned with this virtue can go into company without giving a manifest offence. The easier or higher any one's fortune is, this duty arises proportionably. The different nations of the world are as much distinguished by their cleanliness as by their arts and sciences. The more any country is civilized, the more they consult this part of politeness. We need but compare our ideas of a female Hottentot and an English beauty, to be satisfied of the truth of what nath been advanced. In the next place, cleanliness may be said to be the foster-mother of love. Beauty indeed most commonly produces the passion in the mind, but cleanliness preserves it. An indifferent face and person, kept in perpetual neatness, hath won many a heart from a pretty slattern. Age itself is not unamiable, while it is preserved clean and unsullied: like a piece of metal constantly kept smooth and bright, we look on it with more pleasure than on a new vessel that is cankered with rust. I might observe farther, that as cleanliness renders us agreeable to others, so it makes us easy to ourselves: that it is an excellent preservative of health; and that several vices, destructive both to mind and body, are inconsistent with the habit of it. But these reflections I shall leave to the leisure of my readers, and shall observe, in the third place, that it bears a great analogy with purity of mind, and naturally inspires refined sentiments and passions. We find from experience that, through the prevalence of custom, the most vicious actions lose their horror by being made familiar to us. On the contrary, those who it is made one part of their religion; the Jewish law, and the Mahometan, which in some things copies after it, is filled with bathings, purifications, and other rites of the like nature. Though there is the abovenamed convenient reason to be assigned for these ceremonies, the chief intention undoubtedly was to typify inward purity and cleanliness of heart by those outward washings. We read several injunctions of this kind in the book of Deuteronomy, which confirm this truth; and which are but ill accounted for by saying, as some do, that they were only instituted for convenience in the desert, which otherwise could not have been habitable for so many years. I shall conclude this essay with a story which I have somewhere read in an account of Mahometan superstitions. A dervise of great sanctity one morning had the misfortune, as he took up a crystal cup which was consecrated to the prophet, to let it fall upon the ground and dash it in pieces. His son coming in some time after, he stretched out his hand to bless him, as his manner was every morn ing: but the youth going out stumbled over the threshold and broke his arm. As the old man wondered at these events, a caravan passed by in its way from Mecca; the dervise approached it to beg a blessing; but as he stroked one of the holy camels, he received a kick from the beast that sorely bruised him. His sorrow and amazement increased upon him, until he recollected that, through hurry and inadvertency, he had that morning come abroad without washing his hands. No. 632.] Monday, December 13, 1714. -Explebo numerum, reddarque tenebris. THE love of symmetry and order, which is natural to the mind of man, betrays him sometimes into very whimsical fancies. "This noble principle,' says a French author, loves to amuse itself on the most trifling occasions. You may see a profound philosopher,' says he, 'walk for an hour together in his chamber, and industriously |