THE END OF THE WORLD.

HE sea (they say) shall rise fifteen cubits above the highest

THE

mountains, and thence descend into hollowness and prodigious drought; and when they are reduced again to their usual proportions, then all the beasts and creeping things, the monsters and the usual inhabitants of the sea, shall be gathered together, and make fearful noises to distract mankind: the birds shall mourn and change their songs into threnes and sad accents: rivers of fire shall rise from the east to west, and the stars shall be rent into threads of light, and scatter like the beards of comets: then shall be fearful earthquakes, and the rocks shall rend in pieces, the trees shall distil blood, and the mountains and fairest structures shall return unto their primitive dust; the wild beasts shall leave their dens, and come into the companies of men, so that you shall hardly tell how to call them, herds of men, or congregations of beasts; then shall the graves open and give up their dead, and those which are alive in nature and dead in fear, shall be forced from the rocks whither they went to hide them, and from caverns of the earth, where they would fain have been concealed; because their retirements are dismantled, and their rocks are broken with wider ruptures, and admit a strange light into their secret bowels; and the men being forced abroad into the theatre of mighty horrors, shall run up and down distracted and at their wits' end.

PLINY, Epist. viii. 17. vi. 16.
SENECA, Nat. Quaest. iii. c. 27, sqq.

DISASTROUS EFFECT OF A SUPPOSED INTERRUPTION OF NATURE'S COURSE.

OW if Nature should intermit her course, and leave altogether,

Now

though it were only for a while, the observation of her own laws; if those principal and mother elements of the world, whereof all things in this lower world are made, should lose the qualities which now they have; if the frame of that heavenly arch erected over our heads should loosen and dissolve itself; if celestial spheres should forget their wonted motion, and by irregular volubility turn themselves any way, as it might happen; if the prince of the lights of heaven, which now as a giant doth run his unwearied course, should, as it were, through a languishing faintness, begin to stand and to rest himself; if the moon should wander from her beaten way; the times and seasons of the years blend themselves by disordered and confused mixture; the winds breathe out their last gasp; the clouds yield no rain, and the earth be defeated of heavenly influence; the fruits of the earth pine away, as children at the withered breasts of their mother, no longer able to give them relief,--what would become of man himself, whom these things now do all serve? See we not plainly that the obedience of creatures to the law of nature is the stay of the whole world.

CICERO, de Nat. Deor. iii. § 39.
SENECA, de Beneficiis, iv. c. 5.

De Oratore, iii. § 178.
De Providentia, c. 5.

PART V.

EPISTOLARY

I'

Tis

THE HON. HORACE WALPOLE TO THE

very

HON. H. S. CONWAY.

STRAWBERRY HILL, August 18th, 1774.

hard that because you do not get my letters you will

I

not let me receive yours, who do receive them. I have not had a line from you these five weeks. Of your honours and glories fame has told me; and for aught I know, you may be a veldtmarshal by this time, and despise such a poor cottager as me. Take notice, I shall disclaim you in my turn, if you are sent on a command against Dantzic or to usurp a new district in Poland. have seen no armies, kings, or empresses, and cannot send you such august gazettes; nor are they what I want to hear of. I like to hear you are well and diverted. For my part, I wish you were returned to your plough. Your Sabine farm is in high beauty. I have lain there twice this week, going to and from a visit to George Selwyn, near Gloucester: a tour as much to my taste as yours to you. For fortified towns I have seen ruined castles. luckily, in that of Berkeley I found a whole regiment of militia in garrison. I endeavoured to comfort myself by figuring that they were guarding Edward II. I have seen many other ancient sights without asking leave of the King of Prussia. They have found at

Un

least seventy thousand pounds of Lord Thomond's. George Howard has decked himself with a red riband, money, and honours! Charming things and yet one may be very happy without them. What can I tell you more? Nothing. Indeed, my letter is long enough. Everybody's head but mine is full of elections. I had the satisfaction at Gloucester, where George Selwyn is canvassing, of reflecting on my own wisdom.

"Suave mari magno turbantibus æquora ventis,"

etc. I am certainly the greatest philosopher in the world, without ever having thought of being so; always employed and never busy; eager about trifles, and indifferent to everything serious. Well, if it is not philosophy, at least it is content. I am as pleased here with my own nutshell as any monarch you have seen these two months astride his eagle ;-not but I was dissatisfied when I missed you at Park-place, and was peevish at your being in an aulic-chamber. Adieu ! Yours ever. P.S. They tell us from Vienna that the peace is made between Tisiphone and the Turk; is it true?

CICERO, ad Atticum, lib. ii. Ep. vii. lib. iv. Ep. viii.
HORACE, Epist. lib. I. iv. 10.

TO A NOBLEMAN IN THE COUNTRY.

STR

IR CLEMENT tells me you will shortly come to town. We begin to want comfort in a few friends around us, while the winds whistle and the waters roar. The sun gives a parting look, but 'tis a cold one; we are ready to change those distant favours of a lofty beauty for a gross material fire that warms and comforts more. I wish you could be here till your family come to town; you'll live more innocently, and kill fewer harmless creatures, nay, none, except by your proper deputy, the butcher. It is fit for con

science sake that you should come to town, and that the Duchess should stay in the country, where no innocents of another species may suffer by her. I advise you to make man your game, hunt and beat about here for coxcombs, and truss up rogues in satire: I fancy they'll turn to a good account, if you can produce them fresh, or make them keep

bodies of you.

and their relations will come and buy their

CICERO, ad Famil. vii. 10.

Ad Quintum Fratrem, ii. 16.

I

SAMENESS IN THE DRAMA.

HAVE always been an idle man, and have read or attended the greater part of the plays that are extant, and will venture to affirm that, exclusive of Shakespeare's and some Spanish pieces never represented nor translated, there are barely half-a-dozen plots among them, comic and tragic: so that it is evidently a much easier matter to run over the usual variations than to keep entirely in another tune and to raise up no recollections. Both in tragedies and comedies the changes are pretty similar, and nearly in the same place. You perceive the turnings and windings of the road a mile before you, and you know exactly the precipice down which the hero or heroine must fall; you can discover with your naked eye who does the mischief, and who affords the help; where the assassin bursts forth with the dagger, and where the old gentleman shakes the crabstick over the shoulder of his dissolute nephew.

CICERO, ad Famil. vii. 1.

HORACE, Epist. lib. II. i. 168, sqq.

A. P. 93, sqq.

PLINY, Epist. v. 3.