mits their addreffes, without fear of any ill confequence, or want of refpect, from their rage or defpair. She has that in her afpect, against which it is impoffible to offend. A man whofe thoughts are conftantly bent upon fo agreeable an object, must be excufed if the ordinary occurrences in ⚫ converfation are below his attention. I call her indeed perverfe, but, alas! why do I call her fo? Becaufe her fu< perior merit is fuch, that I cannot approach her without awe, that my heart is checked by too much esteem; I am . angry that her charms are not more acceffible, that I am more inclined to worship than falute her: how often have I wifhed her unhappy, that I might have an opportunity of ferving her! and how often troubled in that very imagination, at giving her the pain of being obliged! Well, I have led a miferable life in fecret upon her account; but fancy fhe would have ⚫ condescended to have fome regard for me, if it had not been for that watchful animal her confident. Of all perfons under the fun,' continued he, calling me by my name, be fure to fet a mark upon confidents: they are of all people the most imper⚫tinent. What is moft pleasant to ob* serve in them, is, that they affume to themselves the merit of the perfons whom they have in their cuftody. Oreftilla is a great fortune, and in wonderful danger of furprifes, therefore full of fufpicions of the leaft indifferent thing, particularly careful of new acquaintance, and of growing too familiar with the old. Themifta, her favourite woman, is every whit as careful of whom the fpeaks to, and what the fays. Let the ward be a beauty, her confident fhall treat you with an air of diftance; let her be a fortune, and the affumes the fufpi⚫cious behaviour of her friend and patronefs. Thus it is that very many of our unmarried women of diftinction, are to all intents and purposes married, except the confideration of different fexes. They are directly under the ⚫ conduct of their whisperer; and think they are in a state of freedom, while they can prate with one of these attendants of all men in general, and ftill avoid the man they most like. • You do not fee one heirefs in an hun dred whofe fate does not turn upon this circumftance of chufing a confi dent. Thus it is that the lady is addreffed to, prefented and flattered, only by proxy, in her woman. In · my cafe, how is it poffible that—* Sir Roger was proceeding in his harangue, when we heard the voice of one fpeaking very importunately, and repeating thefe words: What, not one fmile!' We followed the found until we came to a close thicket, on the other fide of which we faw a young womani fitting as it were in a perfonated fullennefs juft over a transparent fountain. Oppofite to her flood Mr. William, Sir Roger's mafter of the game. The knight whispered me—' Hist, these are lovers." The hunt man looking earnestly at the fhadow of the young maiden in the ftream Oh, thou dear picture, if thou couldst remain there in the abfence of that fair creature whom you reprefent in the water, how willingly could I ftand here fatisfied for ever, without troubling my dear Betty herfelf with any mention of her unfortunate William, whom he is angry with: but alas! when the pleafes to be gone, thou wilt alfo vanish-Yet let me talk to thee while thou doft ftay. Tell my dearest Betty thou doft not more depend upon her, than does her William: her abfence will make away with me as well as thee. If the offers to remove thee, I will jump into thefe waves to lay hold on thee; herself, her own dear perfon, I must never embrace again.-Still do you hear me without one fmile?It is too much to bear He had no fooner fpoke thefe words, but he made an offer of throwing himself into the water: at which his mistress started up, and at the next inftant he jumped across the fountain and met her in an embrace. She half recovering from her fright, faid in the most charming voice imaginable, and with a tone of complaint I thought how well you would drown yourself. No, no, you will not drown yourself until you have taken leave of Sufan Holiday. The huntfman, with a tenderness that fpoke the moft paffionate love, and with his cheek close to hers, whispered the fofteft vows of fidelity in her ear, and cried- Do not, my dear, believe a word Kate Willow fays, the is spiteful and makes ftories, because the loves to hear me talk to herfelf for your fake. Look you • there,' 'there, quoth Sir Roger, do you fee there, all mischief comes from confi⚫dents! But let us not interrupt them; the maid is honest, and the man dares not be otherwife, for he knows I loved her father; I will interpofe in this ⚫ matter, and haften the wedding. Kate Willow is a witty mifchievous wench in the neighbourhood, who was a beauty; and makes me hope I fhall fee the perverfe widow in her condition. She was fo flippant with her anfwers to all the honeft fellows that came near her, and fo very vain of 'her beauty, that she has valued herself ⚫ upon her charms until they are ceased. She therefore now makes it her bufi'nefs to prevent other young women 'from being more difcreet than she was herself: however, the faucy thing faid the other day well enough" Sir "Roger and I must make a