under the character of Spectator. I have complaints from lovers, schemes from projectors, scandal from ladies, congratulations, compliments, and advice in abund ance. I have not been thus long an author, to be insensible of the natural fondness every person must have for their own productions; and I begin to think I have treated my correspondents a little too uncivilly in stringing them altogether on a file, and letting them lie so long unregarded. I shall therefore, for the future, think myself at least obliged to take some notice of such letters as I receive, and may possibly do it at the end of every month. In the mean time I intend my present paper as a short answer to most of those which have been already sent me. The public, however, is not to expect should let them into all my secrets; and, though I appear abstruse to most people, it is sufficient if I am understood by my particular correspondents. Philanthropos is, I dare say, a very wellmeaning man, but a little too prolix in his compositions. Constantius himself must be the best judge in the affair he mentions. The letter dated from Lincoln is received. Arethusa and her friend may hear farther from me. Celia is a little too hasty. Harriot is a good girl, but must not courtesy to folks she does not know. I must ingenuously confess my friend Samson Benstaff has quite puzzled me, and writ me a long letter which I cannot com prehend one word of. Collidan must also explain what he means by his 'drigelling.' I think it beneath my spectatorial digInity to concern myself in the affair of the boiled dumpling. My well-wisher Van Nath is very arch, but not quite enough so to appear in print. Philadelphus will, in a little time, see his query fully answered by a treatise which is now in the press. It was very improper at that time to comply with Mr. G. Miss Kitty must excuse me. The gentleman who sent me a copy of verses on his mistress's dancing is, I believe, too thoroughly in love to compose correctly. I have too great a respect for both the universities to praise one at the expense of the other. Tom Nimble is a very honest fellow, and I desire him to present my humble service to his cousin Fill Bumper. I am obliged for the letter upon prejudice. I may in due time animadvert on the case of Grace Grumble. The petition of P. S. granted. I thank Aristippus for his kind invitation. My friend at Woodstock is a bold man to undertake for all within ten miles of him. I am afraid the entertainment of Tom Turnover will hardly be relished by the good cities of London and Westminster. I must consider farther of it before I indulge W. F. in those freedoms he takes with the ladies' stockings. I am obliged to the ingenious gentleman who sent me an ode on the subject of the late Spectator, and shall take particular notice of his last letter. I shall consult some literati on the project sent me for the discovery of the longitude. I know not how to conclude this paper better than by inserting a couple of letters which are really genuine, and which I look upon to be two of the smartest pieces I have received from my correspondents of either sex: 'BROTHER SPEC,-While you are surveying every object that falls in your way, I am wholly taken up with one. Had that sage who demanded what beauty was, lived to see the dear angel I love, he would not have asked such a question. Had another seen her, he would himself have loved the person in whom heaven has made virtue visible; and, were you yourself to be in her company, you could never, with all your loquacity, say enough of her good-humour and sense. I send you the outlines of a picture, which I can no more finish, than I can sufficiently admire the dear original. I am your most affectionate brother, CONSTANTIO SPEC.' "GOOD MR. PERT,-I will allow you nothing until you resolve me the following question. Pray what is the reason, that, while you only talk now upon Wednesdays, Fridays, and Mondays, you pretend to be a greater tattler than when you spoke every day, as you formerly used to do? If this be your plunging out of your taciturnity, pray let the length of your speeches compensate for the scarceness of them. I am, good Mr. Pert, your admirer, if you will be long enough for me, 'AMANDA LOVELENGTH.' When the lady who wrote me a letter, No. 582.] Wednesday, August 18, 1714. dated July the 20th, in relation to some passages in a lover, will be more particular in her directions, I shall be so in my answer. The poor gentleman who fancies my writings could reclaim a husband who can abuse such a wife as he describes, has, I am afraid, too great an opinion of my skill. -Tenet insanibile multos Ch. Dryden. THERE is a certain distemper, which is mentioned neither by Galen not Hippo crates, nor to be met with in the London dication of Astrology. This profound au- I consider writers in the same view this sage astrologer does the heavenly bodies. Some of them are stars that scatter light as others do darkness. I could mention several authors who are tenebrificous stars of the first magnitude, and point out a knot of gentlemen, who have been dull in concert, and may be looked upon as a dark constellation. The nation has been a great while benighted with several of these antiluminaries. I suffered them to ray out their darkness as long as I was able to endure it, till at length I came to a resolution of rising upon them, and hope in a little time to drive them quite out of the British hemisphere, Ipse thymum pinosque ferens de montibus altis, Virg. Georg. iv. 112 With his own hand, the guardian of the bees But, to drop the allegory before I have tired it out, there is no species of