in one of King Charles's parliaments: "Sir, I had the honour to be born at a time—" upon which a rough honest gentleman took him up short: "I would fain know what that gentleman means. Is there any one in this house that has not had the honour to be born as well as himself?" The good sense which reigns in our nation has pretty well destroyed this starched behaviour among men who have seen the world, and know that every gentleman will be treated upon a foot of equality. But there are many who have had their education among women, dependents, or flatterers, that lose all the respect which would otherwise be paid them, by being too assiduous in procuring it.

My Lord Froth has been so educated in punctilio, that he governs himself by a ceremonial in all the ordinary occurrences of life. He measures out his bow to the degree of the person he converses with. I have seen him in every inclination of the body, from a familiar nod to the low stoop in the Salutation-sign. I remember five of us, who were acquainted with one another, met together one morning at his lodgings, when a wag of the company was saying it would be worth while to observe how he would distinguish us at his first entrance. Accordingly he no sooner came into the room, but, casting his eye about, "My lord such a one," says he, "your most humble servant. Sir Richard, your humble servant. Your servant, Mr. Ironside. Ducker, how do you do? Hah! Frank, are you there?" There is nothing more easy than to discover a man whose heart is full of his family. Weak minds that have imbibed a strong tincture of the nursery, younger brothers that have been brought up to nothing, superannuated retainers to a great house, have generally their thoughts taken up with little else.

Mr.

I had some years ago an aunt of my own, by name Mrs. Martha Ironside, who would never marry beneath herself, and is supposed to have died a maid in the fourscorth year of her age. She was the chronicle of our family, and passed away the greatest part of the last forty years of her life in recounting the antiquity, marriages, exploits, and alliances of the Ironsides. Mrs. Martha

conversed generally with a knot of old virgins, who were likewise of good families, and had been very cruel all the beginning of the last century. They were every one of them as proud as Lucifer, but said their prayers twice a day, and in all other respects were the best women in the world. If they saw a fine petticoat at church, they immediately took to pieces the pedigree of her that wore it, and would lift up their eyes to heaven at the confidence of the saucy minx, when they found she was an honest tradesman's daughter. It is impossible to describe the pious indignation that would rise in them at the sight of a man who lived plentifully on an estate of his own getting. They were transported with zeal beyond measure, if they heard of a young woman's matching into a great family upon account only of her beauty, her merit, or her money. In short, there was not a female within ten miles of them that was in possession of a gold watch, a pearl necklace, or a piece of Mechlin lace, but they examined her title to it. My aunt Martha used to chide me very frequently for not sufficiently valuing myself. She would not eat a bit all dinner-time, if at an invitation she found she had been seated below herself; and would frown upon me for an hour together, if she saw me give place to any man under a baronet. As I was once talking to her of a wealthy citizen whom she had refused in her youth, she declared to me with great warmth, that she preferred a man of quality in his shirt to the richest man upon the 'Change in a coach and six. She pretended that our family was nearly related by the mother's side to half a dozen peers; but as none of them knew any thing of the matter, we always kept it as a secret among ourselves. little before her death she was reciting to me the history of my forefathers; but dwelling a little longer than ordinary upon the actions of Sir Gilbert Ironside, who had a horse shot under him at Edgehill fight, I gave an unfortunate pish, and asked, what was all this to me? upon which she retired to her closet, and fell a scribbling for three hours together; in which time, as I afterwards found, she struck me out of her will, and left all she had to my sister Margaret, a wheedling baggage, that used to be asking

A

questions about her great grandfather from morning to night. She now lies buried among the family of the Ironsides, with a stone over her, acquainting the reader that she died at the age of eighty years, a spinster, and that she was descended of the ancient family of the Ironsides. After which follows the genealogy drawn up by her own hand.

ADDISON,

ANDROCLES AND THE LION. (No. 139).

