selves to notice by their dress, their air, and their

levities.

"When I was two and twenty years old, I became, by the death of my father, possessed of a small estate in land, with a very large sum of money in the public funds, and must confess that I did not much fament him, for he was a man of mean parts, bent rather upon growing rich than wise. He once fretted at the expense of only ten shillings, which he happened to overhear me offering for the sting of a hornet, though it was a cold moist summer, in which very few hornets had been seen. He often recommended to me the study of physic, in which, said he, you may at once gratify your curiosity after natural kind. I heard him, Mr. Rambler, with pity, and, as history, and increase your fortune by benefiting manthere was no prospect of elevating a mind formed to grovel, suffered him to please himself with hoping that I should some time follow his advice. For you know that there are men, with whom, when they have once settled a notion in their heads, it is to very little purpose to dispute.

contented

"Being now left wholly to my own inclinations, I very soon enlarged the bounds of my curiosity, and quired only judgement and industry, and when once myself no longer with such rarities as refound, might be had for nothing. I

thoughts to Exotics and Antiques, and became so
now turned my
well known for
my generous patronage of ingenious
my levee was crowded with visitants, some

men, that

to see my museum, and others to increase its trea

sures, by selling

other countries.

me

"I had always

whatever they had brought from

conception, which contents itself with cultivating

a contempt for that narrowness of

some single

whole region into my view, and wished it of yet

Corner of the field of science; I took the

greater extent. But no man's power can be equal to his will. I was forced to proceed by slow degrees, and to purchase what chance or kindness happened to present. I did not, however, proceed without some design, or imitate the indiscretion of those, who begin a thousand collections, and finish none. Having been always a lover of geography, I determined to collect the maps drawn in the rude and barbarous times, before any regular surveys or just observations; and have, at a great expense, brought together a volume, in which, perhaps, not a single country is laid down, according to its true situation, and by which, he that desires to know the errors of the ancient geographers may be amply informed.

"But my ruling passion is patriotism: my chief care has been to procure the products of our own country; and as Alfred received the tribute of the Welch in wolves' heads, I allowed my tenants to pay their rents in butterflies, till I had exhausted the papilionaceous tribe. I then directed them to the pursuit of other animals, and obtained, by this easy method, most of the grubs and insects which land, air, or water, can supply. I have three species of earthworms not known to the naturalists, have discovered a new ephemera, and can show four wasps that were taken torpid in their winter quarters. I have, from my own ground, the longest blade of grass upon record, and once accepted, as a half-year's rent for a field of wheat, an ear containing more grains than had been seen before upon a single stem.

"One of my tenants so much neglected his own interest, as to supply me, in a whole summer, with only two horse-flies, and those of little more than the common size; and I was upon the brink of seizing for arrears, when his good fortune threw a white mole in his way, for which he was not only forgiven, but rewarded.

113

RAMBLER.

These, however, were

at a small expense; nor should I have ventured to petty acquisitions, and made rank myself among the virtuosi without better claims. I have suffered nothing worthy the regard of a wise man to escape my notice: I have ransacked the old and the new world, and been equally attentive to past ages and the present. For the illustration of ancient history, I can show a marble, of which the inscription, though it is not now legible, appears, from some broken remains of the letters, to have been Tuscan, tion of Rome. I have two pieces of porphyry found and therefore probably engraved before the foundaamong the ruins of Ephesus, and three letters broken off by a learned traveller from the monuments of Persepolis; a piece of stone which paved the Areoof Athens, and a plate without figures or characters, which was found at Corinth, and which I therefore believe to be that metal which was once valued before gold. I have sand gathered out of the Danube; some of the mortar which cemented the Granicus; a fragment of Trajan's bridge over the

pagus

water-course of Tarquin

Flaminian

; a horse-shoe broken on the way; and a turf with five daisies dug

from the field of Pharsalia.
"I do not wish to raise the

monarchs

envy of unsuccessful

collectors, by too pompous a display of my scientific few regions of the globe which are not honoured wealth, but cannot forbear to observe, that there are with some memorial in my cabinets. The Persian s are said to have boasted the greatness of their empire, by being served at their tables with drink from the Ganges and the Danube. I can show one vial, of which the water was formerly an icicle e crags of Caucasus, and another that contains what once was snow on the top of Atlas; in a third is dew brushed from a banana in the garden of Ispahan; and in another, brine that has rolled in the

on

the

Pacific ocean. I flatter myself that I am writing to a man who will rejoice at the honour which my labours have procured to my country; and therefore, I shall tell you that Britain can, by my care, boast of a snail that has crawled upon the wall of China; a humming-bird which an American princess wore in her ear; the tooth of an elephant who carried the queen of Siam; the skin of an ape that was kept in the palace of the great Mogul; a riband that adorned one of the maids of a Turkish sultana; and a scymitar once wielded by a soldier of Abas the great.

"In collecting antiquities of every country, I have been careful to choose only by intrinsic worth, and real usefulness, without regard to party or opinions. I have therefore a lock of Cromwell's hair in a box turned from a piece of the royal oak; and keep in the same drawers, sand scraped from the coffin of king Richard, and a commission signed by Henry the Seventh. I have equal veneration for the ruff of Elizabeth and the shoe of Mary of Scotland; and should lose, with like regret, a tobacco-pipe of Raleigh, and a stirrup of king James. I have paid the same price for a glove of Lewis, and a thimble of queen Mary; for a fur cap of the Czar, and a boot of Charles of Sweden.

at

"You will easily imagine that these accumulations were not made without some diminution of my fortune, for I was so well known to spare no cost, that every sale some bid against me for hire, some for sport, and some for malice; and if I asked the price of any thing it was sufficient to double the demand. For curiosity, trafficking thus with avarice, the wealth of India had not been enough; and I, by little and little, transferred all my money from the funds to my closet: here I was inclined to stop, and live upon my estate in literary leisure, but the sale of the Harleian collection shook my resolution: I mortgaged my land

and purchased thirty medals, which I could never find before. I have at length bought till I can buy no longer, and the cruelty of my creditors has seized my repository; I am, therefore, condemned to disperse what the labour of an age will not reassemble. I submit to that which cannot be opposed, and shall, in a short time, declare a sale. I have, while it is yet in my power, sent you a pebble, picked up by Tavernier on the banks of the Ganges; for which I desire no other recompense than that will recommend my catalogue to the public.

66

you

QUISQUILIUS."

No. 83. TUESDAY, JANUARY 1, 1751.

Nisi utile est quod facias, stulta est gloria.

All useless science is an empty boast.

PHÆD.

THE publication of the letter in my last paper has naturally led me to the consideration of that thirst after curiosities, which often draws contempt and ridicule upon itself, but which is perhaps no otherwise blameable, than as it wants those circumstantial recommendations which add lustre even to moral excellencies, and are absolutely necessary to the grace and beauty of indifferent actions.

Learning confers so much superiority on those who possess it, that they might probably have escaped all censure, had they been able to agree among themselves; but as envy and competition have divided the