stayed in town, to keep off infection; and that he got together a quantity of it upon the first news of the sickness being at Dantzic.1 When of a sudden, turning short to one of his servants, who stood behind him, he bade him call a hackney-coach, and take care it was an elderly man that drove it.

He then resumed his discourse upon Mrs. Trueby's water, telling me that the Widow Trueby was one who did more good than all the doctors and apothecaries in the county; that she distilled every poppy that grew within five miles of her; that she distributed her water gratis among all sorts of people: to which the Knight added, that she had a very great jointure, and that the whole country would fain have it a match between him and her; "And truly," says Sir Roger, "if I had not been engaged,2 perhaps I could not have done better."

His discourse was broken off by his man's telling him he had called a coach. Upon our going to it, after having cast his eye upon the wheels, he asked the coachman if his axletree was good; upon the fellow's telling him he would warrant it, the Knight turned to me, told me he looked like an honest man, and went in without further ceremony.

We had not gone far, when Sir Roger, popping out his head, called the coachman down from his box, and, upon his presenting himself at the window, asked him if he smoked: as I was considering what this would end in, he bade him stop by the way at any good tobacconist's, and take in a roll of their

1. The great plague of Dantzic which swept away nearly half the inhabitants was in 1709.

2. Not in the sense of betrothed, but in that of having his

best Virginia. Nothing material happened in the remaining part of our journey till we were set down at the west end of the Abbey.

As we went up the body of the church, the Knight pointed at the trophies upon one of the new monu. ments, and cried out, "A brave man, I warrant him! Passing afterwards by Sir Cloudesley Shovel,1 he flung his hand that way, and cried, "Sir Cloudesley Shovel! a very gallant man!" As we stood before Busby's 2 tomb, the Knight uttered himself again after the same manner, "Dr. Busby a great man! he whipped my grandfather-a very great man! I should have gone to him myself if I had not been a blockhead a very great man!" We were immediately conducted into the little chapel on the right hand. Sir Roger, planting himself at our historian's elbow, was very attentive to everything he said, particularly to the account he gave us of the lord who had cut off the King of Morocco's head. Among several other figures, he was very well pleased to see the statesman Cecil 4 upon his knees; and, concluding them all to be great men, was conducted to the figure which represents that martyr to good housewifery, who died by the prick of a needle.5 Upon our interpreter's telling us

3

1. An English admiral who was drowned in 1707 when his fleet was wrecked off the Scilly Isles.

2. Dr. Busby was headmaster of Westminster school for fiftyfive years. Although he died in 1695, a game of cards known as Dr. Busby's school was familiar in America a generation ago, and perhaps has not yet gone wholly out of play.

3. The chapel of St. Edmund.

4. The great Lord Burleigh of Elizabeth's reign.

5. Addison is probably slyly repeating the verger's foolish tale. The figure is of Elizabeth Russell, who is pointing her forefinger at a death's skull on the pedestal.

that she was a maid of honor to Queen Elizabeth, the Knight was very inquisitive into her name and family; and, after having regarded her finger for some time, "I wonder," says he, "that Sir Richard Baker has said nothing of her in his Chronicle."

We were then conveyed to the two coronation chairs, where my old friend, after having heard that the stone underneath the most ancient of them, which was brought from Scotland, was called Jacob's Pillar,1 sat himself down in the chair; and, looking like the figure of an old Gothic king, asked our interpreter what authority they had to say that Jacob had ever been in Scotland. The fellow, instead of returning him an answer, told him that he hoped his honor would pay his forfeit. I could observe Sir Roger a little ruffled upon being thus trepanned; but, our guide not insisting upon his demand, the Knight soon recovered his good humor, and whispered in my ear that if Will Wimble were with us, and saw those two chairs, it would go hard but he would get a tobacco-stopper out of one or t'other of them.

Sir Roger, in the next place, laid his hand upon. Edward the Third's sword, and, leaning upon the pommel of it, gave us the whole history of the Black Prince; concluding that, in Sir Richard Baker's opinion, Edward the Third was one of the greatest princes that ever sat upon the English throne.

We were then shown Edward the Confessor's tomb, upon which Sir Roger acquainted us that he

1. Jacob's Pillar or pillow was the name given to the stone which was set in the chair in which Scottish kings had been crowned since the ninth century till Edward the First brought it to Westminster in 1297 upon the conquest of Scotland.

was the first who touched for the evil,1 and afterwards Henry the Fourth's, upon which he shook his head, and told us there was fine reading in the casualties in that reign.

Our conductor then pointed to that monument where there is the figure of one of our English kings without an head; 2 and upon giving us to know that the head, which was of beaten silver, had been stolen away several years since, "Some Whig, I'll warrant you," says Sir Roger: "you ought to lock up your kings better; they will carry off the body too if you don't take care."

The glorious names of Henry the Fifth and Queen Elizabeth gave the Knight great opportunities of shining and of doing justice to Sir Richard Baker, who, as our Knight observed with some surprise, had a great many kings in him whose monuments he had not seen in the Abbey.

For my own part, I could not but be pleased to see the Knight show such an honest passion for the glory of his country, and such a respectful gratitude to the memory of its princes.

I must not omit that the benevolence of my good old friend, which flows out towards every one he converses with, made him very kind to our interpreter, whom he looked upon as an extraordinary man; for which reason he shook him by the hand at parting,

1. Scrofula was called the "king's evil" from the superstition that it could be cured by the touch of a king truly anointed. The superstition was by no means dead in Queen Anne's time. Dr. Johnson, who was a victim of the disease, remembered being taken to Queen Anne to be cured.

2. The king without a head was Henry V. The head had been of solid silver, the rest of the figure being plated.

telling him that he should be very glad to see him at his lodgings in Norfolk Buildings, and talk over these matters with him more at leisure.

XXXI. SIR ROGER UPON BEARDS.

Stolidam præbet tibi vellere barbam.1

PERSIUS, Satires, ii. 28.

WHEN I was last with my friend Sir Roger in Westminster Abbey, I observed that he stood longer than ordinary before the bust of a venerable old man. I was at a loss to guess the reason of it; when, after some time, he pointed to the figure, and asked me if I did not think that our forefathers looked much wiser in their beards than we do without them? "For my part," says he, "when I am walking in my gallery in the country, and see my ancestors, who many of them died before they were of my age, I cannot forbear regarding them as so many old patriarchs, and at the same time looking upon myself as an idle smockfaced young fellow. I love to see your Abrahams, your Isaacs, and your Jacobs, as we have them in old pieces of tapestry, with beards below their girdles, that cover half the hangings." The Knight added, "if I would recommend beards in one of my papers, and endeavor to restore human faces to their ancient dignity, that, upon a month's warning he would undertake to lead up the fashion himself in a pair of whiskers."

I smiled at my friend's fancy; but, after we parted, could not forbear reflecting on the metamor phosis our faces have undergone in this particular. The beard, conformable to the notion of my friend 1. "Holds out his foolish beard for thee to pluck."