66

"A fig for prospects," answered Pounce; one acre here is worth ten there; for my part, I have no delight in the prospect of any land but my own."

66

Sir," said Adams, "you can indulge yourself in many fine prospects of that kind."

"I thank God I have a little," replied the other, "with which I am content, and envy no man. I have a little, Mr. Adams, with which I do as much good as I can."

Adams answered, "That riches, without charity, were nothing worth; for that they were a blessing only to him who made them a blessing to others."

"You and I," said Peter, "have different notions of charity. I own, as it is generally used, I do not like the word, nor do I think it becomes one of us gentlemen; it is a mean, parson-like quality; though I would not infer that many parsons have it neither."

"Sir," said Adams, "my definition of charity is a generous disposition to relieve the distressed."

"There is something in that definition," answered Peter, "which I like well enough; it is, as you say, a dispositionand does not so much consist in the act as in the disposition to do it; but, alas! Mr. Adams, who are meant by the distressed? believe me, the distresses of mankind are mostly imaginary, and it would be rather folly than goodness to relieve them."

"Sure, sir," replied Adams, "hunger and thirst, cold and nakedness, and other distresses which attend the poor, can never be said to be imaginary evils."

"How can any man complain of hunger," said Pounce, "in a country where such excellent salads are to be gathered almost in every field?-or of thirst, where every stream and river produce such delicious potations ?-and as for cold and nakedness, they are evils introduced by luxury and custom.

A man naturally wants clothes no more than a horse or any. other animal; and there are whole nations who go without them. But these are things, perhaps, which you, who do not know the world

"You will pardon me, sir," returned Adams; "I have read of the Gymnosophists."

"A plague of your Jehosaphats," cried Peter; "the greatest fault in our constitution is the provision made for the poor, except that perhaps made for some others. Sir, I have not an estate which doth not contribute almost as much again to the poor as to the land-tax; and I do assure you I expect myself to come to the parish in the end."

To which Adams giving a dissenting smile, Peter thus proceeded "I fancy, Mr. Adams, you are one of those who imagine I am a lump of money; for there are many who I fancy believe that not only my pockets, but my whole clothes, are lined with bank bills; but, I assure you, you are all mistaken; I am not the man the world esteems me. If I can hold my head above water, it is all I can. I have injured myself by purchasing; I have been too liberal of my money. Indeed I fear my heir will find my affairs in a worse situation than they are reputed to be. Ah! he will have reason to wish I had loved money more and land less. Pray, my good neighbor, where should I have that quantity of money the world is so liberal to bestow on me? Where could I possibly, without I had stole it, acquire such a treasure?"

"Why truly," said Adams, "I have been always of your opinion; I have wondered, as well as yourself, with what confidence they could report such things of you, which have to me appeared as mere impossibilities; for you know, sir, and I have often heard you say it, that your wealth is of your own acquisition; and can it be credible that in your short time vou should have amassed such a heap of treasure as these

people will have you are worth? Indeed, had you inherited an estate like Sir Thomas Booby, which had descended in your family through many generations, they might have had a color for their assertions."

"Why, what do they say I am worth?" cries Peter, with a malicious sneer.

"Sir," answered Adams, "I have heard some aver you are not worth less than twenty thousand pounds." At which Peter frowned.

Nay, sir," said Adams, "you ask me only the opinion of others; for my own part, I have always denied it, nor did I ever believe you could possibly be worth half that

sum.

"However, Mr. Adams," said he, squeezing him by the hand, "I would not sell them all I am worth for double that sum ; and as to what you believe, or they believe, I care not a fig. I am not poor, because you think me so, nor because you attempt to undervalue me in the country. I know the envy of mankind very well; but I thank heaven I am above them. It is true, my wealth is of my own acquisition. I have not an estate like Sir Thomas Booby, that hath descended in my family through many generations; but I know heirs. of such estates, who are forced to travel about the country, like some people in torn cassocks, and might be glad to accept of a pitiful curacy, for what I know; yes, sir, as shabby fellows as yourself, whom no man of my figure, without that vice of good-nature about him, would suffer to ride in a chariot with him."

"Sir," said Adams, "I value not your chariot of a rush; and if I had known you had intended to affront me, I would have walked to the world's end on foot, ere I would have accepted a place in it. However, sir, I will soon rid you of that inconvenience!" And so saying, he opened the chariot

door, without calling to the coachman, and leaped out into the highway, forgetting to take his hat along with him; which, however, Mr. Pounce threw after him with great violence.

Verses written at an Sun at Benley.

BY SHENSTONE.

"SHALL I not take," said Falstaff, with an exquisite duplication of the personal pronoun, "mine EASE at mine INN ?"

The question might induce us to fancy, that he had another abode; that it was as much as to say, "Must I go and encounter my difficulty at my lodgings?" But he meant it as an appeal to the expectations of everybody. Everybody, the moment he entered an inn, looked to being thoroughly at his ease; to possess comfort and security as surely as he did the things he paid for.

And this is the feeling we all have of an inn. It is not comparable with home, on the very gravest or the very gayest occasions; much less as a place to reside in; but as a place to visit, there is nothing like it. It is like being abroad and at home at the same time; abroad, in respect to the novelty; and at home, as regards doing what we please. We are not sufficiently used to it, to feel a thankless indifference; neither do we entertain such affection for it, as converts interest into anxiety.-But we do it injustice in writing sentences about it. There is nothing sententious at an inn (except on the window-panes); it is only free and easy. If you are wise, it is with mirth: if you run the whole round of philosophy with some "learned Theban" of a friend, it is after dinner, when the blood is running the finer round of cheerfulness, to which you feel that the other round is only subordinate. The top things throughout are the dinner, and the inn, and the reciprocity; and you only wish that all the world were as happy as yourselves, wondering that they are not so, and that everybody does