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thing to exercise resolution or flatter expecta- hath rather attempted to paint some possible tion. The dead cannot return, and nothing is distress than really feels the evils she has deleft us here but languishment and grief. scribed.

Yet such is the course of nature, that whoever lives long must outlive those whom he loves and honours. Such is the condition of our present existence, that life must one time lose it, associations, and every inhabitant of the earth must walk downward to the grave alone and unregarded, without any partner of his joy or grief, without any interested witness of his inisfortunes or success.

Misfortune, indeed, he may yet feel; for where is the bottom of the misery of man? But what is success to him that has none to enjoy it? Happiness is not found in self-contemplation it is perceived only when it is reflected from another.

We know little of the state of departed souls, because such knowledge is not necessary to a good life. Reason deserts us at the brink of the grave, and can give no farther intelligence. Revelation is not wholly silent. "There is joy in the angels of Heaven over one sinner that repenteth:" and surely this joy is not incommunicable to souls disentangled from the body, and made like angels..

Let hope therefore dictate, what revelation does not confute, that the union of souls may still remain; and that we who are struggling with sin, sorrow, and infirmities, may have our part in the attention and kindness of those who have finished their course, and are now receiving their reward.

These are the great occasions which force the mind to take refuge in religion; when we have no help in ourselves, what can remain but that we look up to a higher and a greater Power? and to what hope may we not raise our eyes and hearts when we consider that the greatest power is the best?

Surely there is no man who, thus afflicted, does not seek succour in the gospel, which has brought life and immortality to light. The precepts of Epicurus, who teaches us to endure what the laws of the universe make necessary, may silence, but not content us. The dictates of Zeno, who commands us to look with indifference on external things, may dispose us to conceal our sorrow, but cannot assuage it. Real alleviation of the loss of friends, and rational tranquillity in the prospect of our own dissolution, can be received only from the promises of Him in whose hands are life and death, and from the assurance of another and better state, in which all tears will be wiped from the eyes, and the whole soul shall be filled with joy. Philosophy may infuse stubbornness, but religion only can give patience. I am, &c.

No. 42.] SATURDAY, FEB. 3, 1759.

THE subject of the following letter is not wholly unmentioned by the Rambler. The Spectator has also a letter containing a case not much different. I hope my correspondent's performance is more an effort of genius, than effusion of the passions; and that she

SIR,

TO THE IDLER.

There is a cause of misery, which, though certainly known both to you and your predecessors has been but little taken notice of in your pa pers; I mean the snares that the bad behaviour of parents extends over the paths of life which their children are to tread after them; and as I make no doubt but the Idler holds the shield for virtue as well as the glass for folly, that he will employ his leisure hours as much to his own satisfaction, in warning his readers against a danger, as in laughing them out of a fashion: for this reason to ask admittance for my story in your paper, though it has nothing to recommend it but truth, and the honest wish of warning others to shun the track which I am afraid may lead me at last to ruin.

I am the child of a father, who, having always lived in one spot in the country where he was born, and having had no genteel education himself, thought no qualification in the world desirable but as they led up to fortune, and no learning necessary to happiness but such as might most effectually teach me to make the best market of myself: I was unfortunately born a beauty, to a full sense of which my father took care to flatter me; and having, when very young, put me to school in the country, afterwards transplanted me to another in town, at the instigation of his friends, where his illjudged fondness let me remain no longer than to learn just enough experience to convince me of the sordidness of his views, to give me an idea of perfections which my present situation will never suffer me to reach, and to teach me sufficient morals to dare to despise what is bad, though it be in a father.

Thus equipped (as he thought completely) for life, I was carried back into the county, and lived with him and my mother in a small vil lage, within a few miles of the county-town; where I mixed, at first with reluctance, among company which, though I never despised, could not approve, as they were brought up with other inclinations and narrower views than my own. My father took great pains to show me every where, both at his own house, and at such public diversions as the country afford ed: he frequently told the people all he had was for his daughter; took care to repeat the civilities I had recived from all his friends in London; told how much I was admired, all his little ambition could suggest to set me in a stronger light.

Thus have I continued tricked out for sale, as I may call it, and doomed, by parental authori ty, to a state little better than that of prostitution. I look on myself as growing cheaper every hour, and am losing all that honest pride, that modest confidence, in which the virgin dignity consists. Nor does my misfortune stop here. though many would be too generous to impute the follies of a father to a child whose heart has

PERDITA.

