annexed to it in those words: "If thou shalt find a bird's nest in the way, thou shalt not take the dam with the young: but thou shalt in anywise let the dam go, that it may be well with thee, and that thou may'st prolong thy days." This whole matter, with regard to each of these considerations, is set in a very agreeable light in one of the Persian fables of Pilpay, with which I shall end this paper. A traveller passing through a thicket, and seeing a few sparks of a fire, which some passengers had kindled as they went that way before, made up to it. On a sudden the sparks caught hold of a bush in the midst of which lay an adder, and set it in flames. The adder intreated the traveller's assistance, who tying a bag to the end of his staff, reached it and drew him out; he then bid him go where he pleased, but never more be hurtful to men, since he owed his life to a man's compassion. The adder, however, prepared to sting him, and when he expostulated how unjust it was to retaliate good with evil, I shall do no more (said the adder) than what you men practise every day, whose custom it is to requite benefits with ingratitude. If you can deny this truth, let us refer it to the first we meet. The man consented, and seeing a tree, put the question to it, in what manner a good turn was to be recompensed? If you mean according to the usage of men (replied the tree), by its contrary. I have been standing here these hundred years to protect them from the scorching sun, and in requital they have cut down my branches, and are going to saw my body into planks. Upon this the adder insulting the man, he appealed to a second evidence, which was granted, and immediately they met a cow. The same demand was made, and much the same answer given, that among men it was certainly so; I know it, said the cow, by woful experience; for I have served a man this long time with milk, butter, and cheese, and brought him besides a calf every year; but now I am old, he turns me into this pasture, with design to sell me to a butcher, who will shortly make an end of me. The traveller upon this stood confounded, but desired of courtesy one more trial, to be finally judged by the next beast they should meet. This happened to be the fox, who, upon hearing the story in all its circumstances, could not be persuaded it was possible for the adder to get into so narrow a bag. The adder, to convince him, went in again; the fox told the man he had now his enemy in his power, and with that he fastened the bag, and crushed him to pieces. 3. DESCRIPTION OF AN OLD COUNTRY HOUSE. ("LETTERS TO LETTER VIII.) DEAR MADAM,-I am fourscore miles from London, a short journey compared to that I so often thought at least of undertaking, rather than die without seeing you again. Though the place I am in is such as I would not quit for the town, if I did not value you more than any, nay, everybody else there; and you'll be convinced DESCRIPTION OF AN OLD COUNTRY HOUSE. 277 how little the town has engaged my affections in your absence from it, when you know what a place this is which I prefer to it; I shall therefore describe it to you at large, as the true picture of a genuine ancient country seat. You must expect nothing regular in my description of a house that seems to be built before rules were in fashion; the whole is so disjointed, and the parts so detached from each other, and yet so joining again one can't tell how, that (in a poetical fit) you'd imagine it had been a village in Amphion's time, where twenty cottages had taken a dance together, were all out, and stood still in amazement ever since. A stranger would be grievously disappointed who should ever think to get into this house the right way: one would expect, after entering through the porch, to be let into the hall;-alas! nothing less; you find yourself in a brew-house. From the parlour you think to step into the drawing-room; but, upon opening the ironnailed door, you are convinced, by a flight of birds about your ears, and a cloud of dust in your eyes, that 'tis the pigeon-house. On each side our porch are two chimnies that wear their greens on the outside, which would do as well within, for whenever we make a fire, we let the smoke out of the windows. Over the parlour window hangs a sloping balcony, which time has turned to a very convenient penthouse. The top is crowned with a very venerable tower, so like that of the church just by that the jackdaws build in it as if it were the true steeple. The great hall is high and spacious, flanked with long tables, images of ancient hospitality; ornamented with monstrous horns, about twenty broken pikes, and a match-lock musquet or two, which, they say, were used in the civil wars. Here is one vast arched window, beautifully darkened with divers scutcheons of painted glass. There seems to be great propriety in this old manner of blazoning upon glass, ancient families being like ancient windows, in the course of generations-seldom free from cracks. One shining pane bears date 1286. The youthful face of Dame Elinor owes more to this single