the loss of one who has ever been the support to him under all other afflictions. How, thought I, will he be able to bear the hour of her death, that could not, when I was lately with him, speak of a sickness, which was then past, without sorrow! We were now got pretty far into Westminster, and arrived at my friend's house. At the door of it I met Favonius, not without a secret satisfaction to find he had been there. I had formerly conversed with him at this house; and as he abounds with that sort of virtue and knowledge which makes religion beautiful, and never leads the conversation into the violence and rage of party disputes, I listened to him with great pleasure. Our discourse chanced to be upon the subject of death, which he treated with such a strength of reason, and greatness of soul, that, instead of being terrible, it appeared to a mind rightly cultivated altogether to be contemned, or rather to be desired. As I met him at the door, I saw in his face a certain glowing of grief and humanity, heightened with an air of fortitude and resolution, which, as I afterward found, had such an irresistible force, as to suspend the pains of the dying, and the lamentation of the nearest friends who attended her. I went up directly to the room where she lay, and was met at the entrance by my friend, who, notwithstanding his thoughts had been composed a little before, at the sight of me turned away his face and wept. The little family of children renewed the expressions of their sorrow according to their several ages and degrees of understanding. The eldest daughter was in tears, busied in attendance upon her mother; others were kneeling about the bedside; and what troubled me most was, to see a little boy, who was too young to know the reason, weeping only because his sisters did. The only one in the room who seemed resigned and comforted was the dying person. At my approach to the bedside, she told me with a low broken voice, "This is kindly done. Take care of your friend-do not go from him!" She had before taken leave of her husband and children, in a manner proper for so solemn a parting, and with a gracefulness peculiar to a woman of her character. My heart was torn in pieces, to see the husband on one side suppressing and keeping down the swellings of his grief, for fear of disturbing her in her last moments; and the wife even at that time concealing the pain she endured, for fear of increasing his affliction. She kept her eyes upon him for some moments after she grew speechless, and soon after closed them for ever. In the moment of her departure, my friend, who had thus far commanded himself, gave a deep groan, and fell into a swoon by her bedside. The distraction of the children, who thought they saw both their parents expiring together, and now lying dead before them, would have melted the hardest heart; but they soon perceived their father recover, whom I helped to remove into another room, with a resolution to accompany him until the first pangs of his affliction were abated. I knew consolation would now be impertinent, and, therefore, contented myself to sit by him, and condole with him in silence. For I shall here use the method of an ancient author, who, in one of his epistles, relating the virtues and death of Macrinus's wife, expresses himself thus: "I shall suspend my advice to this best of friends, until he is made capable of receiving it by those three great remedies, the necessity of submission, length of time, and satiety of grief." In the meantime, I cannot but consider, with much commiseration, the melancholy state of one who has had such a part of himself torn from him, and which he misses in every circumstance of life. His condition is like that of one who has lately lost his right arm, and is every moment offering to help himself with it. He does not appear to himself the same person in his house, at his table, in company, or in retirement: and loses the relish of all the pleasures and diversions that were before entertaining to him by her participation of them. The most agreeable objects recall the sorrow for her with whom he used to enjoy them. This additional satisfaction, from the taste of pleasures in the society of one we love is admirably described by Milton, who represents Eve, though in Paradise itself, no further pleased with the beautiful objects around her, than as she sees them in company with Adam, in that passage so inexpressibly charming: "With thee conversing, I forget all time: All seasons, and their change; all please alike, The variety of images in this passage is infinitely pleasing: and the recapitulation of each particular image, with a little varying of the expression, makes one of the finest turns of words that I have ever seen: which I rather mention, because Mr Dryden has said, in his preface to Juvenal, that he could meet with no turn of words in Milton. It may be further observed, that though the sweetness of these verses has something in it of a pastoral, yet it excels the ordinary kind, as much as the scene of it is above an ordinary field or meadow. I might here, since I am accidentally led into this subject, show several passages in Milton that have as excellent turns of this nature as any of our English poets whatsoever; but shall only mention that which follows, in which he describes the fallen angels engaged in the intricate disputes of predestination, freewill, and foreknowledge; and, to humour the perplexity, makes a kind of labyrinth in the very words that describe it. "Others apart sat on a hill retired, In thoughts more elevate, and reasoned high TRUE LOVE. "Whate'er men do, or say, or think, or dream, Our motley paper seizes for its theme."