No. 43.] SATURDAY, FEB. 10, 1759.

set her above them; yet I am afraid the most in your power to be a better friend than her charitable of them will hardly think it possible father to for me to be daily spectatress of his vices without tacitly allowing them, and at last consenting to them, as the eye of the frighted infant is, by degrees reconciled to the darkness of which at first it was afraid. It is a common opinion, he himself must very well know, that vices, like diseases, are often hereditary; and that the property of the one is to infect the manners, as the other poisons the springs of life.

THE natural advantages which arise from the position of the earth which we inhabit, with respect to the other planets, afford much employment to mathematical speculation, by which it has been discovered, that no other conformation of the system could have given such commodious distributions of light and heat, or imparted fertility and pleasure to so great a part of a revolving sphere.

It may be, perhaps, observed by the moralist, with equal reason, that our globe seems particu larly fitted for the residence of a being, placed here only for a short time, whose task is, to advance himself to a higher and happier state of existence, by unremitted vigilance of caution, and activity of virtue.

Yet this though bad, is not the worst; my father deceives himself the hopes of the very child he has brought into the world; he suffers his house to be the seat of drunkenness, riot, and irreligion: who seduces, almost in my sight, the menial servant, converses with the prostitute, and corrupts the wife! Thus I, who from my earliest dawn of reason was taught to think that at my approach every eye sparkled with pleasure, or was dejected as conscious of superior charms, am excluded from society, through fear lest I should partake, if not of The duties required of a man are such as humy father's crimes, at least of his reproach. man nature does not willingly perform, and Is a parent, who is so little solicitous for the such as those are inclined to delay who yet inwelfare of a child, better than a pirate who tend some time to fufil them. It was thereturns a wretch adrift in a boat at sea, without fore necessary that this universal reluctance a star to steer by, or an anchor to hold it fast? should be conteracted, and the drowsiness of Am I not to lay all my miseries at those doors hesitation wakened into resolve; that the danwhich ought to have opened only for my protec-ger of procrastination should be always in tion? And if doomed to add at last one more view, and the fallacies of security be hourly to the number of those wretches whom neither detected. the world nor its law befriends, may I not justly say that I have been awed by a parent into ruin? But though a parent's power is screened from insult and violation by the very words of Heaven, yet surely no laws, divine or human, forbid me to remove myself from the malignant shade of a plant that poisons all around it, blasts the bloom of youth, checks its improvements, and makes all its flowerets fade; but to whom can the wretched, can the dependent fly? For me to fly a father's house, is to be a beggar; I have only one comforter amidst my anxieties, a pious relation, who bids me appeal to Heaven for a witness of my just intentions, fly as a deserted wretch to its protection; and being asked who my father is, point, like the ancient philosopher, with my finger to the heavens.

To this end all the appearances of nature uniformly conspire. Whatever we see on every side reminds us of the lapse of time and the flux of life. The day and night succeed each other, the rotation of seasons diversifies the year, the sun rises, attains the meridian, declines and sets; and the moon every night changes its form.

The day has been considered as an image of the year and the year as the representation of life. The morning answers to the spring, and the spring to childhood and youth; the noon corresponds to the summer, and the summer to the strength of manhood. The evening is an emblem of autumn, and autumn of declining life. The night with its silence and darkness shows the winter, in which all the powers of vegetation are benumbed; and the winter points out the time when life shall cease, with its hopes and pleasures.

The hope in which I write this, is, that you will give it a place in your paper; and as your essays sometimes find their way into the coun- He that is carried forward, however swiftly, try, that my father may read my story there; by a motion equable and easy, perceives not the and, if not for his own sake yet for mine, spare change of place but by the variation of obto perpetuate that worst of calamities to me, jects. If the wheel of life, which rolls thus the loss of character, from which all his dis-silently along, passed on through undistinguishsimulation has not been able to rescue himself. Tell the world, Sir, that it is possible for virtue to keep its throne unshaken without any other guard than itself; that it is possible to maintain that purity of thought so necessary to the completion of human excellence even in the midst of temptations; when they have no friend within, nor are assisted by the voluntary indulgence of vicious thoughts.

If the insertion of a story like this does not break in on the plan of your paper, you have it

able uniformity, we should never mark its approaches to the end of the course. If one hour were like another; if the passage of the sun did not show that the day is wasting; if the change of seasons did not impress upon us the flight of the year; quantities of duration equal to days and years would glide unobserved. If the parts of time were not variously coloured, we should never discern their departure or succession, but should live thoughtless of the past, and careless of the future, without will, and perhaps without power, to compute the periods of life, or to

compare the tine which is already lost with that which may probably remain.

