lishes, opens or encloses, deluges or drains, it is not his care what may be the opinion of those who are skilled in perspective or architecture, it is fufficient that he has no landlord to control him, and that none has any right to examine in what projects the lord of the manor spends his own money on his own grounds.

For this reason it is not very common to want fubjects for rural converfation. Almost every man is daily doing fomething which produces merriment, wonder, or refentment, among his neighbours. This utter exemption from restraint leaves every anomalous quality to operate in its full extent, and fuffers the natural character to diffuse itself to every part of life, The pride which, under the check of publick obfer. vation, would have been only vented among fervants and domesticks, becomes in a country baronet the torment of a province, and instead of terminating in the deftruction of China ware and glaffes, ruins tenants, difpoffeffes cottagers, and haraffes villages with actions of trespass and bills of indictment.

It frequently happens that even without violent paffions, or enormous corruption, the freedom and laxity of a ruftick life produces remarkable particularities of conduct or manner. In the province where I now refide, we have one lady eminent for wearing a gown always of the fame cut and colour; another for fhaking hands with those that vifit her; and a third for unshaken resolution never to let tea or coffee enter her house.

But of all the female characters which this place affords, I have found none fo worthy of attention as that of Mrs. Bufy, a widow, who loft her husband in her thirtieth year, and has fince paffed her time at

the

the manor-house in the government of her children, and the management of the eftate.

Mrs. Bufy was married at eighteen from a boarding-fchool, where fhe had paffed her time like other young ladies in needle-work, with a few intervals of dancing and reading. When fhe became a bride she spent one winter with her husband in town, where having no idea of any converfation beyond the formalities of a vifit, fhe found nothing to engage her paffions; and when she had been one night at court, and two at an opera, and feen the monument, the Tombs, and the Tower, fhe concluded that London had nothing more to fhew, and wondered that when women had once feen the world they could not be content to stay at home. She therefore went willingly to the ancient feat, and for fome years ftudied housewifery under Mrs. Bufy's mother, with fo much affiduity, that the old lady, when she died, bequeathed her a caudle-cup, a foup-dish, two beakers, and a cheft of table-linen fpun by herself.

the

Mr. Bufy finding the economical qualities of his lady, refigned his affairs wholly into her hands, and devoted his life to his pointers and his hounds. He never vifited his eftates, but to deftroy the partridges or foxes; and often committed fuch devastations in rage of pleasure, that fome of his tenants refused to hold their lands at the ufual rent. Their landlady perfuaded them to be fatisfied, and entreated her hufband to difmifs his dogs, with many exact calculations of the ale drank by his companions, and corn confumed by the horses, and remonftrances against the infolence of the huntfman, and the frauds of the groom. The huntfman was too neceffary to his

4

happiness

happiness to be difcarded; and he had ftill continued to ravage his own eftate, had he not caught a cold and a fever by fhooting mallards in the fens. His fever was followed by a confumption, which in a few months brought him to the grave.

economist to feel

Mrs. Bufy was too much an either joy or forrow at his death. She received the compliments and confolations of her neighbours in a dark room, out of which fhe ftole privately every night and morning to fee the cows milked; and after a few days declared that the thought a widow might employ herself better than in nurfing grief; and that, for her part, fhe was refolved that the fortunes of her children fhould not be impaired by her neglect.

She therefore immediately applied herself to the reformation of abufes. She gave away the dogs, discharged the fervants of the kennel and ftable, and sent the horses to the next fair, but rated at fo high a price that they returned unfold. She was refolved to have nothing idle about her, and ordered them to be employed in common drudgery. They loft their fleekness and grace, and were foon purchased at half the value.

She foon difencumbered herself from her weeds, and put on a riding-hood, a coarfe apron, and fhort petticoats, and has turned a large manor into a farm, of which he takes the management wholly upon herself. She rifes before the fun to order the horfes to their geers, and fees them well rubbed down at their return from work; fhe attends the dairy morning and evening, and watches when a calf falls that it may be carefully nurfed; fhe walks out among

the

the sheep at noon, counts the lambs, and obferves the fences, and, where she finds a gap, ftops it with a bush till it can be better mended. In harvest fhe rides a-field in the waggon, and is very liberal of her ale from a wooden bottle. At her leisure hours fhe looks goofe eggs, airs the wool room, and turns the cheese.

When respect or curiofity brings vifitants to her house, fhe entertains them with prognofticks of a fcarcity of wheat, or a rot among the sheep, and always thinks herself privileged to dismiss them, when fhe is to see the hogs fed, or to count her poultry on the rooft.

The only things neglected about her are her children, whom she has taught nothing but the lowest household duties. In my laft vifit I met Mifs Bufy carrying grains to a fick cow, and was entertained with the accomplishments of her eldest fon, a youth of fuch early maturity, that though he is only fixteen, fhe can truft him to fell corn in the market. Her younger daughter, who is eminent for her beauty, though fomewhat tanned in making hay, was busy in pouring out ale to the ploughmen, that every one might have an equal share.

I could not but look with pity on this young family, doomed by the abfurd prudence of their mother to ignorance and meannefs; but when I recommended a more elegant education, was anfwered, that she never faw bookish or finical people grow rich, and that fhe was good for nothing herself till fhe had forgotten the nicety of the boarding-school.

I am, Yours, &c.

BUCOLUS,

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NUMB. 139. TUESDAY, July 16, 1751.

IT

Sit quod vis fimplex duntaxat et unum.

Let every piece be fimple and be one.

HOR.

T is required by Aristotle to the perfection of a tragedy, and is equally neceffary to every other fpecies of regular compofition, that it fhould have a beginning, a middle, and an end. "The begin"ning," fays he, "is that which hath nothing ne"ceffarily previous, but to which that which fol"lows is naturally confequent; the end, on the con

trary, is that which by neceffity, or at least, ac"cording to the common course of things, fucceeds fomething elfe, but which implies nothing confequent to itself; the middle is connected on one fide "to fomething that naturally goes before, and on the "other to fomething that naturally follows it."

Such is the rule laid down by this great critick, for the difpofition of the different parts of a well conftituted fable. It must begin, where it may be made intelligible without introduction; and end, where the mind is left in repofe, without expectation of any farther event. The intermediate paffages muft join the last effect to the first cause, by a regular and unbroken concatenation; nothing must be therefore inferted which does not apparently arise from fomething foregoing, and properly make way for fomething that fucceeds it.

This