piece, than to all the glasses she ever consulted in her life. Who can say after this that glass is frail, when it is not half so perishable as human beauty or glory? for in another pane you see the memory of a knight preserved, whose marble nose is mouldered from his monument in the church adjoining. And yet, must not one sigh to reflect, that the most authentic record of so ancient a family should lie at the mercy of every boy that throws a stone? In this hall, in former days, have dined gartered knights and courtly dames; with ushers, sewers, and seneschals; and yet it was but t'other night that an owl flew in hither, and mistook it for a barn. This hall lets you up (and down) over a very high threshold into the parlour. It is furnished with historical tapestry, whose marginal fringes do confess the moisture of the air. The other contents of the room are a broken-bellied virginal, with two or three mildewed pictures of mouldy ancestors. These are carefully set at the further corner; for the windows being everywhere broken, make it so convenient a place to dry poppies and mustard-seed in, that the room is appropriated to that use. Next this parlour lies (as I said before) the pigeon-house; by the side of which runs an entry that leads, on one hand and t'other, into a bed-chamber, a buttery, and a small hole called the chaplain's study. Then follow a brew-house, a little green and gilt parlour, and the great stairs, under which is the dairy. A little further on the right, the servants' hall; and by the side of it, up six steps, the cld lady's closet, which has a lattice into the said hall, that while she said her prayers, she might cast an eye on the men and maids. There are upon this ground-floor in all twenty-four apartments, hard to be distinguished by particular names; among which I must not forget a chamber that has in it a large antiquity of timber, which seems to have been either a bedstead or a cyder-press. Our best room above is very long and low, of the exact proportion of a band-box; it has hangings of the finest work in the world, those I mean which Arachne spins out of her own bowels; indeed the roof is so decayed, that after a favourable shower of rain, we may, with God's blessing, expect a crop of mushrooms between the chinks of the floors. All this upper story has for many years had no other inhabitants than certain rats, whose very age renders them worthy of this venerable mansion, for the very rats of this ancient seat are gray. Since these had not quitted it, we hope at least this house may stand during the small remainder of days these poor animals have to live, who are now too infirm to remove to another; they have still a small subsistence left them in the few remaining books of the library. I had never seen half what I have described, but for an old, starched, gray-headed steward, who is as much an antiquity as any in the place, and looks like an old family picture walked out of its frame. He failed not, as we passed from room to room, to relate several memoirs of the family, but his observations were particularly curious in the cellar; he showed where stood the triple rows of butts of sack, and where were ranged the bottles of tent' for toast in the morning. He pointed to the stands that supported the ironhooped hogsheads of strong beer; then stepping to a corner, he lugged out the tottered fragment of an unframed picture: "this," says he, with tears in his eyes, 'was poor Sir Thomas, once master of the drink I told you of: he had two sons (poor young masters), that never arrived to the age of this beer; they both fell ill in this very cellar, and never went out upon their own legs." He could not pass by a broken bottle, without taking it up to show us the arms of the family on it. He then led me up the tower, by dark, winding stone steps, which landed us into several little rooms, one above another; one of these was nailed up, and my guide whispered to me the occasion of it. The ghost of Lady Frances is supposed to walk here; some prying maids of the family formerly reported 66 1 A kind of red wine. that they saw a lady in a fardingale through the keyhole; but this matter was hushed up, and the servants forbid to talk of it. I must needs have tired you with this long letter; but what engaged me in this description was a generous principle to preserve the memory of a thing that must itself soon fall to ruin; nay, perhaps, some part of it before this reaches your hands: indeed Í owe this old house the same gratitude that we do to an old friend that harbours us in his declining condition, nay, even in his last extremity. I have found this an excellent place for retirement and study, where no one who passes by can dream there is an inhabitant, and even anybody that would visit me dares not venture under my roof. You will not wonder I have translated a great deal of Homer in this retreat; any one that sees it will own I could not have chosen a fitter or more likely place to converse with the dead.' VII. LORD BOLINGBROKE. VISCOUNT BOLINGBROKE, better known to students of literature