But the course of time is so visibly marked, that it is observed even by the birds of passage, and by nations who have raised their minds very little above animal instinct; there are human beings whose language does not supply them with words by which they can number five, but I have read of none that have not names for day and night, for summer and winter.

Yet it is certain that these admonitions of nature, however forcible, however importunate, are too often vain; and that many who mark with such accuracy the course of time, appear to have little sensibility of the decline of life. Every man has something to do which he neglects; every man has faults to conquer which he delays to combat.

So little do we accustom ourselves to consider the effects of time, that things necessary and certain often surprise us like unexpected contingencies. We leave the beauty in her bloom, and, after an absence of twenty years, wonder, at our return, to find her faded. We meet those whom we left children, and can scarcely persuade ourselves to treat them as men. The traveller visits in age those countries through which he rambled in his youth, and hopes for merriment at the old place. The man of business wearied with unsatisfactory prosperity, retires to the town of his nativity, and expects to play away the last years with the companions of his childhood, and recover youth in the fields where he once was young.

From this inattention, so general and so mischievous, let it be every man's study to exempt himself. Let him that desires to see others happy, make haste to give while his gift can be enjoyed, and remember that every moment of delay takes away something from the value of his benefaction. And let him, who purposes his own happiness, reflect, that while he forms his purpose the day rolls on, and "the night cometh when no man can work!"

No. 44.] SATURDAY, FEB. 17, 1759.

things, is far the most pleasing part of mental occupation. We are naturally delighted with novelty, and there is a time when all that we see is new. When first we enter into the world, whithersoever we turn our eyes, they meet Knowledge with Pleasure at her side; every diversity of nature pours ideas in upon the soul; neither search nor labour are necessary; we have nothing more to do than to open our eyes, and curiosity is gratified.

Much of the pleasure which the first survey of the world affords, is exhausted before we are conscious of our own felicity, or able to compare our condition with some other possible state. We have therefore few traces of the joy of our earliest discoveries; yet we all remember a time when nature had so many untasted gratifications, that every excursion gave delight which can now be found no longer, when the noise of a torrent, the rustle of a wood, the song of birds, or the play of lambs, had power to fill the attention, and suspend all perception of the course of time.

But these easy pleasures are soon at end; we have seen in a very little time so much, that we call out for new objects of observation, and endeavour to find variety in books and life. But study is laborious, and not always satisfactory; and conversation has its pains as well as pleasures; we are willing to learn but not willwe are pained by ignorance, ing to be taught; but pained yet more by another's knowledge. From the vexation of pupilage men commonly set themselves free about the middle of life, by shutting up the avenues of intelligence, and resolving to rest in their present state; and they, whose ardour of inquiry continues longer, find themselves insensibly forsaken by their in structors. As every man advances in life, the proportion between those that are younger and that are older than himself, is continually changing; and he that has lived half a century finds few that do not require from him that information which he once expected from those

that went before him.

Then it is that the magazines of memory are opened, and the stores of accumulated knowledge are displayed by vanity or benevolence, or in honest commerce of mutual interest. Every man wants others, and is therefore glad when he is wanted by them. And as few men will endure the labour of intense meditation without necessity, he that has learned enough for his profit or his honour, seldom endeavours after further acquisitions.

MEMORY is, among the faculties of the human mind, that of which we make the most frequent use, or rather that of which the agency is incessant or perpetual. Memory is the primary and fundamental power, without which there could be no other intellectual operation. Judgment and ratiocination suppose something al- The pleasure of recollecting speculative noready known, and draw their decisions only tions would not be much less than that of gainfrom experience. Imagination selects ideas ing them, if they could be kept pure and from the treasures of remembrance, and pro- unmingled with the passages of life; but such duces novelty only by varied combinations. is the necessary concatention of our thoughts, We do not even form conjectures of distant, or that good and evil are linked together, and no anticipations, of future events, but by conclud-pleasure recurs but associated with pain. Every ing what is possible from what is past.

The two offices of memory are collection and distribution; by one images are accumulated, and by the other produced for use. Collection is always the employment of our first years; and distribution commonly that of our advanc

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revived idea reminds us of a time, when some thing was enjoyed that is now lost, when some hope was yet not blasted, when some purpose had yet not languished into sluggishness or indifference.

Whether it be that life has more vexations than comforts, or, what is in the event just the same, that evil makes deeper impression than

good, it is certain that no man can review the time past without heaviness of heart. He remembers many calamities incurred by folly, many oppotunities lost by negligence. The shades of the dead rise up before him; and he laments the companions of his youth, the partners of his amusements, the assistants of his labours, whom the hand of death has snatched away.