ANDROCLES was the slave of a noble Roman who was proconsul of Afric. He had been guilty of a fault, for which his master would have put him to death, had not he found an opportunity to escape out of his hands, and fled into the deserts of Numidia. As he was wandering among the barren sands, and almost dead with heat and hunger, he saw a cave in the side of a rock. He went into it, and, finding at the further end of it a place to sit down upon, rested there for some time. At length, to his great surprise, a huge overgrown lion entered at the mouth of the cave, and, seeing a man at the upper end of it, immediately made towards him. Androcles gave himself for gone; but the lion, instead of treating him as he expected, laid his paw upon his lap, and with a complaining kind of voice fell a-licking his hand. Androcles, after having recovered himself a little from the fright he was in, observed the lion's paw to be exceedingly swelled by a large thorn that stuck in it. He immediately pulled it out, and, by squeezing the paw very gently, made a great deal of corrupt matter run out of it; which probably freed the lion from the great anguish he had felt some time before. The lion left him upon receiving this good office from him, and soon after returned with a fawn which he had just killed. This he laid down at the feet of his benefactor, and went off again in pursuit of his prey. Androcles, after having sodden the flesh of it by the sun, subsisted upon it till the lion had supplied him with another. He lived many days

in this frightful solitude, the lion catering for him with great assiduity. Being tired at length of this savage society, he was resolved to deliver himself up into his master's hands, and suffer the worst effects of his displeasure, rather than be thus driven out from mankind. His master, as was customary for the proconsul of Afric, was at that time getting together a present of all the largest lions that could be found in the country, in order to send them to Rome, that they might furnish out a show to the Roman people. Upon his poor slave's surrendering himself into his hands, he ordered him to be carried away to Rome as soon as the lions were in readiness to be sent, and that for his crime he should be exposed to fight with one of the lions in the amphitheatre, as usual, for the diversion of the people. This was all performed accordingly. Androcles, after such a strange run of fortune, was now in the area of the theatre amidst thousands of spectators, expecting every moment when his antagonist would come out upon him. At length a huge monstrous lion leaped out from the place where he had been kept hungry for the show. He advanced with great rage towards the man, but on a sudden, after having regarded him a little wistfully, fell to the ground, and crept towards his feet with all the signs of blandishment and caress. Androcles, after a short pause, discovered that it was his old Numidian friend, and immediately renewed his acquaintance with him. Their mutual congratulations were very surprising to the beholders, who, upon hearing an account of the whole matter from Androcles, ordered him to be pardoned, and the lion to be given up into his possession. Androcles returned at Rome the civilities which he had received from him in the deserts of Afric. Dion Cassius says that he himself saw the man leading the lion about the streets of Rome, the people everywhere gathering about them, and repeating to one another, Hic est leo hospes hominis, hic est homo medicus leonis. "This is the lion who was the man's host, this is the man who was the lion's physician."

ADDISON.

VOL. II.

C C

A WORTHY merchant, and a friend of mine, sends me the following letter, to be inserted in my commentaries upon lions:

66

Sir, "Since one of your correspondents has, of late, entertained the public with a very remarkable and ancient piece of history, in honour of the grandees of the forest; and since it is probable you may in time collect a great many curious records and amazing circumstances, which may contribute to make these animals respected over the face of the whole earth; I am not a little ambitious to have the glory of contributing somewhat to so generous an undertaking. If you throw your work into the form of chronicle, I am in hopes I may furnish out a page in it towards the latter end of the volume, by a narration of a modern date, which I had in the year 1700 from the gentleman to whom it happened.

"About sixty years ago, when the plague raged at Naples, Sir George Davis (consul there for the English nation) retired to Florence. It happened one day he went out of curiosity to see the great duke's lions. At the further end, in one of the dens, lay a lion, which the keepers in three years' time could not tame with all the art and gentle usage imaginable. Sir George no sooner appeared at the grates of the den, but the lion ran to him with all the marks of joy and transport he was capable of expressing: he reared himself up and licked his hand, which this gentleman put in through the grates. The keeper, affrighted, took him by the arm and pulled him away, begging him not to hazard his life by going so near the fiercest creature of that kind that ever entered those dens. However, nothing would satisfy Sir George, notwithstanding all that could be said to dissuade him, but he must go into the den to him. The very instant he entered, the lion threw his paws upon his shoulders, and licked his face, and ran to and fro in the den, fawning, and full of joy, like a dog at the sight of his master. The rumour of this interview between the lion and