was examined concerning his departure. At last the lady returned home, and was with great difficulty preserved from fits by spirits and cordials. The family was despatched a thousand ways without success, and the house was filled with distraction, till, as we were deliberating what further measures to take, he returned from a petty gaming-table, with his coat torn, and his head broken; without his sword, snuff-box, sleeve-buttons, and watch. by the prerogative of longer life, are inclined to treat the notions of those whose conduct they superintend with superciliousness and contempt, for want of considering that the future and the past have different appearances; that the dis proportion will always be great between expect ation and enjoyment, between new possession and satiety; that the truth of many maxims of age gives too little pleasure to be allowed till it is felt; and that the miscries of life would be increased beyond all human power of endurance, if we were to enter the world with the same opinions as we carry from it. Of this loss, or robbery, he gave little account; but, instead of sinking into his former shame, endeavoured to support himself by surliness and asperity. "He was not the first that had played We naturally indulge those ideas that please away a few trifles, and of what use were birth us. Hope will predominate in every mind, till and fortune if they would not admit some sallies it has been suppressed by frequent disappointand expenses?" His mamma was so much pro-ments. The youth has not yet discovered how voked by the cost of this prank, that she would many evils are continually hovering about us, neither palliate nor conceal it; and his father, and when he is set free from the shackles of disafter some threats of rustication which his fond- cipline, looks abroad into the world with rapture; ness would not suffer him to execute, reduced the he sees an elysian region open before him, so allowance of his pocket, that he might not be variegated with beauty, and so stored with plea tempted by plenty to profusion. This method sure, that his care is rather to accumulate good, would have succeeded in a place where there are than to shun evil; he stands distracted by differ no panders to folly and extravagance, but was ent forms of delight, and has no other doubt, now likely to have produced pernicious conse- than which path to follow of those which all lead quences; for we have discovered a treaty with a equally to the bowers of happiness. broker, whose daughter he seems disposed to marry, on condition that he shall be supplied with present money, for which he is to repay thrice the value at the death of his father. There was now no time to be lost. A domes-gines that there may be greatness without safety, tic consultation was immediately held, and he was doomed to pass two years in the country; but his mother, touched with his tears, declared that she thought him too much of a man to be any longer confined to his book, and he therefore begins his travels to-morrow under a French governor. I am, &c. EUMATHES. BAXTER, in the narrative of his own life, has enumerated several opinions, which, though he thought them evident and incontestable at his first entrance into the world, time and experience disposed him to change. Whoever reviews the state of his own mind from the dawn of manhood to its decline, and considers what he pursued or dreaded, slighted or esteemed, at different periods of his age, will have no reason to imagine such changes of sentiment peculiar to any station or character. Every man, however careless and inattentive, has conviction forced upon him; the lectures of time obtrude themselves upon the most unwilling or dissipated auditor; and by comparing our past with our present thoughts, we perceive that we have changed our minds, though perhaps we cannot discover when the alteration happened, or by what causes it was produced. This revolution of sentiments occasions a perpetual contest between the old and young. They who imagine themselves entitled to veneration He who has seen only the superficies of life believes every thing to be what it appears, and rarely suspects that external splendour conceals any latent sorrow or vexation. He never ima affluence without content, jollity without friendship, and solitude without peace. He fancies himself permitted to cull the blessings of every condition, and to leave its inconveniences to the idle and the ignorant. He is inclined to believe no man miserable but by his own fault, and sel dom looks with much pity upon failings or mis carriages, because he thinks them willingly ad mitted, or negligently incurred. It is impossible, without pity and contempt, to hear a youth of generous sentiments and warm imagination, declaring in the moment of openness and confidence, his designs and expecta tions; because long life is possible, he considers it as certain, and therefore promises himself all the changes of happiness, and provides gratifications for every desire. He is, for a time, to give himself wholly to frolic and diversion, to range the world in search of pleasure, to delight every eye, to gain every heart, and to be celebrated equally for his pleasing levities and solid attain ments, his deep reflections and his sparkling repar tees. He then clevates his views to nobler enjoyments, and finds all the scattered excellences of the female world united in a woman, who prefers his addresses to wealth and titles; he is afterwards to engage in business, to dissipate difficulty, and overpower opposition; to climb, by the mere force of merit, to fame and greatness; and reward all those who countenanced his rise, or paid due regard to his early excellence. At last he will retire in peace and honour; contract his views to domestic pleasures; form the manners of children like himself; observe how every year expands the beauty of his daughters, and how his sons catch ardour