When an offer was made to Themistocles of teaching him the art of memory, he answered, that he would rather wish for the art of forgetfulness. He felt his imagination haunted by phantoms of misery which he was unable to suppress, and would gladly have calmed his thoughts with some oblivious antidote. this we all resemble one another: the hero and the sage are like vulgar mortals, overburdened by the weight of life; all shrink from recollection, and all wish for an art of forgetfulness.

No. 45.] SATUrday, Feb. 24, 1758.

In

THERE is in many minds a kind of vanity exerted to the disadvantage of themselves; a desire to be praised for superior acuteness discovered only in the degradation of their species, or censure of their country.

Defamation is sufficiently copious. The general lampooner of mankind my find long exercise for his zeal or wit, in the defects of nature, the vexations of life, the follies of opinion, and the corruptions of practice. But fiction is easier than discernment; and most of these writers spare themselves the labour of inquiry, and exhaust their virulence upon imaginary crimes, which, as they never existed can never be mended.

empty splendour and to airy fiction, that art which is now employed in diffusing friendship, in reviving tenderness, in quickening the affections of the absent, and continuing the presence of the dead.

Yet in a nation, great and opulent, there is room, and ought to be patronage, for an art like that of painting through all its diversities; and it is to be wished, that the reward now offered for an historical picture may excite an honest emulation, and give beginning to an English school.

It is not very easy to find an action or event that can be efficaciously represented by a painter.

He must have an action not successive, but instantaneous; for the time of a picture is a single moment. For this reason the death of Hercules cannot well be painted, though at the first view it flatters the imagination with very glittering ideas; the gloomy mountain overhanging the sea, and covered with trees, some bending to the wind, and some torn from the root by the raging hero; the violence with which he sends from his shoulders the envenomed garment; the propriety with which his muscular nakedness may be displayed: the death of Lycas whirled from the promontory; the gigantic presence of Philoctetes; the blaze of the fatal pile, which the deities behold with grief and terror from the sky.

All these images fill the mind, but will not compose a picture, because they cannot be united in a single moment. Hercules must have rent his flesh at one time, and tossed Lycas into the air at another; he must first tear up the trees, and then lie down upon the pile.

The action must be circumstantial and distinct. There is a passage in the Iliad which cannot be read without strong emotions. A That the painters find no encouragement Trojan prince, seized by Achilles in the battle, among the English for many other works than falls at his feet, and in moving terms supplicates portraits, has been imputed to national selfish-for life. "How can a wretch like thee," says 'Tis vain, says the satirist, to set before any Englishman the scenes of landscapes, or the heroes of history; nature and antiquity are nothing in his eye; he has no value but for himself, nor desires any copy but of his own

ness.

form.

the haughty Greek, "intreat to live when thou knowest that the time must come when Achilles is to die?" This cannot be painted, because no peculiarity of attitude or disposition can so supply the place of language as to impress the

sentiment.

Whoever is delighted with his own picture The event painted must be such as excites must derive his pleasure from the pleasure of passions, and different passions in the several another. Every man is always present to him-actors or a tumult of contending passion in self, and has, therefore, little need of his own the chief.

resemblance, nor can desire it, but for the sake Perhaps the discovery of Ulysses by his nurse of those whom he loves, and by whom he is of this kind. The surprise of the nurse hopes to be remembered. This use of the art is mingled with joy; that of Ulysses checked by a natural and reasonable consequence of affec-prudence, and clouded by solicitude; and the tion; and though, like other human actions, it is often complicated with pride, yet even such pride is more laudable than that, by which palaces are covered with pictures, that, however excellent, neither imply the owner's virtue nor excite it.

distinctness of the action by which the scar is found; all concur to complete the subject. But the picture, having only two figures, will want variety.

A much nobler assemblage may be furnished by the death of Epaminondas. The mixture of Genius is chiefly exerted in historical pic-gladness and grief in the face of the messenger tures; and the art of the painter of portraits is who brings his dying general an account of often lost in the obscurity of his subject. But the victory; the various passions of the attenit is in painting as in life, what is greatest is dants; the sublimity of composure in the henot always best. I should grieve to see Rey-ro, while the dart is by his own command nolds transfer to heroes and to goddesses, to drawn from his side, and the faint gleam of

tell. She always gives her directions oblique and allusively, by the mention of something relative or consequential, without any other purpose than to exercise my acuteness and her own.

satisfaction that diffuses itself over the languor | She has nothing to hide, yet nothing will she of death, are worthy of that pencil which yet I do not wish to see employed upon them. If the design were not too multifarious and extensive, I should wish that our painters would attempt the dissolution of the parliament by Cromwell. The point of time may be chosen when Cromwell looked round the Pandemonium with contempt, ordered the bauble to be taken away; and Harrison laid hands on the speaker to drag him from the chair.