-Juv. Sat. The imposition of honest names and words upon improper subjects, has made so regular a confusion among us, that we are apt to sit down with our errors, well enough satisfied with the methods we are fallen into, without attempting to deliver ourselves from the tyranny under which we are reduced by such innovations. Of all the laudable motives of human life, none have suffered so much in this kind, as love; under which revered name a brutal desire called lust is frequently concealed and admitted; though they differ as much as a matron from a prostitute, or a companion from a buffoon. Philander the other day was bewailing this misfortune with much indignation, and upbraided me for having some time since quoted those excellent lines of the satirist : "To an exact perfection they have brought The action love, the passion is forgot." "How could you," said he, “leave such a hint so coldly? How could Aspasia and Sempronia enter into your imagination at the same time, and you never declare to us the different receptions you gave them?" The figures which the ancient mythologists and poets put upon love and lust in their writings are very instructive. Love is a beauteous blind child, adorned with a quiver and a bow, which he plays with, and shoots around him, without design or direction; to intimate to us that the person beloved has no intention to give us the anxieties we meet with, but that the beauties of a worthy object are like the charms of a lovely infant; they cannot but attract your concern and fondness, though the child so regarded is as insensible of the value you put upon it as it is that it deserves your benevolence. On the other side, the sages figured lust in the form of a satyr; of shape, part human, part bestial; to signify that the followers of it prostitute the reason of a man to pursue the appetites of a beast. This satyr is made to haunt the paths and coverts of the wood nymphs and shepherdesses, to lurk on the banks of rivulets, and watch the purling streams, as the resorts of retired virgins; to show that lawless desire tends chiefly to prey upon innocence, and has something so unnatural in it, that it hates its own make, and shuns the object it loved, as soon as it has made it like itself. Love, therefore, is a child that complains and bewails its inability to help itself, and weeps for assistance, without an immediate reflection or knowledge of the food it wants: Lust, a watchful thief, which seizes its prey, and lays snares for its own relief; and its principal object being innocence, it never robs, but it murders at the same time. From this idea of a Cupid and a satyr, we may settle our notions of these different desires, and accordingly rank their followers. Aspasia must, therefore, be allowed to be the first of the beauteous order of love, whose unaffected freedom and conscious innocence give her the attendance of the graces in all her actions. That awful distance which we bear toward her in all our thoughts of her, and that cheerful familiarity with which we approach her, are certain instances of her being the truest object of love of any of her sex. In this accomplished lady love is the constant effect, because it is never the design. Yet, though her mien carries much more invitation than command, to behold her is an immediate check to loose behaviour; and to love her is a liberal education; for, it being the nature of all love to create an imitation of the beloved person in the lover, a regard for Aspasia naturally produces decency of manners, and good conduct of life in her admirers. If, therefore, the giggling Leucippe could but see her train of fops assembled, and Aspasia move by them, she would be mortified at the veneration with which she is beheld, even by Leucippe's own unthinking equipage, whose passions have long taken leave of their understandings. As charity is esteemed a conjunction of the good qualities necessary to a virtuous man, so love is the happy composition of all the accomplishments that make a fine gentleman. The motive of a man's life is seen in all his actions; and such as have the beauteous boy for their inspirer, have a simplicity of behaviour, and a certain evenness of desire, which burns like the lamp of life in their bosoms; while they who are instigated by the satyr are ever tortured by jealousies of the object of their wishes; often desire what they scorn, and as often consciously and knowingly embrace where they are mutually indifferent. AMUSEMENTS AND RELAXATIONS OF GREAT MEN. "There should be added a certain sweetness of discourse and manners, which is no considerable sauce to friendship. But by all means throw out sadness and severity in everything. There is something of gravity indeed in it; but friendship requires a greater remiss ness, freedom, and pleasantness, and an inclination to good temper and affability."