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the greatest respect for your good sense and address. When one of these has a little cunning, he passes his time in the utmost satisfaction to himself and his friends; for his position is never to report or speak a displeasing thing to his friend. As for letting him go on in an error, he knows advice against them is the office of persons of greater talents and less discretion.

The Latin word for a flatterer (assentator) implies no more than a person that barely consents; and indeed such a one, if a man were able to purchase or maintain him, cannot be bought too dear. Such a one never contradicts you, but gains upon you, not by a fulsome way of commending you in broad terms, but liking whatever you propose or utter; at the same time is ready to beg your pardon, and gainsay you, if you chance to speak ill of yourself. An old lady is very seldom without such a companion as this, who can recite the names of all her lovers, and the matches refused by her in the days when she minded such vanities (as she is pleased to call them, though she so much approves the mention of them). It is to be noted, that a woman's flatterer is generally elder than herself, her years serving to recommend her patroness's age, and to add weight to her complaisance in all other particulars.

We gentlemen of small fortunes are extremely necessitous in this particular. I have, indeed, one who smokes with me often; but his parts are so low, that all the incense he does me is to fill his pipe with me, and to be out at just as many whiffs as I take. This is all the praise or assent that he is capable of, yet there are more hours when I would rather be in his company than that of the brightest man I know. It would be a hard matter to give an account of this inclination to be flattered; but if we go to the botton of it, we shall find that the pleasure in it is something like that of receiving money which lay out. Every man thinks he has an estate of reputation, and is glad to see one that will bring any of it home to him; it is no matter how dirty a bag it is conveyed to him in, or by how clownish a messenger, so the money is good. All that we want to be pleased with flattery, is to believe that the man is sincere who gives it us. It is by this one accident that absurd creatures often outrun the most skilful in this art. Their want of ability is here an advantage, and their bluntness, as it is the seeming effect of sincerity, is the best cover to artifice.

Terence introduces a flatterer talking to a coxcomb, whom he cheats out of a livelihood, and a third person on the stage makes on him this pleasant remark, This fellow has an art of making fools madmen.' The love of flattery is indeed sometimes the weakness of a great mind; but you see it also in persons who otherwise discover no manner of relish of anything above mere sensuality. These latter it sometimes improves, but always debases the former. A fool is in himself the object of pity till he is flattered. By the force of that, his stupidity is raised into affectation, and he becomes of dignity enough to be ridiculous. I remember a droll, that upon one's saying the times are so ticklish that there must great care be taken what one says in conversation, answered with an air of surliness and honesty, If people will be free, let them be so in the manner that I am, who never abuse a man but to his face. He had no reputation for saying dangerous truths; therefore when it was repeated, You abuse a man but to his face? Yes, says he, I flatter him.

It is, indeed, the greatest of injuries to flatter any but the unhappy, or such as are displeased with themselves for some infirmity. In this latter case we have a member of our club, that, when Sir Jeffrey falls asleep, wakens him with snoring. This makes Sir Jeffrey hold up for some moments the longer, to see

there are men younger than himself among us, who are more lethargic than he is.

When flattery is practised upon any other consideration, it is the most abject thing in nature; nay, I cannot think of any character below the flatterer, except he that envies him. You meet with fellows prepared to be as mean as possible in their condescensions and expressions; but they want persons and talents to rise up to such a baseness. As a coxcowb is a fool of parts, so a flatterer is a knave of parts. The best of this order that I know, is one who disguises it under a spirit of contradiction or reproof. He told an arrant driveller the other day, that he did not care for being in company with him, because he heard he turned his absent friends into ridicule. And upon Lady Autumn's disputing with him about something that happened at the Revolution, he replied with a very angry tone, Pray, madam, give me leave to know more of a thing in which I was actually concerned, than you who were then in your nurse's arms.

[Quack Advertisements.]

It gives me much despair in the design of reforming the world by my speculations, when I find there always arise, from one generation to another, successive cheats and bubbles, as naturally as beasts of prey and those which are to be their food. There is hardly a man in the world, one would think, so ignorant as not to know that the ordinary quack-doctors, who publish their abilities in little brown billets, distri buted to all who pass by, are to a man impostors and murderers; yet such is the credulity of the vulgar, and the impudence of these professors, that the affair still goes on, and new promises of what was never done before are made every day. What aggravates the jest is, that even this promise has been made as long as the memory of man can trace it, and yet nothing performed, and yet still prevails. As I was passing along to-day, a paper given into my hand by a fellow without a nose, tells us as follows what good news is come to town, to wit, that there is now a certain cure for the French disease, by a gentleman just come from his travels.