from their father's history; he will give laws to the neighbourhood, dictate axioms to posterity; and leave the world an example of wisdom and of happiness. With hopes like these, he sallies jocund into life; to little purpose is he told, that the condition of humanity admits no pure and unmingled happiness; that the exuberant gayety of youth ends in poverty or disease; that uncommon qualifications and contrarieties of excellence, produce envy equally with applause; that, whatever adiniration and fondness may promise him, he must marry a wife like the wives of others, with some virtues and some faults, and be as often disgusted by her vices, as delighted by her elegance; that if he adventures into the circle of action, he must expect to encounter men as artful, as daring, as resolute as himself; that of his children, some may be deformed, and others vicious; some may disgrace him by their follies; some offend him by their insolence, and some exhaust him by their profusion. He hears all this with obstinate incredulity, and wonders by what malignity old age is influenced, that it cannot forbear to fill his ears with predictions of misery. Among other pleasing errors of young minds, is the opinion of their own importance. He that has not yet remarked how little attention his contemporaries can spare from their own affairs, conceives all eyes turned upon himself, and imagines every one that approaches him to be an enemy or a follower, an admirer or a spy. He therefore considers his fame as involved in the event of every action. Many of the virtues and vices of youth proceed from this quick sense of reputation. This it is that gives firmness and constancy, fidelity and disinterestedness, and it is this that kindles resentment for slight injuries, and dictates all the principles of sanguinary honour. But as time brings him forward into the world, he soon discovers that he only shares fame or reproach with innumerable partners; that he is left unmarked in the obscurity of the crowd; and that what he does, whether good or bad, soon gives way to new objects of regard. He then easily sets himself free from the anxieties of reputation, and considers praise or censure as a transient breath, which, while he hears it, is passing away, without any lasting mischief or advantage. In youth, it is common to measure right and wrong by the opinion of the world, and in age, to act without any measure but interest, and to lose shame without substituting virtue. Such is the condition of life, that something is always wanting to happiness. In youth, we have warm hopes, which are soon blasted by rashness and negligence, and great designs, which are defeated by inexperience. In age, we have knowledge and prudence without spirit to exert, or motives to prompt them; we are able to plan schemes, and regulate measures; but have not time remaining to bring them to com-1 pletion. has never been formally extended, though equally entitled to regard with those triflers, who have hitherto supplied you with topics of amusement or instruction. I am, Mr. Rambler, a legacyhunter; and, as every man is willing to think well of the tribe in which his name is registered, you will forgive my vanity, if I remind you that the legacy-hunter, however degraded by an illcompounded appellation in our barbarous language, was known, as I am told, in ancient Rome, by the sonorous titles of captator and hærcdipeta. My father was an attorney in the country, who married his master's daughter in hopes of a fortune which he did not obtain, having been, as he afterwards discovered, chosen by her only because she had no better offer, and was afraid of service. I was the first offspring of a marriage, thus reciprocally fraudulent, and therefore could not be expected to inherit much dignity or generosity, and if I had them not from nature, was not likely ever to attain them; for, in the years which I spent at home, I never heard any reason for action or forbearance, but that we should gain money or lose it; nor was taught any other style of commendation, than that Mr. Sneaker is a warm man, Mr. Gripe has done his business, and needs care for nobody. My parents, though otherwise not great philosophers, knew the force of early education, and took care that the blank of my understanding should be filled with impressions of the value of money. My mother used, upon all occasions, to inculcate some salutary axioms, such as might incite me to keep what I had, and get what I could; she informed me that we were in a world, where all must catch that catch can; and as I grew up, stored my memory with deeper observations; restrained me from the usual puerile expenses, by remarking that many a little make a mickle; and when I envied the finery of my neighbours, told me that brag was a good dog, but holdfast was better. a I was soon sagacious enough to discover that I was not born to great wealth; and having heard no other name for happiness, was sometimes inclined to repine at my condition. But my mother always relieved me by saying that there was money enough in the family, that it was good to be of kin to means, that I had nothing' to do but to please my friends, and I might come to hold up my head with the best squire in the country. These splendid expectations arose from our alliance to three persons of considerable fortune. My mother's aunt had attended on a lady, who, when she died, rewarded her officiousness and fidelity with a large legacy. My father had two relations, of whom one had broken his indentures and run to sea, from whence, after an absence of thirty years, he returned with ten thousand pounds; and the other had lured an heiress out of a window, who dying of her first child, had left him her estate, on which he lived, with out any other care than to collect his rents, and preserve from poachers that game which he could not kill himself, These hoarders of money were visited and courted by all