scribblers more offensive, and more incurable, than your periodical writers, whose works return upon the public on certain days, and at stated times. We have not the consolation in the perusal of these authors which we find at the reading of all others, namely, EVERY station of life has duties which are that we are sure if we have but patience, proper to it. Those who are determined by we may come to the end of their labours. choice to any particular kind of business, I have often admired a humorous saying are indeed more happy than those who are of Diogenes, who, reading a dull author to determined by necessity; but both are unseveral of his friends, when every one be- der an equal obligation of fixing on employgan to be tired, finding he was almost come ments, which may be either useful to themto a blank leaf at the end of it, cried, 'Cou-selves or beneficial to others: no one of the rage, lads, I see land.' On the contrary, our progress through that kind of writers I am now speaking of is never at an end. One day makes work for another-we do not know when to promise ourselves rest. It is a melancholy thing to consider that the art of printing, which might be the greatest blessing to mankind, should prove detrimental to us, and that it should be made use of to scatter prejudice and ignorance through a people, instead of conveying to them truth and knowledge. I was lately reading a very whimsical treatise, entitled William Ramsay's‡ Vin sons of Adam ought to think himself exempt from that labour and industry which were denounced to our first parent, and in him to all his posterity. Those to whom birth or fortune may seem to make such an application unnecessary, ought to find out some calling or profession for themselves, that they may not lie as a burden on the species, and be the only useless parts of the creation. Many of our country gentlemen in their busy hours apply themselves wholly to the chase, or to some other diversion which they find in the fields and woods. This gave occasion to one of our most eminent English writers to represent every one of them as lying under a kind of curse, pronounced to them in the words of Goliah, I will give thee to the fowls of the air and to the beasts of the field.' Though exercises of this kind, when in- | to come into something that might redound dulged with moderation, may have a good to the good of their successors, grew very influence both on the mind and body, the peevish: We are always doing,' says he, country affords many other amusements of a something for posterity, but I would fain more noble kind. see posterity do something for us.' Among these, I know none more delightful in itself, and beneficial to the public, than that of planting. I could mention a nobleman whose fortune has placed him in several parts of England, and who has always left these visible marks behind him, which show he has been there: he never hired a house in his life, without leaving all about it the seeds of wealth, and bestowing legacies on the posterity of the owner. Had all the gentlemen of England made the same improvements upon their estates, our whole country would have been at this time as one great garden. Nor ought such an employment to be looked upon as too inglorious for men of the highest rank. There have been heroes in this art, as well as in others. We are told in particular of Cyrus the Great, that he planted all the Lesser Asia. There is indeed something truly magnificent in this kind of amusement: it gives a nobler air to several parts of nature; it fills the earth with a variety of beautiful scenes, and has something in it like creation. For this reason the pleasure of one who plants is something like that of a poet, who, as Aristotle observes, is more delighted with his productions than any other writer or artist whatsoever. Plantations have one advantage in them which is not to be found in most other works, as they give a pleasure of a more lasting date, and continually improve in the eye of the planter. When you have finished a building, or any other undertaking of the like nature, it immediately decays upon your hands: you see it brought to the utmost point of perfection, and from that time hastening to its ruin. On the contrary, when you have finished your plantations, they are still arriving at greater degrees of perfection as long as you live, and appear more delightful in every succeeding year than they did in the foregoing. But I do not only recommend this art to men of estates as a pleasing amusement, but as it is a kind of virtuous employment, and may therefore be inculcated by moral motives; particularly from the love which we ought to have for our country, and the regard which we ought to bear to our posterity. As for the first I need only mention what is frequently observed by others, that the increase of forest trees does by no means bear a proportion to the destruction of them, insomuch, that in a few ages the nation may be at a loss to supply itself with timber sufficient for the fleets of England. I know when a man talks of posterity in matters of this nature, he is looked upon with an eye of ridicule by the cunning and selfish part of mankind. Most people are of the humour of an old fellow of a college, who, when he was pressed by the society But I think men are inexcusable, who fail in a duty of this nature, since it is so easily discharged. When a man considers that the putting a few twigs into the ground is doing good to one who will make his appearance in the world about fifty years hence, or that he is perhaps making one of his own descendants easy or rich, by so inconsiderable an expense, if