match, for we are both despised by those we "loved:" the huffy has a great deal of ' power wherever he comes, and has ⚫ her share of cunning. However, when I reflect upon this woman, I do not know whether in the main I am the worse for having 'loved her: whenever he is recalled to 'my imagination my youth returns, and I feel a forgotten warmth in my ⚫ veins. This affliction in my life has THE ftreaked all my conduct with a foftnefs, of which I fhould otherwise have been incapable. It is owing, perhaps, 'to this dear image in my heart, that I am apt to relent, that I eafily forgive, and that many defirable things are grown into my temper, which Ihould ⚫ not have arrived at by better motives than the thought of being one day hers. I am pretty well fatisfied fuch a paffion as I have had is never well cured; and between you and me, I am often apt to imagine it has had ⚫ fome whimsical effect upon my brain; for I frequently find, that in my most ferious difcourfe I let fall fome comical familiarity of fpeech or odd phrase that makes the company laugh: however, I cannot but allow fhe is a most ⚫ excellent woman. When she is in the country I warrant fhe does not run into dairies, but reads upon the nature of plants; he has a glafs beehive, and comes into the garden out of books to fee them work, and obferve the policies of their commonwealth. She understands every thing. I would give ten pounds to hear her argue with my friend Sir Andrew Freeport about trade. No, no, for all the looks fo innocent as it were, take my word for it fhe is no fool.' с No CXIX. TUESDAY, JULY 17. URBEM QUAM DICUNT ROMAM, MELIBOEE, PUTAVI STULTUS EGO HUIC NOSTRE SIMILEM----- VIRG. ECL. I. V. 20. FOOL THAT I WAS, I THOUGHT IMPERIAL ROME HE first and most obvious reflections which arife in a man who changes the city for the country, are upon the different manners of the people whom he meets with in thofe two different fcenes of life. By manners I do not mean morals, but behaviour and goodbreeding, as they fhew themselves in the town and in the country. And here, in the first place, I must obferve a very great revolution that has happened in this article of good-breeding. Several obliging deferences, condefcenfions, and fubmiffions, with many outward forms and ceremonies that accompany them, were first of ali brought DRYDEN. T up among the politer part of mankind, who lived in courts and cities, and dif tinguished themfelves from the ruftic part of the fpecies, who on all occafions acted bluntly and naturally, by fuch a mutual complaifance and intercourse of civilities. These forms of converfation by degrees multiplied and grew troublefome; the modifh world found too great a constraint in them, and have therefore thrown most of them afide. Converfation, like the Romish religion, was fo encumbered with fhow and ceremony, that it stood in need of a reformation to retrench it's fuperfluities, and restore it to it's natural good fenfe and beauty. At prefent, therefore, an unconftrained carriage, and a certain opennefs of behaviour, are the height of good-breed ing. The fashionable world is grown free and eafy; our manners fit more loofe upon us: nothing is fo modifh as an agreeable negligence. In a word, good-breeding fhews itfelf moft, where to an ordinary eye it appears the least. If after this we look on the people of mode in the country, we find in them the manners of the laft age. They have no fooner fetched themfelves up to the fashion of the polite world, but the town has dropped them, and are nearer to the first state of nature than to thofe refinements which formerly reigned in the court, and fill prevail in the country. One may know a man that never converfed in the world, by his excefs of good-breeding. A polite country fquire fhall make you as many bows in half an hour, as would ferve a courtier for a week. There is infinitely more to do about place and precedency in a meeting of justices wives, than in an affembly of ducheffes. ge This rural politenefs is very troublefome to a man of my temper, who nérally take the chair that is next me, and walk firft or laft, in the front or in the rear, as chance directs. I have known my friend Sir Roger's dinner almoft cold before the company could adjust the ceremonial, and be prevailed upon to fit down; and have heartily pitied my old friend, when I have feen him forced to pick and cull his guests, as they fat at the feveral parts of his table, that he might drink their healths according to their respective ranks and qualities. Honeft Will Wimble, who I fhould have thought had been altogether uninfected with ceremony, gives me abundance of trouble in this particular. Though he has been filhing all the morning, he will not help himself at dinner until I am ferved. When we are going out of the hall, he runs behind me; and last night, as we were walking in the fields, ftopped fhort at a tile until I came up to it, and upon my making figns to him to get over, told me, with a ferious fmile, that fure I believe ed they had no manners in the country. There has happened another revolution in the point of good-breeding, which relates to the converfation among CH of mode, and, which I cannot but look upon