In Russel Court, over against the Cannon Ball, at the Surgeons' Arms, in Drury Lane, is lately come from his travels a surgeon, who hath practised surgery and physic, both by sea and land, these twenty-four years. He, by the blessing, cures the yellow jaundice, green-sickness, scurvy, dropsy, surfeits, long sea voyages, campaigns, &c., as some people that has been lame these thirty years can testify; in short, he cureth all diseases incident to men, women, or children.'

If a man could be so indolent as to look upon this havoc of the human species which is made by vice and ignorance, it would be a good ridiculous work t comment upon the declaration of this accomplishe traveller. There is something unaccountably taking among the vulgar in those who come from a great way off. Ignorant people of quality, as many there are of such, dote excessively this way; many instances of which every man will suggest to himself, without my enumeration of them. The ignorants of lower order, who cannot, like the upper ones, be profuse of their money to those recommended by coming from a distance, are no less complaisant than the others; for they venture their lives for the same admiration.

The doctor is lately come from his travels, and has practised both by sea and land, and therefore cures the green-sickness, long sea voyages, and cam paigns.' Both by sea and land! I will not answe for the distempers called 'sea voyages and campaigns,' but I daresay that of green-sickness might be as well taken care of if the doctor stayed ashore. But the art of managing mankind is only to make them stare a little to keep up their astonishment;

to let nothing be familiar to them, but ever to have something in their sleeve, in which they must think you are deeper than they are. There is an ingenious fellow, a barber, of my acquaintance, who, besides his broken fiddle and a dried sea-monster, has a twine-cord, strained with two nails at each end, over his window, and the words, 'rainy, dry, wet,' and so forth, written to denote the weather, according to the rising or falling of the cord. We very great scholars are not apt to wonder at this; but I observed a very honest fellow, a chance customer, who sat in the chair before me to be shaved, fix his eye upon this miraculous performance during the operation upon his chin and face. When those and his head also were cleared of all incumbrances and excrescences, he looked at the fish, then at the fiddle, still grubling in his pockets, and casting his eye again at the twine, and the words writ on each side; then altered his raind as to farthings, and gave my friend a silver sixpence. The business, as I said, is to keep up the amazement; and if my friend had only the skeleton and kit, he must have been contented with a less payment. But the doctor we were talking of, adds to his long voyages the testimony of some people that has been thirty years lame.' When I received my paper, a sagacious fellow took one at the same time, and read until he came to the thirty years' confinement of his friends, and went off very well convinced of the doctor's sufficiency. You have many of these prodigious persons, who have had some extraordinary accident at their birth, or a great disaster in some part of their lives. Anything, however foreign from the business the people want of you, will convince them of your ability in that you profess. There is a doctor in Mouse Alley, near Wapping, who sets up for curing cataracts upon the credit of having, as his bill sets forth, lost an eye in the emperor's service. His patients come in upon this, and he shows his muster-roll, which confirms that he was in his imperial majesty's troops; and he puts out their eyes with great success. Who would believe that a man should be a doctor for the cure of bursten children, by declaring that his father and grandfather were born bursten? But Charles Ingoltson, next door to the Harp in Barbican, has made a pretty penny by that asseveration. The generality go upon their first conception, and think no further; all the rest is granted. They take it that there is something uncommon in you, and give you credit for the rest. You may be sure it is upon that I go, when, sometimes, let it be to the purpose or not, I keep a Latin sentence in my front; and I was not a little pleased when I observed one of my readers say, casting his eye on my twentieth paper, More Latin still? What a prodigious scholar is this man!' But as I have here taken much liberty with this learned doctor, I must make up all I have said by repeating what he seems to be in earnest in, and honestly promise to those who will not receive him as a great man, to wit, 'That from eight to twelve, and from two till six, he attends for the good of the public to bleed for threepence.'

[Story-Telling.]

