All envy would be extinguished, if it were! universally known that there are none to be envied, and surely none can be much envied who are not pleased with themselves. There is reason to suspect, that the distinctions of mankind have more show than value, when it is found that all agree to be weary alike of pleasures and of cares; that the powerful and the weak, the celebrated and obscure, join in one common wish, and implore from nature's hand the nectar of oblivion.

Ditto, ten. After breakfast transcribed half a sermon from Dr. Hickman. N. B. Never to transcribe any more from Calamy; Mrs. PilSuch is our desire of abstraction from our-cocks, at my curacy, having one volume of selves, that very few are satisfied with the that author lying in her parlour-window. quantity of stupefaction which the needs of the body force upon the mind. Alexander himself added intemperance to sleep, and solaced with the fumes of wine the sovereignty of the world; and almost every man has some art by which he steals his thoughts away from his present

Ditto, seven. Returned home, and stirred my fire. Went to the common-room, and supped on the snipes with Dr. Dry.

Ditto, eight. Began the evening in the common-room. Dr. Dry told several stories. Were very merry.

Our new fellow that studie physic, very talkative toward twelve HOR. Pretends he will bring the youngest Missto drink tea with ine soon. Impertinent blockhead!

at Peterhouse; but hope a ride will set all to | bility and ingenious disposition creates to him rights. Weather-glass below fair.

Ditto, ten. Mounted my horse, thought the weather suspicious. Pain in my ankle entirely gone. Catched in a shower coming back. Convinced that my weather-glass is the best in Cambridge.

Ditto, twelve. Dressed. Sauntered up to the Fishmonger's-hill. Met Mr. H. and went with him to Peterhouse. Cook made us wait thirty-six minutes beyond the time. The company; some of my Emanuel friends. For dinner, a pair of soals, a leg of pork and peas among other things. Mem. Peas-pudding not boiled enough. Cook reprimanded and sconced in my presence.

Ditto, after dinner. Pain in my ankle returns. Dull all the afternoon. Rallied for being no company. Mr. H. 's account of the accommodations on the road in his Bath journey. Ditto, six. Got into spirits. Never was more chatty. We sat late at whist. Mr. H. and self agreed at parting to take a gentle ride, and dine at the old house on the London road to-morrow.

Thursday, nine. My semptress. She has lost the measure of my wrist. Forced to be measured again. The baggage has got a trick of smiling.

Ditto, ten to eleven. Made some rappeesnuff. Read the magazines. Received a present of pickles from Miss Pilcocks. Mem. To send in return some collared eel, which I know both the old lady and miss are fond of.

self, by reflecting, that he is placed under those venerable walls, where a Hooker and a Hammond, a Bacon and a Newton, once pursued the same course of science, and from whence they soared to the most elevated heights of literary fame. This is that incitement which Tully, according to his own testimony, experienced at Athens, when he contemplated the porticos where Socrates sat, and the laurel groves where Plato disputed. But there are other circumstances, and of the highest importance, which render our college su perior to all other places of education. Their institutions, although somewhat fallen from their primæval simplicity, are such as influence, in a particular manner, the moral conduct of their youth; and in this general depravity of manners and laxity of principles, pure religion is no where more strongly inculcated. The academies, as they are presumptuously styled, are too low to be mentioned: and foreign seminaries are likely to prejudice the unwary mind with Calvinism. But English universities render their students virtuous, at least by excluding all opportunities of vice: and, by teaching them the principles of the church of England, confirm them in those of true Christianity.

No. 34.] SATURDAY, DEC. 9, 1758.

To illustrate one thing by its resemblance to another, has been always the most popular and efficacious art of instruction, there is, indeed, no other method of teaching that of which any one is ignorant, but by means of something already known; and a mind so enlarged by contemplation and inquiry, that it has always many objects within its view, will seldom

Ditto, eleven. Glass very high. Mounted at the gate with Mr. H. Horse skittish and wants exercise. Arrive at the old house. All the provision bespoke by some rakish fellowcommoner in the next room, who had been on a scheme to Newmarket. Could get nothing but mutton chops off the worst end. Port very new. Agree to try some other house to-be long without some near and familiar image

morrow.

through which an easy transition may be maus to truths more distant and obscure.

