history of what had passed. The king was at once astonished and transported at so strange a relation; and seeing his brother enter the room with Balsora in his hand, he leaped off from the sofa on which he sat, and cried out It is he! It is my Abdallah!' Having said this, he fell upon his neck and wept. The whole company, for some time, remained silent, and shedding tears of joy. The king at length, after having kindly reproached Helim for depriving him so long of such a brother, embraced Balsora with the greatest tenderness, and told her that she should now be a queen: indeed; for that he would immediately make his brother king of all the conquered nations on the other? side the Tygris. He easily discovered in the eyes of our two lovers, that, instead of being transported with the offer, they preferred their present retirement to empire. At their request therefore he changed his intentions, and made them a present of all the open country as far as they could see from the top of mount Khacan. Abdallah, continuing to extend his former improvements, beautified this whole prospect with groves and fountains, gardens, and seats of pleasure, till it became the most delicious spot of ground within the empire, and is therefore called the Garden of Persia. This caliph, Ibrahim, after a long and happy reign, died without children, and was succeeded by Abdallah, a son of Abdallah and Balsora. This was that king Abdallah who afterwards fixed the imperial residence upon mount Khacan, which con tinues at this time to be the favourite palace of the Persian empire. ON THE BEAUTIES OF THE CREATION. No. 169. IN fair weather, when my heart is cheered, and I feel that exaltation of spirits which results from light and warmth, joined with a beautiful prospect of na ture, I regard myself as one placed by the hand of God in the midst of an ample theatre, in which the sun, moon and stars, the fruits also and vegetables of the earth, perpetually changing their positions or their aspects, exhibit an elegant entertainment to the understanding as well as to the eye. Thunder and lightning, rain and hail, the painted bow, and the glaring comets, are decorations of this mighty theatre. And the sable hemisphere studded with spangles, the blue vault at noon, the glorious gildings and rich colours in the horizon, I look on as so many successive scenes. When I consider things in this light, methinks it. is a sort of impicty to have no attention to the course of nature, and the revolutions of the heavenly bodies. To be regardless of those phænomena that are placed within our view, on purpose to entertain our faculties, and dirplay the wisdom and power of their creator, in an affront to providence, of the same kind (I hope it is not imp.ous to make such a simile) as it would be to a good poet to sit out his play without minding the plot or beauties of it. And yet how few. are there who attend to the drama of nature, its artificial structure, and those admirabla ma bines whereby the passions of a philosopher are gratefully agitated, and his soul affected with the sweet emotions of joy and suprise! How many fox-hunters and rural squires are to be found found in Great Britain, who are ignorant that they have all this while lived on a planet; that the sun is several thousand times bigger than the earth; and that there are other worlds within our view, greater and more glorious than our own! Ay, but," says some illiterate fellow, I enjoy the world, and leave others to contemplate it. Yes, you eat and drink, and run about upon it: that is, you enjoy it as a brute; but to enjoy it as a rational being is to know it, to be sensible of its greatness and beauty, to be delighted with its harmony, and by these reflections to obtain just sentiments of the almighty mind that framed it." The man who, unembarrassed with vulgar cares, leisurely attends to the flux of things in heaven and things on earth, and observes the laws by which they are governed, hath secured to himself an easy and convenient seat, where he beholds with pleasure alł that passes on the stage of nature; while those about him are, some fast asleep, and others struggling for the highest places, or turning their eyes from the entertainment prepared by providence, to play at pushpin with one another, Within this ample circumference of the world, the glorious lights that are hung on high, the meteors in the middle region, the various livery of the earth, and the profusion of good things that distinguish the seasons, yield a prospect which annihilates all human grandeur. But when we have seen frequent returns of the same things, when we have often viewed the heaven and the earth in, all their various array, our attention flags and qur admiration ceases. All the art and magnificence in nature could not make us pleased with the same entertainment presented a hundred years successively to our view. I am led into this way of thinking by a question started the other night, viz. Whether it were possible that a man should be weary of a fortunate and healthy course of life? My opinion was, that the bare repetition of the same objects, abstracted from all other inconveniencic, was sufficient to create in our minds a distaste of the world; and that the abhorrence old men have of death proceeds rather from a distrust of what may follow, than from the prospect of losing any present enjoyments. For (as an antient author somewhere expresses it), when a man has seen the vicissitudes of night and day, winter and summer, spring and autumn, the returning faces of the several parts of nature, what is there further to detain his fancy here below? The spectacle indeed is glorious, and may bear viewing several times. But in a very few scenes of revolving years we feel a satiety of the same images; the mind grows impatient to see the curtain drawn and behold new scenes disclosed, and the imagination is in this life filled with a confused idea of the next. Death, considered in this light, is no more than passing from one entertainment to another. If the present objects are grown tiresome and distasteful, it is in order to prepare our minds for a more exquisite, relish of those which are fresh and new. If the good things we have hitherto enjoyed are transient, they will be succeeded by those which the inexhaustible power of the deity will supply to eternal ages. If the pleasures of our present state are blended with pain and uneasiness, our future will consist of sincere unmused delights. Blessed hope! the thought whereof turns the very nuperfcctions of our nature into occasions of comfort and joy. But what consolation is left to the man who hath no hope hope or prospect of these things? View him in that part of life when the natural decay of his faculties concurs, with the frequency of the same objects to make him weary of this world; when, like a man who hangs upon a precipice, his present situation is uneasy, and the moment that he quits his hold he is sure of sinking into hell or annihilation. There is not any character so hateful as his who invents racks and tortures for mankind. The freethinkers make it their business to introduce doubts, perplexities, and despair into the minds of men, and, according to the poet's rule, are most justly punished by their own schemes. ON GARDENING. CATALOGUE OF EVERGREENS. I LATELY took a particular friend of mine to my house in the country, not without some apprehension that it could afford little entertainment to a man of his po lite taste, particularly in architecture and gardening, who had so long been conversant with all that is beau tiful and great in either.. But it was a pleasant surprise to me to hear him often declare, he had found in my retirement that beauty which he always thought wanting in the most celebrated seats, or if you will villas, of the nation. This he described to me in those verses with which Martial begins one of his epigrams: Baiana nostri villa, Basse, Faustiní, Viduaque platano, tonsilique buxeto, Ingrata lati spatia detinet campi, Sed rure vero, barbaroque lætatur. Lib. iii. 49. There |