·

Tom Lizard told us a story the other day, of some persons which our family know very well, with so much humour and life, that it caused a great deal of mirth at the tea-table. His brother Will, the Templar, was highly delighted with it; and the next day being with some of his Inns-of-court acquaintance, resolved (whether out of the benevolence or the pride of his heart, I will not determine) to entertain them with what he called a pleasant humour enough.' I was in great pain for him when I heard him begin; and was not at all surprised to find the company very little roved by it. Will blushed, looked round the room,

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and with a forced laugh, Faith, gentlemen,' said he, I do not know what makes you look so grave: it was an admirable story when I heard it.'

When I came home, I fell into a profound contemplation upon story-telling, and, as I have nothing so much at heart as the good of my country, I resolved to lay down some precautions upon this subject. I have often thought that a story-teller is born, as well as a poet. It is, I think, certain that some men have such a peculiar cast of mind, that they see things in another light than men of grave dispositions. Men of a lively imagination and a mirthful temper will represent things to their hearers in the same manner as they themselves were affected with them; and whereas serious spirits might perhaps have been disgusted at the sight of some odd occurrences in life, yet the very same occurrences shall please them in a well-told story, where the disagreeable parts of the images are concealed, and those only which are pleasing exhibited to the fancy. Story-telling is therefore not an art, but what we call a 'knack;' it doth not so much subsist upon wit as upon humour; and I will add, that it is not perfect without proper gesticulations of the body, which naturally attend such merry emotions of the mind. I know very well that a certain gravity of countenance sets some stories off to advantage, where the hearer is to be surprised in the end. But this is by no means a general rule; for it is frequently convenient to aid and assist by cheerful looks and whimsical agitations. I will go yet further, and affirm that the success of a story very often depends upon the make of the body, and the formation of the features, of him who relates it. I have been of this opinion ever since I criticised upon the chin of Dick Dewlap. I very often had the weakness to repine at the prosperity of his conceits, which made him pass for a wit with the widow at the coffee-house, and the ordinary mechanics that frequent it; nor could I myself forbear laughing at them most heartily, though upon examination I thought most of them very flat and insipid. I found, after some time, that the merit of his wit was founded upon the shaking of a fat paunch, and the tossing up of a pair of rosy jowls. Poor Dick had a fit of sickness, which robbed him of his fat and his fame at once; and it was full three months before he regained his reputation, which rose in proportion to his floridity. He is now very jolly and ingenious, and hath a good constitution for wit.

Those who are thus adorned with the gifts of nature, are apt to show their parts with too much ostentation. I would therefore advise all the professors of this art never to tell stories but as they seem to grow out of the subject-matter of the conversation, or as they serve to illustrate or enliven it. Stories that are very common are generally irksome; but may be aptly introduced, provided they be only hinted at and mentioned by way of allusion. Those that are altogether new, should never be ushered in without a short and pertinent character of the chief persons concerned, because, by that means, you may make the company acquainted with them; and it is a certain rule, that slight and trivial accounts of those who are familiar to us, administer more mirth than the brightest points of wit in unknown characters. A little circumstance in the complexion or dress of the man you are talking of, sets his image before the hearer, if it be chosen aptly for the story. Thus, I remember Tom Lizard, after having made his sisters merry with an account of a formal old man's way of complimenting, owned very frankly that his story would not have been worth one farthing, if he had made the hat of him whom he represented one inch narrower. Besides the marking distinct characters, and selecting pertinent circumstances, it is likewise necessary to leave off in time, and end smartly; so that there is a kind of drama in the forming of a story; and the manner of con

ducting and pointing it is the same as in an epigram. It is a miserable thing, after one hath raised the expectation of the company by humorous characters and a pretty conceit, to pursue the matter too far. There is no retreating; and how poor is it for a storyteller to end his relation by saying, 'That's all !'