he finds himself averse to it, he must conclude that he has a poor and base heart, void of all generous principles and love to mankind. There is one consideration which may very much enforce what I have here said. Many honest minds, that are naturally disposed to do good in the world, and become beneficial to mankind, complain within themselves that they have not talents for it. This therefore is a good office, which is suited to the meanest capacities, and which may be performed by multitudes who have not abilities sufficient to deserve well of their country, and to recommend themselves to their posterity, by any other method. It is the phrase of a friend of mine, when any useful country neighbour dies, that you may trace him;' which I look upon as a good funeral oration, at the death of an honest husbandman who had left the impressions of his industry behind him in the place where he has lived. Upon the foregoing considerations, I can scarcely forbear representing the subject of this paper as a kind of moral virtue; which, as I have already shown, recommends itself likewise by the pleasure that attends it. It must be confessed that this is none of those turbulent pleasures which are apt to gratify a man in the heats of youth; but, if it be not so tumultuous, it is more lasting. Nothing can be more delightful than to entertain ourselves with prospects of our own making, and to walk under those shades which our own industry has raised. Amusements of this nature compose the mind, and lay at rest all those passions which are uneasy to the soul of man, besides that they naturally engender good thoughts, and dispose us to laudable contemplations. Many of the old philosophers passed away the greatest parts of their lives among their gardens. Epicurus himself could not think sensual pleasure attainable in any other scene. Every reader, who is acquainted with Homer, Virgil, and Horace, the greatest geniuses of all antiquity, knows very well with how much rapture they have spoken on this subject; and that Virgil in particular has written a whole book on the art of planting. This art seems to have been more especially adapted to the nature of man in his primeval state, when he had life enough to see his productions flourish in their utmost beauty, and gradually decay with him. I One who lived before the flood might have seen a wood of the tallest oaks in the acorn. But I only mention this particular, in order to introduce, in my next paper, a history which I have found among the accounts of China, and which may be looked upon as an antediluvian novel. No. 584.] Monday, August 23, 1714. Virg. Ecl. x. 42. might fall upon his brother, when he cursed him in the bitterness of his heart. Hilpa was in the hundredth and sixtieth year of her age at the death of her husband, having brought him but fifty children before he was snatched away, as has been already related. Many of the antediluvians made love to the young widows though no one was thought so likely to succeed in her affections as her first lover Shalum, who renewed his court to her about ten years after the death of Harpath; for it was not thought decent in those days that a widow should be seen by a man within ten years after the decease of her husband. Shalum, falling into a deep melancholy, and resolving to take away that objection HILPA was one of the hundred and fifty which had been raised against him when daughters of Zilpa, of the race of Cohu, he made his first addresses to Hilpa, began by whom some of the learned think is meant immediately after her marriage with HarCain. She was exceedingly beautiful; and, path, to plant all that mountainous region when she was but a girl of threescore and which fell to his lot in the division of this ten years of age, received the addresses of country. He knew how to adapt every several who made love to her. Among plant to its proper soil, and is thought to these were two brothers, Harpath and Sha-have inherited many traditional secrets of lum. Harpath being the first-born, was that art from the first man. This employmaster of that fruitful region which lies at ment turned at length to his profit as well the foot of mount Tirzah, in the southern as to his amusement; his mountains were in parts of China. Shalum (which is to say a few years shaded with young trees, that the planter in the Chinese language) pos- gradually shot up into groves, woods, and sessed all the neighbouring hills, and that forests, intermixed with walks, and lawns, great range of mountains which goes under and gardens; insomuch that the whole rethe name of Tirzah. Harpath was of a gion, from a naked and desolate prospect, haughty contemptuous spirit; Shalum was began now to look like a second Paradise. of a gentle disposition, beloved both by The pleasantness of the place, and the God and man. agreeable disposition of Shalum, who was reckoned one of the mildest and wisest of all who lived before the flood, drew into it multitudes of people, who were perpetually employed in the sinking of wells, the dig ging of trenches, and the hollowing of trees, for the better distribution of water through every part of this spacious plantation. It is said that among the antediluvian women, the daughters of Cohu had their minds wholly set upon riches; for which reason the beautiful Hilpa preferred Harpath to Shalum, because of his numerous flocks and herds, that covered all the low country which runs along the foot of mount Tirzah, and is watered by several fountains and streams breaking out of the sides of that mountain. Harpath made so quick a despatch of his courtship, that he married Hilpa in the