-Cic. De Amicitia. As I was looking over my letters this morning, I chanced to cast my eye upon the following one, which came to my hands about two months ago from an old friend of mine, who, as I have since learned, was the person that wrote the agreeable epistle inserted in my paper of the third of the last month. It is of the same turn with the other, and may be looked upon as a specimen of right country letters: * The best critic that ever wrote, speaking of some passages in Homer which appear extravagant or frivolous, says, indeed, that they are dreams, but the dreams of Jupiter. My friend's letter appears to me in the same light. One sees him in an idle hour; but at the same time in the idle hour of a wise man. A great mind has something in it too severe and forbidding that is not capable of giving itself such little relaxations, and of condescending to these agreeable ways of trifling. Tully, when he celebrates the friendship of Scipio and Lælius, who were the greatest as well as the politest men of their age, "SIR,-This sets out to you from my summer- represents it as a beautiful passage in their rehouse upon the terrace, where I am enjoying a tirement, that they used to gather up shells on few hours' sunshine, the scanty sweet remains of the sea-shore, and amuse themselves with the a fine autumn. The year is almost at the lowest; variety of shape and colour which they met with so that, in all appearance, the rest of my letters in those little unregarded works of nature. The between this and spring will be dated from my great Agesilaus could be a companion to his own parlour fire, where the little fond prattle of a children, and was surprised by the ambassadors wife and children will so often break in upon of Sparta as he was riding among them upon a the connection of my thoughts, that you will hobby-horse. Augustus, indeed, had no play-fel. easily discover it in my style. If this winter lows of his own begetting, but he is said to have should prove as severe as the last, I can tell you passed many of his hours with little Moorish beforehand that I am likely to be a very miser-boys at a game of marbles, not unlike our able man, through the perverse temper of my modern taw. There is, methinks, a pleasure in eldest boy. When the frost was in its ex-seeing great men thus fall into the rank of mantremity, you must know that most of the blackbirds, robins, and finches of the parish, whose music has entertained me in the summer, took refuge under my roof. Upon this, my care was to rise every morning before day to set open my windows for the reception of the cold and hungry, whom at the same time I relieved with a very plentiful alms, by strewing corn and seeds upon the floors and shelves. But Dicky, without any regard to the laws of hospitality, considered the casements as so many traps, and used every bird as a prisoner at discretion. Never did tyrant exercise more various cruelties. Some of the poor creatures he chased to death about the room; others he drove into the jaws of a bloodthirsty cat; and even in his greatest acts of mercy either clipped the wings or singed the tails of his innocent captives. You will laugh when I tell you I sympathised with every bird in its misfortunes; but I believe you will think me in the right for bewailing the child's unlucky humour. On the other hand, I am extremely pleased to see his younger brother carry a universal benevolence towards everything that has life. When he was between four and five years old, I caught him weeping over a beautiful butterfly, which he chanced to kill as he was playing with it; and I am informed that this morning he has given his brother three halfpence, which was his whole estate, to spare the life of a tom-tit. These are at present the matters of greatest moment within my observation, and I know are too trifling to be communicated to any but so wise a man as yourself, and from one who has the happiness to be-Your most faithful, and most obedient servant." kind, and entertain themselves with diversions and amusements that are agreeable to the very. weakest of the species. I must frankly confess, that it is to me a beauty in Cato's character, that he would drink a cheerful bottle with his friend: and I cannot but own, that I have seen with great delight one of the most celebrated authors of the last age feeding the ducks in St James's Park. By instances of this nature, the heroes, the statesmen, the philosophers, become as it were familiar with us, and grow the more ami. able, the less they endeavour to appear awful. A man who always acts in the severity of wisdom, or the haughtiness of quality, seems to move in a personated part. It looks too constrained and theatrical for a man to be always in that character which distinguishes him from others; besides that the slackening and unbending our minds on some occasions makes them exert themselves with greater vigour and alacrity when they return to their proper and natural state. As this innocent way of passing a leisure hour is not only consistent with a great character, but very graceful in it; so there are two sorts of people to whom I would most earnestly recommend it. The first are those who are uneasy out of want of thought; the second are those who are so out of turbulence of spirit. The first are the impertinent, and the second the danger. ous part of mankind. It grieves me to the very heart when I see several young gentlemen, descended of honest parents, run up and down, hurrying from one end of the town to the other, calling in at every * Persia. times please