As the choosing of pertinent circumstances is the life of a story, and that wherein humour principally consists, so the collectors of impertinent particulars are the very bane and opiates of conversation. Old men are great transgressors this way. Poor Ned Poppy-he's gone!-was a very honest man, but was so excessively tedious over his pipe, that he was not to be endured. He knew so exactly what they had for dinner when such a thing happened, in what ditch his bay horse had his sprain at that time, and how his man John-no, it was William-started a hare in the common field, that he never got to the end of his tale. Then he was extremely particular in marriages and intermarriages, and cousins twice or thrice removed, and whether such a thing happened at the latter end of July or the beginning of August. He had a marvellous tendency likewise to digressions; insomuch, that if a considerable person was mentioned in his story, he would straightway launch out into an episode of him; and again, if in that person's story he had occasion to remember a third man, he broke off, and gave us his history, and so on. He always put me in mind of what Sir William Temple informs us of the tale-tellers in the north of Ireland, who are hired to tell stories of giants and enchanters to lull people asleep. These historians are obliged, by their bargain, to go on without stopping; so that after the patient hath, by this benefit, enjoyed a long nap, he is sure to find the operator proceeding in his work. Ned procured the like effect in me the last time I was with him. As he was in the third hour of his story, and very thankful that his memory did not fail him, I fairly nodded in the :lbow chair. He was much affronted at this, till I t.ld him, 'Old friend, you have your infirmity, and I have mine.'

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But of all evils in story-telling, the humour of telling tales one after another in great numbers, is the least supportable. Sir Harry Pandolf and his son gave my Lady Lizard great offence in this particular. Sir Harry hath what they call a string of stories, which he tells over every Christmas. When our family visits there, we are constantly, after supper, entertained with the Glastonbury Thorn. When we have wondered at that a little, Ay, but father,' saith the son, let us have the Spirit in the Wood.' After that hath been laughed at, Ay, but father,' cries the booby again, 'tell us how you served the robber.' Alack-a-day,' saith Sir Harry with a smile, and rubbing his forehead, 'I have almost forgot that, but it is a pleasant conceit to be sure.' Accordingly he tells that and twenty more in the same independent order, and without the least variation, at this day, as he hath done, to my knowledge, ever since the Revolution. I must not forget a very odd compliment that Sir Harry always makes my lady when he dines here. After dinner he says, with a feigned concern in his countenance, Madam, I have lost by you to-day. How so, Sir Harry?' replies my lady. Madam,' says he, I have lost an excellent appetite.' At this his son and heir laughs immoderately, and winks upon Mrs Annabella. This is the thirty-third time that Sir Harry hath been thus arch, and I can bear it no longer.

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As the telling of stories is a great help and life to conversation, I always encourage them, if they are pertinent and innocent, in opposition to those gloomy mortals who disdain everything but matter of fact. Those grave fellows are my aversion, who sift everything with the utmost nicety, and find the malignity of a lie in a piece of humour pushed a little beyond

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exact truth. I likewise have a poor opinion of those who have got a trick of keeping a steady countenance, that cock their hats and look glum when a pleasant thing is said, and ask, Well, and what then! Men of wit and parts should treat one another with benevolence; and I will lay it down as a maxim, that if you seem to have a good opinion of another man's wit, he will allow you to have judgment.

Having given these samples of Steele's composition, we now add some of the best of Addison's pieces —

[The Political Upholsterer.]

There lived some years since, within my neighbourhood, a very grave person, an upholsterer, who seemed a man of more than ordinary application to business. He was a very early riser, and was often abroad two or three hours before any of his neighbours. He had a particular carefulness in the knitting of his brows, and a kind of impatience in all his motions, that plainly discovered he was always intent on matters of importance. Upon my inquiry into his life and conversation, I found him to be the greatest newsmonger in our quarter; that he rose before day to read the Postman; and that he would take two or three turns to the other end of the town before his neighbours were up, to see if there were any Dutch mails come in. He had a wife and several children; but was much more inquisitive to know what passed in Poland than in his own family, and was in greater pain and anxiety of mind for King Augustus's welfare than that of his nearest relations. He looked extremely thin in a dearth of news, and never enjoyed himself in a westerly wind. This indefatigable kind of life was the ruin of his shop; for about the time that his favourite prince left the crown of Poland, he broke and disappeared.

This man and his affairs had been long out of my mind, till about three days ago, as I was walking in St James's Park, I heard somebody at a distance hemming after me: and who should it be but my old neighbour the upholsterer? I saw he was reduced to extreme poverty, by certain shabby superfluities in his dress; for notwithstanding that it was a very sultry day for the time of the year, he wore a loose greatcoat and a muff, with a long campaign wig out of curl; to which he had added the ornament of a pair of black garters buckled under the knee. Upon his coming up to me, I was going to inquire into his present circumstances, but was prevented by his asking me, with a whisper, whether the last letters brought any accounts that one might rely upon from Bender? I told him, none that I heard of; and asked him whether he had yet married his eldest daughter? He told me no: But pray, says he, tell me sincerely, what are your thoughts of the king of Sweden? for though his wife and children were starving, I found his chief concern at present was for this great monarch. I told him, that I looked upon him as one of the first heroes of the age. But pray, says he, do you think there is anything in the story of his wound? And finding me surprised at the question, Nay, says he, I only propose it to you. I answered, that I thought there was no reason to doubt of it. But why in the heel, says he, more than in any other part of the body? Because, said I, the bullet chanced to light there.