who had any pretence to approach them, and received presents and compliments from cousins who could scarcely tell the degree of their relation. But we had peculiar advan 1 1 tages, which encouraged us to hope, that we should by degrees supplant our competitors. My father, by his profession, made himself necessary in their affairs; for the sailor and the chambermaid, he inquired out mortgages and securities, and wrote bonds and contracts; and had endeared himself to the old woman, who once rashly lent a hundred pounds without consulting him, by informing her that her debtor was on the point of bankruptcy, and posting so expeditiously with an execution that all the other creditors were defrauded. races, only that he might show the gentlemen how a sailor sat upon a horse. The old gentlewoman thought herself wiser than both, for she lived with no servant but a maid, and saved her money. The others were indeed sufficiently frugal; but the squire could not live without dogs and horses, and the sailor never suffered the day to pass but over a bowl of punch, to which, as he was not critical in the choice of his company, every man was welcome that could roar out a catch, or tell a story. All these, however, I was to please; an arTo the squire he was a kind of steward, and duous task; but what will not youth and avahad distinguished himself in his office by his ad- rice undertake? I had an unresisting suppleness dress in raising the rents, his inflexibility in dis- of temper, and an unsatiable wish for riches; I tressing the tardy tenants, and his acuteness in was perpetually instigated by the ambition of my setting the parish free from burdensome inhabit-parents, and assisted occasionally by their inants, by shifting them off to some other settle-structions. What these advantages enabled me to perform, shall be told in the next letter of, ment. Business made frequent attendance necessary; trust soon produced intimacy; and success gave a claim to kindness; so that we had opportunity to practise all the arts of flattery and endearment. Yours, &c. CAPTATOR. Nil mihi das vivus, dicis post fata daturum, Si non insanis, scis, Maro, quid cupiam. My mother, who could not support the thought No. 198.] SATURDAY, FEB. 8, 1752. She trained me by these precepts to the utmost ductility of obedience, and the closest attention to profit. At an age when other boys are sporting the fields, or murmuring in the school, I was contriving some new method of paying my court; inquiring the age of my future benefactors; or considering how I should employ their lega cies. If our eagerness of money could have been satisfied with the possessions of any one of my relations, they might perhaps have been obtained, but as it was impossible to be always present with all three, our competitors were busy to efface any trace of affection which we might have left behind; and since there was not, on any part, such superiority of merit as could enforce a constant and unshaken preference, whoever was the last that flattered or obliged had for a time the ascendant. My relations maintained a regular exchange of courtesy, took care to miss no occasion of condolence or congratulation, and sent presents at stated times, but had in their hearts not much esteem for one another. The seaman looked with contempt upon the squire as a milksop and a landman, who had lived without knowing the points of the compass, or seeing any part of the world beyond the county-town; and, whenever they met, would talk of longitude and latitude, and circles and tropics, would scarcely tell him the hour without some mention of the horizon and meridian, nor show him the news without detecting his ignorance of the situation of other countries. The squire considered the sailor as a rude uncultivated savage, with little more of human than his form, and diverted himself with his ignorance of all common objects and affairs; when he could persuade him to go into the fields, he always exposed him to the sportsmen, by sending him to look for game in improper places; and once prevailed upon him to be present at the You've told me, Maro, whilst you live, MR. RAMBLER. MART F. LEWIS SIR, You, who must have observed the inclination which almost every man, however unactive or insignificant, discovers of representing his life as distinguished by extraordinary events, will not wonder that Captator thinks his narrative important enough to be continued. Nothing is more common than for those to teaze their companions with their history, who have neither done nor suffered any thing that can excite curiosity, or afford instruction. As I was taught to flatter with the first essays of speech, and had very early lost every other passion in the desire of money, I began my pursuit with omens of success; for I divided my officiousness so judiciously among my relations, that I was equally the favourite of all. When any of them entered the door, I went to welcome him with raptures; when he went away, I hung down my head, and sometimes entreated to go with him with so much importunity, that I very narrowly escaped a consent which I dreaded in my heart. When at an annual entertainment they were all together, I had a harder task; but plied them so impatiently with caresses, that none could charge me with neglect; and when they were wearied with my fondness and civilities, I was always dismissed with money to buy playthings. Life cannot be kept at a stand; the years of innocence and prattle were soon at an end, and other qualifications were necessary to recom mend me to continuance of kindness. It luckily happened that none of my friends had high notions of book-learning. The sailor hated to see tall boys shut up in a school, when they might more properly be seeing the world, and making | When she heard of my exploits in the field, she their fortunes; and was of opinion that, when the first rules of arithmetic were known, all that was necessary