generals preside in it; in England, the judge of the court of honour, is hereditary in the family of the first duke in the kingdom. I should think that the ceremonial of kicking a man into a title, or a great employment, might be settled by the judges of these courts of honour. If I might be worthy of advising in matters of so high a nature, I should think it would be too great a fatigue for the prince himself to kick the whole court, especially in countries where the court is numerous; I should therefore be of opinion, that nobody should have the honour of being kicked by the sovereign, except the first minister, the principal secretaries of state, the president of his councils, and some few others, the great officers of the crown; but these might kick those next in employment under them, who might kick the next; and so it might gradually descend, that there should not be a man in any employment in the kingdom but what might be kicked.

It is not yet indeed become a custom in any court of Europe; the more is the pity; for I think it would be a truly royal exercise for a prince to divert himself with kicking two or three of his ministers every morning; it would contribute to the preservation of his own health, as well as to mending the manners of his court;

and I believe it would become a fashion some where or other, were it not that the young nobility of all nations travel to France, and are apt to retain impressions of what they see there. The barbarity of a French education will not suffer a gentleman to take a kick from any person, be he never so great, without some terrible consequences; but I hope we in this nation may live to get the better of such prejudices, which may have this good consequence, it may introduce an eloquence and politeness of manners not known in the world, except amongst the ancient Goths and modern Hottentots.

I may say without vanity, that we are not such barbarians, but there may be found amongst us some great men, who can pocket up a kick or a cuff, with as good an air as they could a bribe; and as to those splendid exagitations of choler, which are apt to break out into rogue and rascal, I am credibly informed some very stately persons are so used to them, they receive them with the same countenance, as "Sir, I kiss your hands." This shews we are well disposed for a reformation of manners; yet I fear it will not grow into general imitation, unless the court should set the example, which I am afraid will not happen; but if we should

live to see that day, the place-men must of course all fall into it; and I think it would be pleasant enough, when a great employment became vacant, to see a parcel of impudent fellows in lace and embroidery, pressing and elbowing to be kicked.

If the common people, who are not fond of new fashions at their first rise, should discover any dislike of coming into it, why might not the standing army be employed to kick the whole nation?

COMMON-SENSE, June 11, 1737.

No. XLV.

Lætus in præsens animus ;. quod ultra est
Oderit curare, et amara lento

Temperet risu. Nihil est ab omni

Parte beatum,

HORAT.

He who would happy live to-day'
Must laugh the present ills away,

Nor think of woes to come;
For come they will, or soon, or late,
Since mix'd at best is man's estate,
By Heaven's eternal doom.

HASTINGS.

HAVING for several days amused myself with reading over that celebrated humourist of antiquity, Lucian; I fell one evening into a sort of reverie, which had all the extravagance, though void of the wit and poignancy, of that celebrated author. 'Twas not one of the frolics of fancy in sleep, but the pure result of the imagination, heated with what I had read, and busying itself with erecting a thousand new edifices, on the same ideal foundation.

Methought (for a man may dream with his eyes open), the Jupiter of the ancients was again the deity in fashion, and again disposed to familiarise himself to men, by admitting prayers, conferences, or even expostulations:

methought, I saw him descend in that awful, but yet conversible figure, in which Homer has described him, and it may be supposed that Phidias represented him; his brow unclouded, his eye benign, and every muscle sweetened with smiles of condescension and complacency, like the god of nature, and parent of the universe: his terrors all laid by, his thunder sleeping; not the judge, but the friend of man.

Methought likewise, that by a sign from him, the earth lost its rotund figure, and, as Milton aptly expresses it, immediately stretched itself into longitude, becoming an immeasurable plain, hardly to be comprehended by human eyes, though viewed from the remotest of the stars, and to be distinctly surveyed by none but Jove alone. On this were assembled all the nations of the world, of all complexions, manners, and religions; through the midst of whom two dif ferent, nay opposite beings, continually hurried to and fro, present at births, and following to the grave, traversing all the stages of life, the bud of infancy, the bloom of youth, the fullblown flower of manhood, and the decay of age; mixing with society, visiting solitudes, equally intimate with the great and the vulgar, and, alike serving and governing the whole human system. These were sisters and twins,