HERE the Journal breaks off: for the next Of the parallels which have been drawn by morning, as my friend informs me, our genial wit and curiosity, some are literal and real, academic was waked with a severe fit of the as between poetry and painting, two arts which gout; and, at present, enjoys all the dignity of pursue the same end, by the operation of the that disease. But I believe we have lost no-same mental faculties, and which differ only as thing by this interruption; since a continuation of the remainder of the Journal, through the remainder of the week, would most probably have exhibited nothing more than a repeated relation of the same circumstances of idling and luxury.

the one represents things by marks permanent and natural, the other by signs accidental and arbitrary. The one therefore is more easily and generally understood, since similitude of form is immediately perceived; the other is capable of conveying more ideas; for men have thought and spoken of many things which they do not see.

I hope it will not be concluded, from this specimen of academic life, that I have attempted to decry our universities. If literature is not Other parallels are fortuitous and fanciful, the essential requisite of the modern academic, yet these have sometimes been extended to I am yet persuaded that Cambridge and Ox- many particulars of resemblance by a lucky ord, however degenerated, surpass the fashion- concurrence of diligence and chance. The able academies of our metropolis, and the animal body is composed of many members, gymnasia of foreign countries. The number united under the direction of one mind; any of learned persons in these celebrated seats is number of individuals, connected for some still considerable, and more conveniences and common purpose, is therefore called a body. opportunities for study still subsist in them, From his participation of the same appelthan in any other place. There is at least one lation arose the comparison of the body navery powerful incentive to learning; I mean tural and body politic, of which, how far sothe Genius of the place. It is a sort of inspir-ever it has been deduced, no end has hitherto ing deity, which every youth of quick sensi-been found.

In these imaginary similitudes, the same word is used at once in its primitive and metaphorical sense. Thus health, ascribed to the body natural, is opposed to sickness; but attributed to the body politic stands as contrary to adversity. These parallels, therefore, have more of genius, but less of truth; they often please, but they never convince.

Of this kind is a curious speculation frequently indulged by a philosopher of my acquaintance, who had discovered, the qualities requisite to conversation are very exactly represented by a bowl of punch.

ignorance informed we are most delighted with the plainest diction; and it is only in the moments of idleness or pride, that we cali for the gratifications of wit or flattery.

He only will please long, who by tempering the acidity of satire with the sugar of civility, and allaying the heat of wit with the frigidity of humble chat, can make the true punch of conversation; and as that punch can be drank in the greatest quantity which has the largest proportion of water, so that companion will be oftenest welcome, whose talk flows out with inoffensive copiousness, and unenvied insipidity.

Punch, says this profound investigator, is a liquor compounded of spirit and acid juices, sugar and water. The spirit, volatile and fiery, is the proper emblem of vivacity and wit; the No. 35.] SATURDAY, DEC. 16, 1758. acidity of the lemon will very aptly figure pungency of raillery, and acrimony of censure; sugar is the natural representative of luscious adulation and gentle complaisance; and water

MR. IDLER,

TO THE IDLER.

is the proper hieroglyphic of easy prattle, inno-Ir it be difficult to persuade the idle to be busy, cent and tasteless.

Spirit alone is too powerful for use. It will produce madness rather than merriment; and instead of quenching thirst will inflame the blood. Thus wit, too copiously poured out, agitates the hearer with emotions rather violent than pleasing; every one shrinks from the force of its oppression, the company sits entranced and overpowered; all are astonished but nobody is pleased.