myself with considering how much ERRORS IN EDUCATION. "When free from folly, we to wisdom rise." -Francis. place of resort, without being able to fix a quarter of an hour in any, and in a particular haste without knowing for what. It would, methinks, be some consolation if I could persuade those precipitate young gentlemen to compose their restlessness of mind, and apply themselves to any amusement, how trivial soever, that might give them employment, and keep them out of harm's way. They cannot imagine how great a relief it would be to them, if they could grow sedate enough to play for two or three hours at a game of push-pin. But these busy, idle animals are only their own tormentors. The turbulent and dangerous are for embroiling councils, stirring up seditions, and subverting constitutions out of a mere restlessness of temper, and an insensibility of all the pleasures of life that are calm and innocent. It is impossible for a man to be so much employed in any scene of action, as to have great and good affairs enough to fill up his whole time; there will still be chasms and empty spaces, in which a working mind will employ itself to its own prejudice, or that of others, unless it can be at ease in the exercise of such actions as are in themselves indifferent. How often have I wished, for the good of the nation, that several famous politi-ing, without having done my master any other cians could take any pleasure in feeding ducks! I look upon an able statesman out of business, like a huge whale that will endeavour to overturn the ship, unless he has an empty cask to play with. But to return to my good friend and correspondent: I am afraid we shall both be laughed at when I confess that we have often gone out into the field to look upon a bird's nest; and have more than once taken an evening's walk together on purpose to see the sun set. I shall conclude with my answer to his foregoing letter: "DEAR SIR,-I thank you for your obliging letter, and your kindness to the distressed, who will, doubtless, express their gratitude to you themselves the next spring. As for Dick the tyrant, I must desire you will put a stop to his proceedings; and at the same time take care that his little brother be no loser by his mercy to the tom-tit. For my own part, I am excluded all conversation with animals that delight only in a country life, and am, therefore, forced to entertain myself as well as I can with my little dog and cat. They both of them sit by my fire every night, expecting my coming home with impatience; and, at my entrance, never fail of running up to me, and bidding me welcome, each of them in his proper language. As they have been bred up together from their infancy, and seen no other company, they have learned each other's manners, so that the dog often gives himself the airs of a cat, and the cat, in several of her motions and gestures, affects the behaviour of the little dog. When they are at play, I often make one with them; and some When I first began to learn to push, this last winter, my master had a great deal of work upon his hands to make me unlearn the postures and motions which I had got, by having in my younger years practised backsword, with a little eye to the single falchion. Knock Down was the word in the civil wars; and we generally added to this skill the knowledge of the Cornish hug, as well as the grapple, to play with hand and foot. By this means, I was for defending my head when the French gentleman was making a full pass at my bosom; insomuch, that he told me I was fairly killed seven times in one morn mischief than one knock on the pate. This was a great misfortune to me; and I believe I may say, without vanity, I am the first who ever pushed so erroneously, and yet conquered the prejudice of education so well, as to make my passes so clear, and recover hand and foot with that agility as I do at this day. The truth of it is, the first rudiments of education are given very indiscreetly by most parents, as much with relation to the more important concerns of the mind, as in the gestures of the body. Whatever children are designed for, and whatever prospects the fortune or interest of their parents may give them in their future lives, they are all promiscuously instructed the same way; and Horace and Virgil must be thumbed by a boy, as well before he goes to an apprenticeship, as to the university. This ridiculous way of treating the underaged of this island has very often raised both my spleen and mirth, but I think never both at once so much as to-day. A good mother of our neighbourhood made me a visit with her son and heir; a lad somewhat above five feet, and wants but little of the height and strength of a good musketeer in any regiment in the service. business was to desire I would examine him; for he was far gone in a book, the first letters of which she often saw in my papers. The youth produced it, and I saw it was my friend Horace. It was very easy to turn to the place the boy was learning in, which was the fifth Ode of the first book, to Pyrrha. I read it over aloud as well, because I am always delighted when I turn to the beautiful parts of that author, as also to gain time for considering a little how to keep up the mother's pleasure in her child, which I thought Her barbarity to interrupt. In the first place, I asked him, "Who this same Pyrrha was?" He