'I make no apology to Mr. Dodsley on this occasion, as I do not think he will lose a single customer by this compendious, yet comprehensive method of performing libraries. Yours, &c. L. A.'

N° 65. THURSDAY, MARCH 28, 1754.

Campestres meliùs Scythæ,

Quorum plaustra vagas ritè trahunt domos.-HOR.

THAT experience is the best, and should be the only guide of our conduct, is so trite a maxim, that one can hardly offer it without an apology and yet we find the love of innovation and the vanity of invention carrying men daily to a total neglect of it. In a country where mode and fashion govern every thing, we must not be surprised that men are ruled by no fixed principles, but rather should expect they will frequently act in direct opposition to every thing that has long been established. The favourite axiom of the present times, is, that our ancestors were barbarous; therefore, whatever differs from the ignorance of their manners must be wise and right.

To shew the folly of an overweening opinion of inventive wisdom, and to bring the foregoing remarks to the purpose and subject of this day's paper, I shall give an instance from Garcilasso de la Vega, who tells us that when the Spaniards began to settle in Peru, and were erecting large stone buildings, the Indians stood by and laughed at them, saying they were raising their own tombs, which on the first heaving of the earth would fall and crush them. Yet big with their European improving genius, they de

length became the victims of their own opinionated pride. Equally ridiculous would be the Peruvian in England, who, disregarding the old established models of strength and solidity, should build himself a hut after the fashion of his own country, and adapted only to the temperature of that climate.

As I would willingly pay my countrymen the compliment of supposing all their actions to be founded in reason, when I cannot demonstrate the contrary, I have imputed the number of slight wooden edifices with which we see our parks and gardens so crowded, to the extravagant fears with which it may be remembered the inhabitants of more solid structures were seized at the time of the late expected earthquake. If such a time of universal panic should again occur, I doubt not but the builders of these asylums, who had mercenary views, would see good interest for their money, while the generous and benevolent would enjoy the greatest of pleasures, that of making numbers easy and happy. But even in this case, how have they acted against experience! For as a storm of wind is a much more usual phenomenon in this climate than an earthquake, it is evident that the expense of erecting these occasional receptacles (though not indeed very considerable) must be totally thrown away: unless we are to believe those refiners in practical arithmetic, who assert that these retreats have contributed as much as the service of the public in the increase of its inhabitants, as they could have done in the preservation of them, according to their original institution.

The same spirit which influences men to despise and neglect ancient wisdom leads them to a hasty and precipitate imitation of novelty. Thus many, ignorant of the original design of these slight shelters, and not imagining there could possibly be any use in them, concluded that they must imply ornament and

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beauty and recollecting the proverb, that 'every thing that is little is pretty,' dotted their parks with sections of hogsheads. The first I saw of these gave me a high opinion of the modesty of its owner. A wise man of Greece, thought I to myself, was immortalized for his self-denial and humility in occupying the whole of that mansion, of which countryman is contented with the half. But upon my wiser looking round me, and seeing this new old whim propagated all over his park, and these philosophical domicils so numerous as to make a town big enough to hold all the wise men upon earth, I soon changed my opinion of the founder, and concluded him rather to be possessed with the ambitious madness of an Alexander, who coveted more worlds, than with the moderation of the Cynic, who, as Hudibras observes, expressed no manner of solicitude about a plurality of tubs.

The whole world was not half so wide
To Alexander, when he cry'd,

Because he had but one to subdue,

As was a narrow paltry tub to

Diogenes: who is not said

(For aught that ever I could read)

To whine, put finger i' th' eye and sob,
Because h' had ne'er another tub.

The situations usually destined from these moruments of taste, are not in covered valleys, embosomed in groves, or in some sheltered dell; (there deed we have the modesty to place our wood-piles, one-stacks, cinder-heaps, and other more heavy brics, composed of rubbish, oyster-shells, and Kmetimes more glittering worthlessness, under the obling title of grottos, hermitages, &c. &c.) to ake them conspicuous, they are placed on emiences in the bleakest exposures; insomuch that I are overheard an assembly of modern improvers adoling with one another at a drum on a windy

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night, like a company of merchants at Jamaica, who had a rich fleet in the harbour at the time of a hurricane.

The moveable houses of the Scythians, described in my motto, are worthy our admiration. We must acknowledge them to be the perfection of all works, since they will stand the criticism of Momus himself; having that requisite, for the want of which he condemned all other houses: they are upon wheels, and can move from bad neighbours, or be conveyed to shelter from the fury of the winds, or the scorching of the sun. What a satisfaction must it be to a man of fortune to be told that such houses are a manufacture of this age and country, and that he may be supplied with a very complete one, at the common and moderate price of three hundred pounds! It is to be presumed that no gentleman whom this intelligence may reach, will hereafter litter his park with huts, tubs, cribs, sentry-boxes, &c.

The taste of the present age is universally for annuals. Their politics, books, plantations, and now their buildings, must be all annuals; and it is to be apprehended, that in a few years, large trees and substantial structures will be no where to be found, except in our deserts: unless we could be as sanguine in our expectations as a certain schemist, of whom I shall relate some particulars.

This gentleman, whose Chinese temple had been blown down a few weeks after it was erected, was comforting himself that he had found in Hanway's travels, a model never yet executed in this part of the world, which from the advantage of its form must stand against the most violent gusts of wind on the highest mountains. This was, it seems, a pyramid of heads, after a genuine plan of that great improver, Kouli Khan. He immediately contracted with the sexton of his parish for a sufficient supply

of human skulls, and was preparing the other materials, when the scheme was prevented by the overscrupulous conscience of the sexton's wife. The schemist was extremely mortified, yet remained pertinacious in the execution of his design, and, as I am told, set out the next morning for Cornwall to obtain a seat in parliament, in order to bring in a bill for the erecting a pyramid in every county, with niches for the reception of the heads of all criminals hereafter to be executed. He is in no pain for the success of his motion; for though the legislature has found objections to every scheme for making malefactors of use, he doubts not of their ready concurrence in a proposal for making them an ornament to their country.

In former times the Great House was the object to which the stranger's admiration was particularly invited. For this purpose lines of trees were planted to direct, and walls built to confine your approach, in such a manner that the eye must be constantly employed in the contemplation of the principal front. Now it is thought necessary to change all this; you are therefore led by round-about serpentine walks, and find your progress to be often intercepted by invisible and unexpected lines and intrenchments, and the mansion purposely obscured by new plantations, while the noblest trees of the old grove are tumbled down to give you a peep now and then, at an out-building of about ten feet square of plaster and canvas. So different from this was the practice of our ancestors, that whenever they erected such little edifices (which they did only from necessity) they constantly planted before them yews, laurels, or aquatics, according as the soil was moist or dry: and I could venture to promise any modern improver, who delights in laying all things open, that he might in one morning fall down the popu