to make a man complete might be learned on ship-board. The squire only insisted that so much scholarship was indispensably necessary as might confer ability to draw a lease and read the court-hands; and the old chambermaid declared loudly her contempt of books, and her opinion that they only took the head of the main chance. To unite, as well as we could, all their systems, I was bred at home. Each was taught to believe that I followed his directions, and I gained likewise, as my mother observed, this advantage, that I was always in the way; for she had known many favourite children sent to schools or academies, and forgotten. As I grew fitter to be trusted to my own discretion, I was often despatched upon various pretences to visit my relations, with directions from my parents how to ingratiate myself, and drive away competitors. would shake her head, inquire how much I should be the richer for all my performances, and lament that such sums should be spent upon dogs and horses. If the sailor told her of my inclination to travel, she was sure there was no place like England, and could not imagine why any man that can live in his own country should leave it. This sullen and frigid being I found means, however, to propitiate by frequent commendations of frugality, and perpetual care to avoid expense. From the sailor was our first and most considerable expectation; for he was richer than the chambermaid, and older than the squire. He was so awkward and bashful among women, that we concluded him secure from matrimony; and the noisy fondness with which he used to welcome me to his house, made us imagine that he would look out for no other heir, and that we had nothing to do but wait patiently for his death. But in the midst of our triumph, my uncle saluted us one morning with a cry of transport, and clapping his hand hard on my shoulder, told me, I was a happy fellow to have a friend like him in the world, for he came to fit me out for a voyage with one of his old acquaintances. I turned pale and trembled; my father told him that he believed, my constitution not fitted to the sea; and my mother, bursting into tears, cried out that her heart would break if she lost me. All this had no effect; the sailor was wholly insusceptive of the softer passions, and, without regard to tears or arguments, persisted in his resolution to make me a man. I was, from my infancy, considered by the sailor as a promising genius, because I liked punch better than wine; and I took care to improve this prepossession by continual inquiries about the art of navigation, the degree of heat and cold in different climates, the profits of trade, and the dangers of shipwreck. I admired the courage of the seaman, and gained his heart by importuning him for a recital of his adventures, and a sight of his foreign curiosities. I listened with an appearance of close attention to stories which I could already repeat, and at the close never failed to express my resolution to visit We were obliged to comply in appearance, and distant countries, and my contempt of the cow-preparations were accordingly made. I took ards and drones that spend all their lives in their leave of my friends with great alacrity, proclaimnative parish; though I had in reality no desire ed the beneficence of my uncle with the highest of any thing but money, nor ever felt the stimu- strains of gratitude, and rejoiced at the opportu lations of curiosity or ardour of adventure, but nity now put into my hands of gratifying my thirst would contentedly have passed the years of of knowledge. But a week before the day apNestor in receiving rents, and lending upon pointed for my departure I fell sick by my mo mortgages. ther's direction, and refused all food but what she privately brought me; whenever my uncle visited me I was lethargic or delirious, but took care in my raving fits to talk incessantly of travel and merchandize. The room was kept dark; the table was filled with vials and gallipots; my mother was with difficulty persuaded not to endanger her life with nocturnal attendance; my father lamented the loss of the profits of the voyages; and such superfluity of artifices was employed, as perhaps might have discovered the cheat to a man of penetration. But the sailor, unacquainted with subtilties and stratagems, was easily deluded; and as the ship could not stay for my recovery, sold the cargo, and left me to reestablish my health at leisure. The squire I was able to please with less hypocrisy, for I really thought it pleasant enough to kill the game and eat it. Some arts of falsehood, however, the hunger of gold persuaded me to practise, by which, though no other mischief was produced, the purity of my thoughts was vitiated, and the reverence for truth gradually destroyed. I sometimes purchased fish, and pretended to have caught them; I hired the countrymen to show me partridges, and then gave my uncle intelligence of their haunt; I learned the seats of hares at night, and discovered them in the morning with a sagacity that raised the wonder and envy of old sportsmen. One only obstruction to the advancement of my reputation I could never fully surmount; I was naturally a coward, and was therefore always left shamefully behind, when there was a necessity to leap a hedge, to swim a river, or force the horses to their utmost speed; but as these exigencies did not frequently happen, I maintained my honour with sufficient success, and was never left out of a hunting party. The old chambermaid was not so certainly, nor so easily pleased, for she had no predominant passion but avarice, and was therefore cold and inaccessible. She had no conception of any vir in a young man but that of saving his money. I was sent to regain my flesh in a purer air, lest it should appear never to have been wasted, and in two months returned to deplore my disappointment. My uncle pitied my dejection, and bid me prepare myself against