This extraordinary dialogue was no sooner ended, but he began to launch out into a long dissertation upon the affairs of the north; and after having spent some time on them, he told me he was in a great perplexity how to reconcile the Supplement with the English Post, and had been just now examining what the other papers say upon the same subject. The

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Daily Courant, says he, has these words, We have advices from very good hands, that a certain prince has some matters of great importance under consideration. This is very mysterious; but the Postboy leaves us more in the dark, for he tells us that there are private intimations of measures taken by a certain prince, which time will bring to light. Now the Postman, says he, who used to be very clear, refers to the same news in these words: The late conduct of a certain prince affords great matter of speculation. This certain prince, says the upholsterer, whom they are all so cautious of naming, I take to be Upon which, though there was nobody near us, he whispered something in my ear, which I did not hear, or think worthy my while to make him repeat.*

We were now got to the upper end of the Mall, where were three or four very odd fellows sitting together upon the bench. These I found were all of them politicians, who used to sun themselves in that place every day about dinner time. Observing them to be curiosities in their kind, and my friend's acquaintance, I sat down among them.

crown. In compassion to so needy a statesman, and to dissipate the confusion I found he was in, I told him, if he pleased I would give him five shillings, to receive five pounds of him when the great Turk was driven out of Constantinople; which he very readily accepted, but not before he had laid down to me the impossibility of such an event, as the affairs of Europe now stand.

[The Vision of Mirza.]

When I was at Grand Cairo, I picked up several oriental manuscripts, which I have still by me. Among others I met with one entitled 'The Visions of Mirza,' which I have read over with great pleasure. I intend to give it to the public when I have no other entertainment for them, and shall begin with the first vision, which I have translated word for word as follows:

On the 5th day of the moon, which, according to the custom of my forefathers, I always keep holy, after having washed myself, and offered up my morn The chief politician of the bench was a great assertering devotions, I ascended the high hills of Bagdat, in of paradoxes. He told us, with a seeming concern, order to pass the rest of the day in meditation and that by some news he had lately read from Muscovy, prayer. As I was here airing myself on the tops of it appeared to him that there was a storm gathering the mountains, I fell into a profound contemplation in the Black Sea, which might in time do hurt to the on the vanity of human life; and passing from one naval forces of this nation. To this he added, that thought to another, Surely, said I, man is but a shafor his part he could not wish to see the Turk driven dow, and life a dream. Whilst I was thus musing, I out of Europe, which he believed could not but be cast my eyes towards the summit of a rock that was prejudicial to our woollen manufacture. He then not far from me, where I discovered one in the habit told us, that he looked upon the extraordinary re- of a shepherd, with a little musical instrument in his volutions which had lately happened in those parts hand. As I looked upon him, he applied it to his of the world, to have risen chiefly from two persons lips, and began to play upon it. The sound of it was who were not much talked of; and those, says he, are exceedingly sweet, and wrought into a variety of Prince Menzikoff and the Duchess of Mirandola. He tunes that were inexpressibly melodious, and altobacked his assertions with so many broken hints, and gether different from anything I had ever heard. They such a show of depth and wisdom, that we gave our-put me in mind of those heavenly airs that are played selves up to his opinions. to the departed souls of good men upon their first arrival in paradise, to wear out the impressions of the last agonies, and qualify them for the pleasures of that happy place. My heart melted away in secret raptures.

The discourse at length fell upon a point which seldom escapes a knot of true born Englishmen Whether, in case of a religious war, the Protestants would not be too strong for the Papists? This we unanimously determined on the Protestant side. One who sat on my right hand, and, as I found by his discourse, had been in the West Indies, assured us, that it would be a very easy matter for the Protestants to beat the pope at sea; and added, that whenever such a war does break out, it must turn to the good of the Leeward Islands. Upon this, one who sat at the end of the bench, and, as I afterwards found, was the geographer of the company, said, that in case the Papists should drive the Protestants from these parts of Europe, when the worst came to the worst, it would be impossible to beat them out of Norway and Greenland, provided the northern crowns hold together, and the Czar of Muscovy stand neuter.