as very extraordinary. It was certainly one of the firft diftinctions of a well-bred man, to express every thing that had the most remote appearance of being obfcene, in modeft terms and diftant phrafes; whilft the clown, who had no fuch delicacy of conception and expreffion, cloathed his ideas in thofe plain homely terms that are the mott obvious and natural. This kind of good-manners was perhaps carried to an excefs, fo as to make converfation too stiff, formal, and precife; for which reafon, as hypocrify in one age is generally followed by atheifin in another, converfation is in a great measure relapfed into the firtt extreme; fo that at prefent feveral of our men of the town, and particularly thofe who have been polifhed in France, make use of the moft coarse uncivilized words in our language, and utter themselves often in fuch a manner as a clown would blush to hear. This infamous piece of good-breeding, which reigns among the coxcombs of the town, has not yet made it's way into the country; and as it is impoffible for fuch an irrational way of converíation to lait long among a people that make any profeflion of religion, or fhew of modefty, if the country gentlemen get into it they will certainly be left in the lurch. Their good-breeding will come too late to them, and they will be thought a parcel of lewd clowns, while they fancy themfelves talking together like men of wit and pleasure. In As the two points of good-breeding, which I have hitherto infifted upon, regard behaviour and converfation, there is a third which turns upon drefs. this too the country are very much behind-hand. The rural beaux are not yet got out of the fashion that took place at the time of the Revolution, but ride about the country in red coats and laced hats, while the women in many parts are ftill trying to outvy one another in the height of their head-dreffes. But a friend of mine who is now upon the western circuit, having promised to give me an account of the feveral modes and fashions that prevail in the different parts of the nation through which he paffes, I fhall defer the enlarging upon this laft topic until I have received a letter from him, which I expect every post. : L N° CXX. N° CXX. WEDNESDAY, JULY 18. MY EQUIDEM CREDO, QUIA SIT DIVINITUS ILLIS INGENIUM I THINK THEIZ BREASTS WITH HEAV'NLY SOULS INSPIR'D. Y friend Sir Roger is very often merry with me upon my paffing fo much of my time among his poultry, He has caught me twice or thrice looking after a bird's nest, and several times fitting an hour or two together near an hen and chickens. He tells me he believes I am perfonally acquainted with every fowl about his houfe; calls fuch a particular cock my favourite; and frequently complains that his ducks and geefe have more of my company than himfelf. I must confefs I am infinitely delight ed with thofe fpeculations of nature which are to be made in a country-life; and as my reading has very much lain among books of natural history, I can. not forbear recollecting upon this occafion the several remarks which I have met with in authors, and comparing them with what falls under my own obfervation: the arguments for Providence drawn from the natural history of animals being in my opinion demonstrative. The make of every kind of animal is different from that of every other kind; and yet there is not the leaft turn in the mufcles or twist in the fibres of any one, which does not render them more proper for that particular animal's way of life than any other caft or texture of them would have been. The most violent appetites in all creatures are luft and hunger: the first is a perpetual call upon them to propagate their kind; the latter to preferve themfelves. It is aftonishing to confider the different degrees of care that defcend from the parent of the young, fo far as is abfolutely neceffary for the leaving a poAterity. Some creatures caft their eggs as chance directs them, and think of them no farther, as infects and several kinds of fish; others, of a nicer frame, and out proper beds to depofit them in, and there leave them; as the ferpent, the crocodile, and oftrich; others hatch DRYDEN. their eggs and tend the birth, until it is able to fhift for itself. What can we call the principle which directs every different kind of bird to obferve a particular plan in the structure of it's neft, and direct all the fame fpecies to work after the fame model? It cannot be imitation; for though you hatch a crow under a hen, and never let it fee any of the works of it's own kind, the nest it makes fhall be the fame, to the laying of a stick, with all the other nefts of the fame fpecies. It cannot be reafon; for were animals endowed with it to as great a degree as man, their buildings would be as different as ours, according to the different conveniencies that they would propofe to themselves, Is it not remarkable, that the fame temper of weather, which raifes this genial warmth in animals, fhould cover the trees with leaves, and the fields with grafs, for their fecurity and concealment, and produce fuch infinite swarms of infects for the fupport and fustenance of their respective broods? Is it not wonderful, that the love of the