6

with unanimity and, my uncle dying when I was only feven years of age, and leaving his fortune of three hundred pounds per annum, to their use, in truft for me, till I thould have attained my eighteenth year, was apparently an addition to their pleasures. But they were tied to difcord. It was impoffible to render them agreeable. No one in the town could affociate with them and I, continually chained to hone, concluding that no happiness could exist, if it existed not in marriage, determined, whenever it fhould will Providence to leave me to my own disposal, that I would fhut myfelf up from fociety. You may wonder at this strange refolution. I did not, however, form it, without fome previous enquiries. My father had always been more willing, and appeared more able than my mother, to render me the defired account: and to him I now applied. He had been married fome years; "and," faid he, you may learn from me-all the world are on the fame footing-that there is no happiness to be found in marriage! Study,' he contended, was the only rational engagment, the only fource of pleafure; which he inftanced in himself :-without books,' added my father, I fhould have no peace.' He initiated me into a fyftem of logic; and gave me a profpect of metaphyfics, which, though at firft tedious and unfeemly, I found it prudent and neceffary to relifh. But, Madam, I could not always follow fuch recreations; and, finding the company of my parents intolerable, I contrived to evade it entirely. At first, I began by studying in the night, and then endeavoured to make fome progrefs in my engagements. On my father asking my reafon for this whim, I affured him, that my genius was beft calculated for thofe hours, that I knew by experience, there were times happier for ftudy and compofition than others, whatever Dr. Johnson might urge to the contrary. He yielded to my reafoning: and hence, what at its commencement was chofen through necef

fity, became fo natural, that on the death of Mr. and Mrs. Acid, which preceded my twentieth year, I could not throw off my unnatural character. Perceiving by the fettlement of their accounts, that I was poffeffed of five hundred pounds per annum. I quitted my native place, and by plunging farther northward, hoped to move unmolested in my chofen fphere. With my hiftory, fince I fettled in this village, you are no ftranger. But there is fomething -I muft defer it !”—Euphemia returned from her morning ramble, at this mo◄ ment entering the room; promifing to call in the even ing-Acid retired.

IN

(To be concluded in our next.}

ACCOUNT OF MR. FLETCHER.

[From Hutchinson's Hiftory of Cumberland.]

N the village of Little-Broughton, in 1714, was born Abraham Fletcher; a man of fome celebrity, though but a tobacco pipe-maker, and the son of a person of the fame occupation. The father had a small paternal eftate; on which, with his trade, he was barely ena bled to live and bring up his family, without their becoming burthenfome to their parish. It is not certain that his fon Abraham ever went to any school. We mention it on the authority only of a common report, that, very early in life, before he was able to do any work, his parents once fpared him, for three weeks, to attend a school in the village, where youth were taught at the rate of a fhilling for the quarter. If this report be well-founded, all the education he ever had, that was paid for, coft three-pence. By fome means or other, however, he learned to read; and, before he had arrived at manhood, he had alfo learned to write. With these humble attainments to fet out with, it does him infinite honour, that, at length, by dint of industry alone, Abraham Fletcher became

a man

a man of science, and a man of learning. He was of a thinking, inquifitive mind: and, having taught himself arithmetic, in preference to any other science, only because he met with a book of arithmetic and no other, for the fame reafon he applied himself to mathematical investigations. Whatever he attempted, he attempted with all his might; and pursued with unwearied diligence. In the day-time, he was employed in husbandry, or in making pipes: and, at night, eagerly betook himself to work the theorems (which word he long used to pronounce the-or-ems) on which, during the day, he had been intenfely ruminating. Often has he fat up all night delineating diagraems; to the ferious grief of his parents, who confidered only the apparent unprofitablenefs of fuch purfuits, and the certain lofs of the lump or two of cannel-coal, incurred by his lucubrations. Hardly ever, even in the fubfequent more profperous periods of his life, did he afpire to any thing beyond a rush-light. The parents, contented in their ignorance, felt no ambition to have their fon pafs through life otherwife-than they had done, in the midst of hard work and hard fare. And, as his midnight ftudies, and abftractedness of mind, feemed not to them likely to qualify him either to work more, or to eat lefs, they thought it their duty, and, for his intereft, to discountenance and difcourage his paffion for the-or-ems: his books and his flate were hid; and he was double tafked with labour. It was this poor man's fate to begin and continue through life his purfuit after knowledge under almost every poffible difadvantage: yet difficulties and difcourage