He further told us for our comfort, that there were vast tracts of lands about the pole, inhabited neither by Protestants nor Papists, and of greater extent than all the Roman Catholic dominions in Europe.

When we had fully discussed this point, my friend the upholsterer began to exert himself upon the present negotiations of peace, in which he deposed princes, settled the bounds of kingdoms, and balanced the power of Europe, with great justice and impartiality.

I at length took my leave of the company, and was going away; but had not gone thirty yards, before the upholsterer hemmed again after me. Upon his advancing towards me with a whisper, I expected to hear some secret piece of news, which he had not thought fit to communicate to the bench; but instead of that, he desired me in my ear to lend him half-a

*The prince here alluded to so mysteriously was the so-called Pretender, James Stuart, son of King James II.

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I had been often told that the rock before me was the haunt of a genius, and that several had been entertained with music who had passed by it, but never heard that the musician had before made himself visible. When he had raised my thoughts by those transporting airs which he played, to taste the pleasures of his conversation, as I looked upon him like one astonished, he beckoned to me, and by the waving of his hand, directed me to approach the place where he sat. I drew near with that reverence which is due to a superior nature; and as my heart was entirely subdued by the captivating strains I had heard, I fell down at his feet and wept. The genius smiled upon me with a look of compassion and affability that fami liarised him to my imagination, and at once dispelled all the fears and apprehensions with which I approached him. He lifted me from the ground, and taking me by the hand, Mirza,' said he, 'I have heard thee in thy soliloquies; follow me.'

He then led me to the highest pinnacle of the rock, and placing me on the top of it, 'Cast thine eyes eastward,' said he, and tell me what thou seest.' 'I see,' said I, 'a huge valley, and a prodigious tide of water rolling through it.' The valley that thou seest,' said he, is the vale of misery, and the tide of water that thou seest is part of the great tide of eternity.' What is the reason,' said I, 'that the tide I see rises out of a thick mist at one end, and again loses itself in a thick mist at the other?' What thou seest,' said he, is that portion of eternity which is called Time, measured out by the sun, and reaching from the beginning of the world to its consumination. Examine now,' said he, this

sea that is bounded with darkness at both ends, and tell me what thou discoverest in it.' 'I see a bridge,' said I, standing in the midst of the tide.' The bridge thou seest,' said he, is Human Life; consider it attentively.' Upon a more leisurely survey of it, I found that it consisted of threescore and ten entire arches, with several broken arches, which, added to those that were entire, made up the number to about a hundred. As I was counting the arches, the genius told me that this bridge consisted at first of a thousand arches, but that a great flood swept away the rest, and left the bridge in the ruinous condition I now beheld it. But tell me further,' said he, 'what thou discoverest on it.' I see multitudes of people passing over it,' said I, and a black cloud hanging on each end of it.' As I looked more attentively, I saw several of the passengers dropping through the bridge into the great tide that flowed underneath it; and upon further examination, perceived there were innumerable trap-doors that lay concealed in the bridge, which the passengers no sooner trod upon, but they fell through them into the tide, and immediately disappeared. These hidden pitfalls were set very thick at the entrance of the bridge, so that throngs of people no sooner broke through the cloud, but many of them fell into them. They grew thinner towards the middle, but multiplied and lay closer together towards the end of the arches that were entire.

There were indeed some persons, but their number was very small, that continued a kind of hobbling march on the broken arches, but fell through one after another, being quite tired and spent with so long a walk.