answered, very readily, "She was the wife of Pyrrhus, one of Alexander's captains." I lifted up my hands. The mother courtesies-"Nay," says she, "I knew you would stand in admiration; I assure you," continued she, "for all he looks so tall, he is but very young. Pray ask him some more; never spare him." With that I took the liberty to ask him, "what was the character of this gentlewoman?" He read the three first verses: "Quis multa gracilis te puer in rosa -Hor. 1 Od. v. i. and very gravely told me she lived at the sign of The Rose in a cellar. I took care to be very much astonished at the lad's improvements; but withal advised her, as soon as possible, to take him from school, for he could learn no more there. This very silly dialogue was a lively image of the impertinent method used in breeding boys without genius or spirit to the reading things for which their heads were never framed. But this is the natural effect of a certain vanity in the minds of parents, who are wonderfully delighted with the thought of breeding their children to accomplishments, which they believe nothing but want of the same care in their own fathers prevented them from being masters of. Thus it is, that the part of life most fit for improvement is generally employed in a method against the bent of nature; and a lad of such parts as are fit for an occupation, where there can be no calls out of the beaten path, is two or three years of his time wholly taken up in knowing how well Ovid's mistress became such a dress; how such a nymph for her cruelty was changed into such an animal; and how it is made generous in Æneas to put Turnus to death; gallantries that can no more come within the occurrences of the lives of ordinary men, than they can be relished by their imaginations. However, still the humour goes on from one generation to another; and the pastry-cook here in the lane, the other night, told me, "he would not yet take away his son from his learning; but has resolved, as soon as he had a little smattering in the Greek, to put him apprentice to a soapboiler." These wrong beginnings determine our success in the world; and when our thoughts are originally falsely biassed, their agility and force do but carry us the farther out of our way, in proportion to our speed. But we are halfway our journey, when we have got into the right road. If all our days were usefully employed, and we did not set out impertinently, we should not have so many grotesque professors in all the arts of life; but every man would be in a proper and becoming method of distinguishing or entertaining himself suitably to what nature designed him. As they go on now, our parents do not only force us upon what is against our talents, but our teachers are also as injudicious in what they put us to learn. I have hardly ever since suffered so much by the charms of any beauty, as I did before I had a sense of passion, for not apprehending that the smile of Lalage was what pleased Horace; and I verily believe, the stripes I suffered about Digito malè pertinaci has given me that irreconcilable aversion, which I shall carry to my grave, against coquettes. As for the elegant writer of whom I am talking, his excellences are to be observed as they relate to the different concerns of his life; and he is always to be looked upon as a lover, a courtier, or a man of wit. His admirable Odes have numberless instances of his merit in each of these characters. His epistles and satires are full of proper notices for the conduct of life in a court; and what we call good-breeding is most agreeably intermixed with his morality. His addresses to the persons who favoured him, are so inimitably engaging, that Augustus complained of him for so seldom writing to him, and asked him, "whether he was afraid posterity should read their names together?" Now for the generality of men to spend much time in such writings is as pleasant a folly as any he ridicules. Whatever the crowd of scholars may pretend, if their way of life, or their own imaginations, do not lead them to a taste of him, they may read, nay write, fifty volumes upon him, and be just as they were when they began. I remember to have heard a great painter say, "There are certain faces for certain painters, as well as certain subjects for certain poets." This is as true in the choice of studies; and no one will ever relish an author thoroughly well, who would not have been fit company for that author, had they lived at the same time. All others are mechanics in learning, and take the sentiments of writers like waiting-servants who report what passed at their master's table; but debase every thought and expression, for want of the air with which they were uttered. ON THE DEATH OF FRIENDS. And now the rising day renews the year. A day for ever sad, for ever dear."-Dryden. There are those among mankind who can enjoy no relish of their being, except the world is made acquainted with all that relates to them, and think everything lost that passes unobserved; but others find a solid delight in stealing by the crowd, and modelling their life after such a manner, as is as much above the approbation as the practice of the vulgar. Life being too short to give instances great enough of true friendship or goodwill, some sages have thought it pious to preserve a certain reverence for the manes of their deceased friends; and have with |