parent should be fo violent while it lafts, and that it should laft 'no longer than is neceflary for the prefervation of the young? The violence of this natural love is exemplified by a very barbarous experiment which I fhall quote at length, as I find it in an excellent author, and hope my readers will pardon the mentioning fuch an inftance of cruelty, because there is nothing can fo effectually fhew the ftrength of that principle in animals of which I am here fpeaking. A perfon 'who was well killed in diffèctions from the lofs of her young one, than the fente of her own torments.' But notwithstanding this natural love in brutes is much more violent and intenfe than in rational creatures, Provi. dence has taken care that it should be no longer troublesome to the parent than it is ufeful to the young; for fo foon as the wants of the latter ceafe, the mother withdraws her fondnefs, and leaves them to provide for themselves; and what is a very remarkable circumftance in this part of instinct, we find that the love of the parent may be lengthened out beyond it's ufual time, if the prefervation of the fpecies requires it; as we may fee in birds that drive away their young as foon as they are able to get their livelihood, but continue to feed them if they were tied to the nest, or confined within a cage, or by any other means appear to be out of a condition of fupplying their own neceffities. This natural love is not observed in animals to afcend from the young to the parent, which is not at all neceflary for the continuance of the fpecies; nor indeed in reasonable creatures does it rife in any proportion, as it fpreads itself downwards; for in all family affection, we find protection granted and favours bestowed, are greater motives to love and tenderness, than fafety, benefits, or life received. One would wonder to hear fceptical men difputing for the reafon of animals, and telling us it is only our pride and prejudices that will not allow them the ufe of that faculty. Reafon fhews itself in all occurrences of life; whereas the brute makes no difcovery of fuch a talent, but in what immediately regards his own prefervation, or the continuance of his fpecies. Animals in their generation are wifer than the fons of men; but their wifdom is confined to a few particulars, and lies in a very narrow compafs. Take a brute out of his inftinct, and you find him wholly deprived of understanding. To use an inftance that comes often under obfervation. With what caution does the hen provide herself a neft in places unfrequented, and free from noife and difturbance? When she has laid her eggs in fuch a manner that the can cover them, what care does the take in turning them frequently, that all parts may partake of the vital warmth? When the leaves them, to provide for her necessary fufte nance, how punctually does fhe return before they have time to cool, and become incapable of producing an animal? In the fummer you fee her giving herself greater freedoms, and quitting her care for above two hours together; but in winter, when the rigour of the feafon would chill the principles of life, and deftroy the young one, the grows more affiduous in her attendance, and stays away but half the time. When the birth approaches, with how much nicety and attention does the help the chick to break it's prifon? Not to take notice of her covering it from the injuries of the weather, providing it proper nourishment, and teaching it to help itself; nor to mention her forfaking the nest, if after the ufual time of reckoning the young one does not make it's appearance. A chymical operation could not be followed with greater art or diligence, than is feen in the hatching of a chick; though there are many other birds that fhew an infinitely greater fagacity in all the forementioned particulars. But at the fame time the hen, that has all this feeming ingenuity, which is indeed abfolutely neceffary for the propagation of the fpecies, confidered in other refpects, is without the least glimmerings of thought or common sense. She mistakes a piece of chalk for an egg, and fits upon it in the fame manner; the is infenfible of any increafe or diminu tion in the number of thofe fhe lays: he does not diftinguish between her own and those of another fpecies; and when the birth appears of never fo different a bird, will cherish it for her own. In all thefe circumstances which do not carry an immediate regard to the fubfiftence of herself or her fpecies, fhe is a very ideot. There is not, in my opinion, any thing more myfterious in nature than this inftinct in animals, which thus rifes above reafon, and falls infinitely short of it. It cannot be accounted for by any properties in matter, and at the fame time works after fo odd a manner, that one cannot think it the faculty of an intellectual being. For my own part, I look upon it as upon the principle of gravitation in bodies, which is not to be explained by any known qualities inherent in the bodies themfelves, nor from any laws of mechanifm, but, according to the beft notions of the greatest philofophers, is an immediate impreffion from the firft Mover, and the divine energy acting in the creatures. L N° CXXI. |