The acid juices give this genial liquor all its power of stimulating the palate. Conversation would become dull and vapid, if negligence were not sometimes roused, and sluggishness quickened by due severity of reprehension. But acids unmixed will distort the face and torture the palate; and he that has no other qualities than penetration and aspersity, he whose constant employment is detection and censure, who looks only to find faults, and speaks only to publish them, will soon be dreaded, hated, and avoided.

it is likewise, as experience has taught me, not easy to convince the busy that it is better to be idle. When you shall despair of stimulating sluggishness to motion, I hope you will turn your thoughts towards the means of stilling the bustle of pernicious activity.

I am the unfortunate husband of a buyer of bargains. My wife has somewhere heard that a good housewife never has any thing to purchase when it is wanted. This maxim is often in her mouth, and always in her head. She is not one of those philosophical talkers that speculate without practice, and learn sentences of wisdom only to repeat them; she is always making additions to her stores; she never looks into a broker's shop but she spies something that may be wanted some time; and it is impossible to make her pass the door of a house where she hears goods selling by auction.

Whatever she thinks cheap she holds it the duty of an economist to buy; in consequence of The taste of sugar is generally pleasing, but this maxim, we are encumbered on every side it cannot long be eaten by itself. Thus meek- with useless lumber. The servants can scarcely ness and courtesy will always recommend the creep to their beds through the chests and first address, but soon pall and nauseate, unless boxes that surround them. The carpenter is they are associated with more sprightly quali-employed once a week in building closets, fixties. The chief use of sugar is to temper the taste of other substances; and softness of behaviour in the same manner mitigates the roughness of contradiction, and allays the bitterness of unwelcome truth.

ing cupboards, and fastening shelves; and my house has the appearance of a ship stored for a voyage to the colonies.

I had often observed that advertisements set her on fire; and therefore pretending to emulate her laudable frugality, I forbade the newspaper to be taken any longer; but my precaution is vain; I know not by what fatality, or by what confederacy, every catalogue of genuine furniture comes to her hand, every advertisement of a newspaper newly opened is in her pocket-book, and she knows before any of her neighbours when the stock of any man leaving off trade is to be sold cheap for

Water is the universal vehicle by which are conveyed the particles necessary to sustenance and growth, by which thirst is quenched, and all the wants of life and nature are supplied. Thus all the business of the world is transacted by artless and easy talk, neither sublimed by fancy, nor discoloured by affectation, without either the harshness of satire, or the lusciousness of flattery. By this limpid vein of language, curiosity is gratified, and all the know-ready money. ledge is conveyed which one man is required Such intelligence is to my dear one the to impart for the safety or convenience of another. Water is the only ingredient in punch which can be used alone, and with which man is content till fancy has framed an artificial want. Thus while we only desire to have our

Siren's song. No engagement, no duty, no interest, can withhold her from a sale, from which she always returns congatulating herself upon her dexterity at a bargain; the porter lays down his burden in the hall; she dis

plays her new acquisitions, and spends the | No. 36.] SATURDAY, DEC. 23, 1758.
rest of the day in contriving where they shall
be put.
As she cannot bear to have any thing incom-
plete, one purchase necessitates another; she
has twenty feather-beds more than she can use,
and a late sale has supplied her with a propor-
tionable number of Witney blankets, a large
roll of linen for sheets, and five quilts for every
bed, which she bought because the seller told
her, that if she would clear his hands he would
let her have a bargain.

Thus by hourly encroachments my habitation is made narrower and narrower; the dining-room is so crowded with tables, that dinner scarcely can be served; the parlour is decorated with so many piles of china, that I dare not step within the door; at every turn of the stairs I have a clock, and half the windows of the upper floors are darkened that shelves may be set before them.

THE great differences that disturb the peace of
mankind are not about ends, but means. We
have all the same general desires, but how
those desires shall be accomplished will for
ever be disputed.
The ultimate purpose of
government is temporal, and that of religion
is eternal happiness. Hitherto we agree; but
here we must part to try according to the end-
less varieties of passion and understanding
combined with one another, every possible
form of government, and every imaginable
tenet of religion.