The various appearances which rage, and terror, and astonishment, and guilt, might exhibit in the faces of that hateful assembly, of whom the principal persons may be faithfully drawn from portraits or prints; the irresolute repugnance of some, the hypocritical submission of others, the ferocious insolence of Cromwell, the rugged brutality of Harrison, and the general trepidation of fear and wickedness, would, if some proper disposition could be contrived, make a picture of unexampled variety, and irresistible instruction.

No. 46.] SATURDAY, MARCH 3, 1759.

MR. IDLER,

I AM encouraged, by the notice you have taken of Betty Broom, to represent the miseries which I suffer from a species of tyranny which, I believe, is not very uncommon, though perhaps it may have escaped the observation of those who converse little with fine ladies, or see them only in their public characters.

It is impossible to give a notion of this style otherwise than by examples. One night, when she had sat writing letters till it was time to be dressed, "Molly," said she, "the ladies are all to be at court to-night in white aprons." When she means that I should send to order the chair, she says, "I think the streets are clean I may venture to walk." When she would have something put into its place, she bids me "lay it on the floor." If she would have me snuff the candles, she asks, “whether I think her eyes are like a cat's?" If she thinks her chocolate delayed, she talks of the benefit of abstinence. If any needlework is forgotten, she supposes that I have heard of the lady who died by pricking her finger.

She always imagines that I can recall every thing past from a single word. If she wants her head from the milliner she only says,

66

Molly, you know Mrs. Tape." If she would have the mantua-maker sent for, she remarks that "Mr. Taffety, the mercer, was here last week." She ordered, a fortnight ago, that the first time she was abroad all-day I should choose her a new set of coffee-cups at the china-shop; of this she reminded me yesterday, as she was going down stairs, by saying, "You can't find your way now to Pall-Mall."

All this would not vex me, if, by increasing To this method of venting my vexation I my trouble, she spared her own; but, dear am the more inclined, because if I do not com- Mr. Idler, is it not as easy to say coffee-cups, plain to you, I must burst in silence; for my as Pall-Mall? and to tell me in plain words what mistress has teased me, and teased me till II am to do, and when it is to be done, as to can hold no longer, and yet I must not tell torment her own head with the labour of findher of her tricks. The girls that live in com- ing hints, and mine with that of understand. mon services can quarrel, and give warning, ing them? and find other places; but we that live with great ladies, if we once offend them, have nothing left but to return into the country.

I am waiting maid to a lady who keeps the best company, and is seen at every place of fashionable resort. I am envied by all the maids in the square, for few countesses leave off so many clothes as my mistress, and nobody shares with me; so that I supply two families in the country with finery for the assizes and horseraces, besides what I wear myself. The steward and house-keeper have joined against me to procure my removal, that they may advance a relation of their own; but their designs are found out by my lady, who says I need not fear them, for she will never have dow dies about

her.

You would think, Mr. Idler, like others, that I am very happy, and may well be contented with my lot. But I will tell you. My lady has an odd humour. She never orders any thing in direct words, for she loves a sharp girl that can take a hint.

I would not have you suspect that she has any thing to hint which she is ashamed to speak at length; for none can have greater purity of sentiment, or rectitude of intention.

When first I came to this lady, I had nothing like the learning that I have now; for she has many books, and I have much time to read; so that of late I have seldom missed her meaning: but when she first took me I was an ignorant girl; and she, who, as is very common, confounded want of knowledge with want of understanding, began once to despair of bringing me to any thing, because, when I came into her chamber at the call of her bell, she asked me, "Whether we lived in Zembla ;" and I did not guess the meaning of inquiry, but modestly answered that I could not tell. She had happened to ring once when I did not hear her, and meant to put me in mind of that country where sounds are said to be congealed by the frost.

Another time, as I was dressing her head, she began to talk on a sudden of Medusa and snakes, and "men turned into stone, and maids that, if they were not watched, would let their mistresses be Gorgons." I looked round me half frightened, and quite bewildered; till at last, finding that her literature was thrown away upon me, she bid me, with great vehemence, reach the curling-irons.

It is not without some indignation, Mr. Idler,

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