hundredth year of her age; and, being of an insolent temper, laughed to scorn his brother Shalum for having pretended to the beautiful Hilpa, when he was master of nothing but a long chain of rocks and mountains. This so much provoked Shalum, that he is said to have cursed his brother in the bitterness of his heart, and to have prayed that one of his mountains might fall upon his head if ever he came within the shadow of it. From this time forward Harpath would never venture out of the valleys, but came to an untimely end in the two hundred and fiftieth year of his age, being drowned in a river as he attempted to cross it. This river is called to this day, from his name who perished in it, the river Harpath; and, what is very remarkable, issues out of one of those mountains which Shalum wished | The habitations of Shalum looked every year more beautiful in the eyes of Hilpa, who, after the space of seventy autumns, was wonderfully pleased with the distant prospect of Shalum's hills, which were then covered with innumerable tufts of trees and gloomy scenes that gave a magnificence to the place, and converted it into one of the finest landscapes the eye of man could behold. The Chinese record a letter which Shalum is said to have written to Hilpa in the eleventh year of her widowhood. I shall here translate it, without departing from that noble simplicity of sentiments and plainness of manners which appear in the original. Shalum was at this time one hundred and eighty years old, and Hilpa one hundred and seventy. I Shalum, Master of Mount Tirzah, to In the 788th year of the creation. stars, and markest the change of seasons. Can a woman appear lovely in the eyes of such a one? Disquiet me not, O Shalum; let me alone, that I may enjoy those goodly possessions which are fallen to my lot. Win me not by thy enticing words. May thy trees increase and multiply; mayest thou add wood to wood, and shade to shade: but tempt not Hilpa to destroy thy solitude, and make thy retirement populous.' daughter of Zilpa, since thou gavest thy-men. Thy dwellings are among the cedars, self away in marriage to my rival? I grew thou searchest out the diversity of soils, weary of the light of the sun, and have been thou understandest the influences of the ever since covering myself with woods and forests. These threescore and ten years have I bewailed the loss of thee on the top of mount Tirzah, and soothed my melancholy among a thousand gloomy shades of my own raising. My dwellings are at present as the garden of God; every part of them is filled with fruits, and flowers, and fountains. The whole mountain is perfumed for thy reception. Come up into it, O my beloved, and let us people this spot of the new world with a beautiful race of The Chinese say, that a little time after mortals: let us multiply exceedingly among wards she accepted of a treat in one of the these delightful shades, and fill every quar-neighbouring hills to which Shalum had inter of them with sons and daughters. Re-vited her. This treat lasted for two years, member, Oh thou daughter of Zilpa, that and is said to have cost Shalum five hunthe age of man is but a thousand years; that dred antelopes, two thousand ostriches, and beauty is the admiration but of a few centu- a thousand tons of milk; but what most of ries. It flourishes as a mountain oak, or as all recommended it, was that variety of dea cedar on the top of Tirzah, which in licious fruits and potherbs, in which no three or four hundred years will fade away, person then living could any way equal and never be thought of by posterity, unless Shalum. a young wood springs from its roots. Think well on this, and remember thy neighbour in the mountains.' Hilpa, Mistress of the Valleys, to Shalum, In the 789th year of the creation. I know thee, O Shalum; thou art more wise and happy than any of the sons of He treated her in the bower which he had planted amidst the wood of nightingales. This wood was made up of such fruit-trees and plants as are most agreeable to the several kinds of singing birds; so that it had drawn into it all the music of the country, and was filled from one end of the year to the other with the most agreeable concert in season. He showed her every day some beautiful and surprising scene in this new region of woodlands; and, as by this means he had all the opportunities he could wish for of opening his mind to her, he succeeded so well, that upon her departure she made him a kind of promise, and gave him her word to return him a positive answer in less than fifty years. She had not been long among her own people in the valleys, when she received new overtures, and at the same time a most splendid visit from Mishpach, who was a mighty man of old, and had built a great city which he called after his own name. sand years; nay, there were some that were Every house was made for at least a thouleased out for three lives; so that the quantity of stone and timber consumed in this building is scarce to be imagined by those who live in the present age of the world. This great man entertained her with the voice of musical instruments which had been lately invented, and danced before her to the sound of the timbrel. He also presented her with several domestic utensils wrought in brass and iron, which had been newly found out for the convenience of life. In the mean time Shalum grew very uneasy with himself, and was sorely displeased at Hilpa for the reception which she had given to Mishpach, insomuch that he never wrote to her or spoke of her during a whole revolution of Saturn; but, finding that this intercourse went no farther than a visit, he |