We are told by Cumberland that rectitude, applied to action or contemplation, is merely metaphorical; and that as a right line describes the shortest passage from point to point, so a right action effects a good design by the fewest means; and so likewise a right opinion is that which connects distant truths by the shortest train of intermediate propositions.

This, however, might be borne, if she would gratify her own inclinations without opposing mine. But I, who am idle, am luxurious, and To find the nearest way from truth to truth, she condemns me to live upon salt provision. or from purpose to effect, not to use more inShe knows the loss of buying in small quanti-struments where fewer will be sufficient, not ties, we have therefore whole hogs and quar- to move by wheels and levers what will give ters of oxen. Part of our meat is tainted be-way to the naked hand, is the great proof of a fore it is eaten, and part is thrown away because healthful and vigorous mind, neither feeble it is spoiled, but she persists in her system, with healthful ignorance, nor overburdened and will never buy any thing by single penny- with unwieldy knowledge. worths.

But there are men who seem to think nothing so much the characteristic of a genius, as to do common things in an uncommon manner; like Hudibras, to tell the clock by algebra; or like the lady in Dr. Young's satires, to drink tea by stratagem; to quit the beaten track only because it is known, and take a new path how ever crooked or rough because the straight was found out before.

The common vice of those who are still grasping at more, is to neglect that which they already possess; but from this failing my charmer is free. It is the great care of her life that the pieces of beef should be boiled in the order in which they are bought; that the second bag of peas should not be opened till the first were eaten; that every feather-bed shall be lain on in its turn; that the carpets should be taken out of the chests once a month and brushed; and the rolls of linen opened now and then before the fire. She is daily inquiring after the best traps for nice, and keeps the rooms always scented by fumigations to destroy the moths. She employs a workman from time to time to adjust six clocks that never go, and clean five jacks that rust in the garret; and a woman in the next alley that lives by scouring the brass and pewter which are only laid up to tarnish again. It is difficult to enumerate every species of She is always imagining some distant time in authors whose labours counteract themselves; which she shall use whatever she accumulates; the man of exuberance and copiousness, who she has four looking-glasses which she cannot diffuses every thought through so many diversihang up in her house, but which will be hand-ties of expression, that it is lost like water in a some in more lofty rooms; and pays rent for the place of a vast copper in some warehouse, because when we live in the country we shall

Every man speaks and writes with intent to be understood; and it can seldom happen but he that understands himself might convey his notions to another, if, content to be understood, he did not seek to be admired; but when once he begins to contrive how his sentiments may be received, not with most ease to his reader, but with most advantage to himself, he then transfers his consideration from words to sounds, from sentences to periods, and as he grows more elegant becomes less intelligible.

mist; the ponderous dictator of sentences, whose notions are delivered in the lump, and are like uncoined bullion, of more weight than use; the liberal illustrator, who shows by examples and comparisons what was clearly seen when it was first proposed; and the stately son of demonstration, who proves with mathematical formality what no man has yet pretended to doubt.

There is a mode of style for which I know not that the masters of oratory have yet found a name; a style by which the most evident truths are so obscured, that they can no longer be perceived, and the most familiar proposi

tions so disguised that they cannot be known. | Every other kind of eloquence is the dress of sense; but this is the mask by which a true master of his art will so effectually conceal it, that a man will as easily mistake his own positions, if he meets them thus transformed, as he may pass in a masquerade his nearest acquaintance.

This style may be called the terrific, for its chief intention is to terrify and amaze; it may be termed the repulsive, for its natural effect is to drive away the reader; or it may be distinguished, in plain English, by the denomination of the bugbear style, for it has more terror than danger, and will appear less formidable as it is more nearly approached.

where to be found; and that not only its pro per ore is copiously treasured in the caverns a the earth, but that its particles are dispersed throughout all other bodies.