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I directed my sight as I was ordered, and (whether
or no the good genius strengthened it with any super-
natural force, or dissipated part of the mist that was
before too thick for the eye to penetrate) I saw the
valley opening at the farther end, and spreading forth
into an immense ocean, that had a huge rock of ada-
mant running through the midst of it, and dividing
it into two equal parts. The clouds still rested on
one half of it, insomuch that I could discover nothing
in it; but the other appeared to me a vast ocean
planted with innumerable islands that were covered
with fruits and flowers, and interwoven with a thou-
sand little shining seas that ran among them. I
could see persons dressed in glorious habits, with
garlands upon their heads, passing among the trees,
lying down by the sides of fountains, or resting on
beds of flowers, and could hear a confused harmony
of singing birds, falling waters, human voices, and
musical instruments. Gladness grew in me upon the
discovery of so delightful a scene. I wished for the
wings of an eagle that I might fly away to those happy
seats, but the genius told me there was no passage
to them except through the Gates of Death that I
saw opening every moment upon the bridge.
islands,' said he, that lie so fresh and green before
thee, and with which the whole face of the ocean
appears spotted as far as thou canst see, are more in
number than the sands on the sea-shore; there are
myriads of islands behind those which thou here dis-
coverest, reaching farther than thine eye, or even thine
imagination, can extend itself. These are the man-
sions of good men after death, who, according to the
degree and kinds of virtue in which they excelled, are
distributed among these several islar ds, which abound
with pleasures of different kinds and degrees, suitable
to the relishes and perfections of those who are settled
in them. Every island is a paradise accommodated to
its respective inhabitants. Are not these, O Mirza!

The

I passed some time in the contemplation of this wonderful structure, and the great variety of objects which it presented. My heart was filled with a deep melancholy to see several dropping unexpectedly in the midst of mirth and jollity, and catching at every-habitations worth contending for? Does life appear thing that stood by them to save themselves. Some were looking up towards the heavens in a thoughtful posture, and, in the midst of a speculation, stumbled, and fell out of sight. Multitudes were very busy in the pursuit of bubbles that glittered in their eyes and danced before them; but often when they thought themselves within the reach of them, their footing failed, and down they sank. In this confusion of objects, I observed some with scimitars in their hands, and others with urinals, who ran to and fro upon the bridge, thrusting several persons on trap-doors which did not seem to lie in their way, and which they might have escaped had they not been thus forced upon

them.

miserable, that gives thee opportunities of earning such a reward? Is death to be feared, that will convey thee to so happy an existence? Think not man was made in vain, who has such an eternity reserved for him.' I gazed with inexpressible pleasure on these happy islands. At length, said I,Show me now, I beseech thee, the secrets that lie hid under those dark clouds which cover the ocean on the other side of the rock of adamant.' The genius making me no answer, I turned about to address myself to him a second time, but I found that he had left mo. I then turned again to the vision which I had been so long contemplating, but instead of the rolling tide, the arched bridge, and the happy islands, I saw noThe genius seeing me indulge myself on this melan-thing but the long hollow valley of Bagdat, with choly prospect, told me I had dwelt long enough upon it. Take thine eyes off the bridge,' said he,' and tell me if thou yet seest anything thou dost not comprehend.' Upon looking up, What mean,' said I, those great flights of birds that are perpetually hovering about the bridge, and settling upon it from time to time? I see vultures, harpies, ravens, cormorants, and, among many other feathered creatures, several little winged boys, that perch in great numbers upon the middle arches.' 'These,' said the genius, are Envy, Avarice, Superstition, Despair, Love, with the like cares and passions that infest Human Life.'

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I here fetched a deep sigh. Alas,' said I, ' man was made in vain!-how is he given away to misery and mortality!-tortured in life, and swallowed up in death!' The genius being moved with compassion towards me, bade me quit so uncomfortable a prospect. Look no more,' said he, on man in the first stage of his existence, in his setting out for eternity, but cast thine eye on that thick mist into which the tide bears the several generations of mortals that fall into it.'

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oxen, sheep, and camels, grazing upon the sides of it.

[Sir Roger De Coverley's Visit to Westminster Abbey.]

My friend Sir Roger de Coverley told me the other night that he had been reading my paper upon Westminster Abbey, in which,' says he, there are a great many ingenious fancies.' He told me, at the same time, that he observed I had promised another paper upon the tombs, and that he should be glad to go and see them with me, not having visited them since he had read history. I could not at first imagine how this came into the knight's head, till I recollected that he had been very busy all lasi summer upon Baker's Chronicle, which he has quoted several times in his disputes with Sir Andrew Freeport since his last coming to town. Accordingly, I promised to call upon him the next morning, that we might go together to the abbey.

I found the knight under the butler's hands, who always shaves him. He was no sooner dressed, than he called for a glass of the widow Truby's water,

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