next year, for no land-lubber should touch his money. A reprieve however was obtained, and perhaps some new stratagem might have succeeded another spring; but my uncle unhappily made amorous advances to my mother's maid: who, to promote so advantageous a match, discovered the secret with which only she had been entrusted. He stormed, and raved, and declaring that he 296 would have heirs of his own, and not give his less under the shock of electricity; I have twice substance to cheats and cowards, married the dislocated my limbs, and once fractured my girl in two days, and has now four children. skull in essaying to fly, and four times endanCowardice is always scorned, and deceit uni-gered my life by submitting to the transfusion of versally detested. I found my friends, if not blood. wholly alienated, at least cooled in their affec In the first period of my studies I exerted the tion; the squire, though he did not wholly dis-powers of my body more than those of my mind, card me, was less fond, and often inquired when and was not without hopes that fame might be I would go to sea. I was obliged to bear his in- purchased by a few broken bones without the sults, and endeavoured to rekindle his kindness toil of thinking; but having been shattered by by assiduity and respect; but all my care was some violent experiments; and constrained to vain; he died without a will, and the estate de- confine myself to my books, I passed six and volved to the legal heir. thirty years in searching the treasures of ancient wisdom, but am at last amply recompensed for all my perseverance. Thus has the folly of my parents condemned me to spend in flattery and attendance those years in which I might have been qualified to place myself above hope or fear. I am arrived at manhood without any useful art or generous sentiment; and if the old woman should likewise at last deceive me, am in danger at once of beggary and ignorance. I am, &c. CAPTATOR. No. 199.] TUESDAY, FEB. 11, 1752. SIR, Decolor, obscurus, vilis, non ille repe xam CLAUDIANUS. Obscure, unprized, and dark, the magnet lies, TO THE RAMBLER. THOUGH you have seldom digressed from moral subjects, I suppose you are not so rigorous or cynical as to deny the value or usefulness of natural philosophy; or to have lived in this age of inquiry and experiment, without any attention to the wonders every day produced by the pokers of magnetism and the wheels of electricity. At least, 1 may be allowed to hope that, since nothing is more contrary to moral excellence than envy, you will not refuse to promote the happiness of others, merely because you cannot partake of their enjoyments. In confidence, therefore, that your ignorance has not made you an enemy to knowledge, I offer you the honour of introducing to the notice of the public an adept, who, having long laboured for the benefit of mankind, is not willing, like too many of his predecessors, to conceal his secrets in the grave. The curiosity of the present race of philosophers, having been long exercised upon electricity, has been lately transformed to magnetism; the qualities of the loadstone have been investigated, if not with much advantage, yet with great applause; and as the highest praise of art is to imitate nature, I hope no man will think the makers of artificial magnets celebrated or reverenced above their deserts. I have for some time employed myself in the same practice, but with deeper knowledge and more extensive views. While my contemporaries were touching needles and raising weights, or busying themselves with inclination and variation, I have been examining those qualities of magnetism which may be applied to the accommodation and happiness of common life. I have left to inferior understandings the care of conducting the sailor through the hazards of the ocean, and reserved to myself the more difficult and illustrious province of preserving the connubial compact from violation, and setting mankind free for ever from the danger of supposititious children, and the torments of fruitless vigilance and anxious suspicion. To defraud any man of his due praise is un worthy of a philosopher; I shall therefore openly ble secret to the rabbi Abraham Ben Hannase, confess, that I owe the first hint of this inestimawho, in his treatise of precious stones, has left this account of the magnet: "The calamita, or loadstone that attracts iron, produces many bad fantasies in man. If therefore any husband be disturbed with jeaWomen fly from this stone. lousy, and fear lest his wife converses with other men, let him lay this stone upon her while she is wakes, clasp her husband fondly in her arms; asleep. If she be pure, she will, when she but if she be guilty, she will fall out of bed, and run away." could not easily conceive why it had remained When I first read this wonderful passage, I hitherto unregarded in such a zealous competition for magnetical fame. It would surely be unjust to suspect that any of the candidates are strangers to the name or works of rabbi AbraRoyal Society in favour of the English language, ham, or to conclude, from a late edict of the that philosophy and literature are no longer to act in concert. Yet, how should a quality so useful escape promulgation, but by the obscurity of the language in which it was delivered? Why are footmen and chambermaids paid on every Many have signalized themselves my melting their estates in crucibles, I was born to no fortune, and therefore had only my mind and my body to devote to knowledge, and the gratitude of posterity will attest that neither mind nor body has been spared. I have sat whole weeks without sleep by the side of an athanor, to watch the movement of projection; I have made the first experiment in nineteen diving-engines of new house with a man who broke his legs in attempting to construction; I have fallen eleven times speech-fly.-C. *It is said that Dr. Johnson once lodged in the same |