If the extent of the human view could comprehend the whole frame of the universe, I be. lieve it would be found invariably true, that Providence has given that in greatest plenty, which the condition of life makes of greatest use; and that nothing is penuriously imparted or placed far from the reach of man, of which a more liberal distribution, or more easy ac quisition, would increase real and rational felicity.

Iron is common, and gold is rare. Iron contributes so much to supply the wants of nature, A mother tells her infant that two and two that its use constitutes much of the difference make four; the child remembers the proposition, between savage and polished life, between the and is able to count four to all the purposes of state of him that slumbers in European palaces, life, till the course of his education brings him and him that shelters himself in the cavities of among philosophers who fright him from his a rock from the chillness of the night, or the former knowledge, by telling him, that four is violence of the storm. Gold can never be har a certain aggregate of units; that all numbers dened into saws or axes; it can neither furnish being only the repetition of an unit, which, instruments of manufacture, utensils of agrithough not a number itself, is the parent, root, culture, nor weapons of defence; its only quality or original of all number, four is the denomina-is to shine, and the value of its lustre arises tion assigned to a certain number of such repe- from its scarcity. titions. The only danger is, lest, when he first hears these dreadful sounds, the pupil should run away; if he has but the courage to stay till the conclusion, he will find that when speculation has done its worst, two and two still make four.

Throughout the whole circle, both of natural and moral life, necessaries are as iron, and superfluities as gold. What we really need we may readily obtain; so readily that far the greater part of mankind has, in the wanton ness of abundance, confounded natural with artificial desires, and invented necessities for the sake of employment, because the mind is impatient of inaction, and life is sustained with so little labour, that the tediousness of idle time cannot otherwise be supported.

Thus plenty is the original cause of many of our needs; and even the poverty, which is so frequent and distressful in civilized nations, proceeds often from that change of manners which opulence has produced. Nature makes

poor only when we want necessaries; but custom gives the name of poverty to the want of superfluities.

An illustrious example of this species of eloquence may be found in Letters concerning Mind. The author begins by declaring, that "the sorts of things are things that now are, have been, and shall be, and the things that strictly are." In this position, except the last clause, in which he uses something of the scholastic language, there is nothing but what every man has heard and imagines himself to know. But who would not believe that some wonderful novelty is presented to his intellectus when he is afterwards told, in the true bugbear style, that "the ares, in the former sense, are things that lie between the have-beens and the shall-bes. The have-beens are things that are past; the shall-bes are things that are to come; and the things that are, in the latter sense, are things that have not been, nor shall be, nor stand in the midst of such as are before them, or shall be after them. The things that have been, and shall be, have respect to present, past, and future. Those likewise that now are have moreover place; that, for instance, which is here, that which is to the east, that which is to the west."

All this, my dear reader, is very strange; but though it be strange, it is not new; survey these wonderful sentences again, and they will be found to contain nothing more, than very plain truths, which till this author arose had always been delivered in plain language.

No. 37.] SATURDAY, DEC. 30, 1758.

THOSE who are skilled in the extraction and preparation of metals, declare, that iron is every

When Socrates passed through shops of toys and ornaments, he cried out, How many things are here which I do not need! And the same ex. clamation may every man make who surveys the common accommodations of life.

Superfluity and difficulty begin together. To dress food for the stomach is easy, the art is to irritate the palate when the stomach is sufficed A rude hand may build walls, form roofs, and lay floors, and provide all that warmth and security require; we only call the nicer artificers to carve the cornice, or to paint the ceilings Such dress as may enable the body to endure the different seasons, the most unenlightened nations have been able to procure: but the work of science begins in the ambition of distinction, in variations of fashion, and emulation of elegance. Corn grows with easy culture; the gardener's experiments are only employed to exalt the flavours of fruits, and brighten the colours of flowers.

Even of knowledge, those parts are most easy which are generally necessary. The intercourse of society is maintained without the elegances