ments feemed but to increase his ardour. We remember his relating, many years ago, with vaft selfcomplacence and fatisfaction, a device he had formed, by which he flattered himself he fhould be permitted to ftick to his ftudies without interruption, at his few intervals of leifure. He married early; and his wife, adopting the opinions and maxims of his parents,

was

was no friend to ftudies, which appeared to her little likely to lead to any thing that might help to feed and clothe themselves, or their children.-Over his house of one room, there was a kind of loft, or boarded floor, (in Cumberland called a bauks) which, however, had neither door, window, nor stairs. Hither, by means of a fingle rope, which he always drew up after him, he mounted with his book and his flate; and here he went through Euclid. We are confciɔus our anecdote is fimple; yet it is not infignificant.

At about the age of thirty, even his wife began to be perfuaded that learning, according to the old faw, may fometimes be a fubftitute for house and land, and confented to his relinquishing his manual labours, and fetting up as a fchoolmafter. For feveral years, he was a teacher of mathematics of confiderable reputation; and many refpectable young men were his pupils.

Still purfuing knowledge wherever knowledge was to be found, Abraham (now Mr.) Fletcher, became a botanist, as well as a mathematician: but he studied the properties, rather than the claffification, of plants; and made many experiments to afcertain their medical virtues. Few men, it is believed, have lately made a greater proficiency than he did, in this (now perhaps too much neglected) department of fcience: and he was foon qualified to commence doctor, as well as schoolmafter. It is true, indeed, he practifed chiefly, if not folely, with decoctions or diet drinks: yet, with thefe, he either did perform, or got the reputation of performing, many extraordinary cures; and had no Imall practice.

To regularly bred phyficians, many of his noftrums, if they knew them, we are aware, would feem fimple and infignificant. Charlevoix, we remember, in his Hiftory of Canada, fpeaking of fome nation of Indians, naturally mentions their diseases, and their modes of VOL. I.

L

cure,

cure, which, like Fletcher's, were attempted, chiefly, by fimple preparations of plants. And he adds on the occafion- All this, I know, will appear perfectly ridiculous to the faculty in Europe: but, they may permit me to make one obfervation only on the fubject, not undeferving of their attention; which is, that thefe Pow-Wawers of Canada perform as many and as difficult cures as are performed by all the medical fcience of Europe.' Doctor Fletcher was particularly famed for his fkill and fuccefs in hypocondrical cases; and, had he been as able to defcribe, as he was to relieve and cure fuch cafes, many things in this way are known to have occurred in the courfe of his practice, to which even the most learned might have attended with advantage.

If our object in thefe humble biographical sketches was only to write panegyric, we fhould fupprefs a circumftance in the character of Doctor Fletcher, which Dr. Johnson, in his life of Dryden, has taught us, is little likely to do him honour in the prefent age. Like Dryden, like the late Mr. Henderson of Pembroke college, Oxford, and like many other men of unqueftionably great abilities and learning, Fletcher put great confidence in the prognoftications of judicial aftrology. And what is more extraordinary, many of his predictions were wonderfully fulfilled. In the margin of a book belonging to him, filled with astronomical calculations, an entry was also made of the planets' places in the zodiac, at the birth of Abraham Fletcher of Little Broughton; to which one George Bell of Cockermouth, about ten years ago, added the following obfervations.

"This gives, in time, 78 years and 55 days. Near this period is a bad direction; it brings Saturnine griefs, efpecially fuch as proceed from cold, dry, and phlegmatic caufes; and, if Saturn be Anretta, it threateneth death."

However