as the "St John" of Pope, was born at Battersea in 1678, and educated at Eton and Oxford. Being intended for public life, he entered Parliament, and shortly afterwards obtained office under Godolphin. His subsequent political career is well known to every reader of history. On the disgrace of the Whig ministry, Bolingbroke and Harley were called to the administration of affairs, and continued in office till the accession of the Hanover family. He was one of the first victims of the violent measures which political spleen unfortunately prompted on that occasion; and, being threatened with impeachment, he fled to France, where he remained till 1728, when he was pardoned and allowed to return home. In England he devoted all his energies to oppose, through the press, the great Whig minister, Sir Robert Walpole, and he had the satisfaction of living long enough to see his fall. He died at Battersea in 1751. Bolingbroke's reputation as an author is now on the decline, owing in great measure to the loose and heterodox views on Christianity which his writings inculcate, and which he was unhappily able to instil into the mind and poetry of his friend Pope. His works are, however, highly meritorious, and the style is singularly eloquent and forcible,-more so, indeed, than that of almost any of his contemporaries. His chief writings are "Letters on the Study of History,' Letters on the Spirit of Patriotism, and the Idea of a Patriot King," and "Philosophical Essays." 1. THE STUDY OF NATURAL PHILOSOPHY.-(ESSAY I.) There is no study, after that of morality, which deserves the application of the human mind so much as that of natural philo The house here referred to is Stanton Harcourt, Oxfordshire; and it is somewhat curious that Pope sent the very same description to the Duke of Buckingham. Pope's letters were among the first published in this country, and they are deservedly much esteemed: it is seldom, however, that they possess the ease and grace of the letter given above, for Pope always wrote with an eye to the press. sophy, and of the arts and sciences which serve to promote it. The will of God, in the constitution of our moral system, is the object of one: His infinite wisdom and power, that are manifested in the natural system of the universe, are the object of the other. One is the immediate concern of every man, and lies therefore within the reach of every man. The other does so too, as far as our immediate wants require, and far enough to excite awe and veneration of a Supreme Being in every attentive mind. But farther than this, a knowledge of physical nature is not the immediate and necessary concern of every man; and therefore a further inquiry into it becomes the labour of a few, though the fruits of this inquiry be to the advantage of many. Discoveries of use in human life have been sometimes made; but these fruits in general consist chiefly in the gratification of curiosity. Their acquisition, therefore, is painful; and when all that can be gathered are gathered, the crop will be small. Should the human species exist a thousand generations more, and the study of nature be carried on through all of them with the same application, a little more particular knowledge of the apparent properties of matter, and of the sensible principles and laws of motion, might be acquired; more phenomena might be discovered, and a few more of those links, perhaps, which compose the great immeasurable chain of causes and effects that descends from the throne of God. But human sense, which can alone furnish the materials of this knowledge, continuing the same, the want of ideas, the want of adequate ideas, would make it to the last impracticable to penetrate into the great secrets of nature, the real essences of substances, and the primary causes of their action, their passion, and all their operations; so that mankind would cease to be without having acquired a complete and real knowledge of the world they inhabited, and of the bodies they wore in it. 2. DISREGARD OF TRUTH IN CONTROVERSY. Though truth be one, and every necessary truth be obvious enough, yet that there must be various opinions about it among creatures constituted as we are, is as certain as that there are such opinions. Truth, however, is seldom the object, as reason is seldom the guide; but every man's pride and every man's interest require that both should be thought to be on his side. From hence all those disputes, both public and private, which render the state of society a state of warfare-the warfare of tongues, pens, and swords. In that of the two first, with which alone we have to do here, disputes become contests for superiority between man and man, and party and party; instead of being what they should be, comparisons of opinions, of facts and reasons; by which means each side goes off with triumph, and every dispute is a drawn battle. This is the ordinary course of controversy, not among the vulgar alone, but among sage philosophers and pious divines, whose conduct is not more edifying than that of the vulgar. Will it be pretended that |