previous esteem. We love some men, we know not why; our tenderness is naturally excited in all their concerns; we excuse their faults with the same indulgence, and approve their virtues with the same applause with which we consider our own. While we entertain the passion, it pleases us, we cherish it with delight, and give it up with reluctance; and love for love is all the reward we expect or desire. Gratitude, on the contrary, is never conferred, but where there have been previous endeavours to excite it; we consider it as a debt, and our spirits wear a load till we have dis. charged the obligation. Every acknowledgment of gratitude is a circumstance of humiliation; and some are found to submit to frequent mortifications of this kind, proclaiming what obligations they owe, merely because they think it in some measure cancels the debt. Thus love is the most easy and agreeable, and gratitude the most humiliating affection of the mind we never reflect on the man we love, without exulting in our choice, while he who has bound us to him by benefits alone, rises to our idea as a person to whom we have in some measure forfeited our freedom. Love and gratitude are seldom, therefore, found in the same breast without impairing each other; we may tender the one or the other singly to those we converse with, but cannot command both together. By attempting to increase, we diminish them; the mind becomes bankrupt under too large obligations; all additional benefits lessen every hope of future return, and bar up every avenue that leads to tenderness. In all our connexions with society, therefore, it is not only generous but prudent, to appear insensible of the value of those favours we bestow, and endeavour to make the obligation seem as light as possible. Love must be taken by stratagem, and not by open force: we should seem ignorant that we oblige, and leave the mind at full liberty to give or refuse its affections; for constraint may indeed leave the receiver still grateful, but it will certainly produce disgust. straying while rain and thunder conspired to make solitude still more hideous, he perceived a hermit's cell, and approaching, asked for shelter; "Enter," cries the hermit, in a severe tone," men deserve not to be obliged, but it would be imitating their ingratitude to treat them as they deserve. Come in examples of vice may sometimes strengthen us in the ways of virtue." After a frugal meal, which consisted of roots and tea, Mencius could not repress his curiosity to know why the hermit bad retired from mankind, the actions of whom taught the truest lessons of wisdom. "Mention not the name of man," cries the hermit with indignation; here let me live retired from a base ungrateful world; here among the beasts of the forest I shall find no flatterers: the lion is a generous enemy, and the dog a faithful friend; but man, base man, can poison the bowl and smile while he presents it !"-" You have been used ill by mankind," interrupted the philosopher shrewdly. "Yes," returned the hermit, "on mankind have I exhausted my whole fortune, and this staff, and that cup, and those roots, are all that I have in return."-" Did you bestow your fortune, or did you only lend it?" returned Mencius. "I bestowed it undoubtedly replied the other, for where were the merit of being a money-lender?"-" Did they own that they received it?" still adds the philosopher. "A thousand times," cries the hermit; "they every day loaded me with professions of gratitude for obligations received, and solicitations for future favours."-" If then," says Mencius smiling, "you did not lend your fortune in order to have it returned, it is unjust to accuse them of ingratitude; they owned themselves obliged, you expected no more, and they certainly earned each favour by frequently acknowledging the obligation." The hermit was struck with the reply, and surveying his guest with emotion,-"I have heard of the great Mencius, and you certainly are the man: I am now fourscore years old, but still a child in wisdom: take me back to the school of man, and educate me as one of the most ignorant and the youngest of your disciples !" If to procure gratitude be our only aim, Indeed my son it is better to have friends in there is no great art in making the acquisition; our passage through life, than grateful depena benefit conferred demands a just acknowledg-dents, and as love is a more willing, so it is a ment, and we have a right to insist upon our due. But it were much more prudent to forego our right on such an occasion, and exchange it, if we can, for love. We receive but little advantage from repeated protestations of gratitude, but they cost him very much from whom we exact them in return: Exacting a grateful acknowledgment, is demanding a debt by which the creditor is not advantaged, and the debtor pays with reluctance. As Mencius, the philosopher, was travelling in pursuit of wisdom, night overtook him at the foot of a gloomy mountain remote from the habitations of men. Here, as he was more lasting tribute than extorted obligation. As we are uneasy when greatly obliged, gratitude once refused can never after be recovered: the mind that is base enough to disallow the just return, instead of feeling any uneasiness upon recollection, triumphs in its new acquired freedom, and in some measure is pleased with conscious baseness. est concessions to clear the way to a wished-for explanation; the most trifling acknowledgment, the slightest accident, serves to effect a mutual reconciliation. But instead of pursuing the thought, permit me to soften the severity of advice, by a European story, which will fully illustrate my meaning. A fiddler and his wife who had rubbed through life, as most couples usually do, sometimes good friends, at others not quite so well, one day happened to have a dispute, which was conducted with becoming spirit on both sides. The wife was sure she was right, and the husband was resolved to have his own way. What was to be done in such a case? the quarrel grew worse by explanations, and at last the fury of both rose to such a pitch that they made a vow never to sleep together in the same bed for the future. This was the most rash vow that could be imagined, for they were still friends at bottom, and besides they had but one bed in the house: however, resolved they were to go through with it, and at night the fiddle-case was laid in bed between them, in order to make a separation. In this manner they continued for three weeks; every night the fiddle-case being placed as a barrier to divide them. By this time, however, each heartily repented of their vow, their resentment was at an end, and their love began to return; they wished the fiddle-case away, but both had too much spirit to begin. One night, however, as they were both lying awake with the detested fiddle-case between them, the husband happened to sneeze, to which the wife, as is usual in such cases, bid God bless him: "Ay but," returns the husband, "woman, do you say that from your heart?""Indeed I do, my poor Nicholas," cries his wife: "I say it with all my heart." "If so, then," says the husband, "we had as good remove the fiddle-case." LETTER LXVI. FROM THE SAME. Books, my son, while they teach us to respect the interest of others, often make us unmindful of our own; while they instruct the youthful reader to grasp at social happiness, he grows miserable in detail, and attentive to uni. versal harmony, often forgets that he himself has a part to sustain in the concert. I dislike therefore the philosopher who describes the inconveniences of life in such pleasing colours that the pupil grows enamoured of distress, longs to try the charms of poverty, meets it without dread, nor fears its inconveniences till he severely feels them. A youth who has thus spent his life among books, new to the world, and unacquainted with man but by philosophic information, may be considered as a being whose mind is filled with the vulgar errors of the wise; utterly unqualified for a journey through life, yet confident of his own skill in the direction, he sets out with confidence blunders on with vanity, and finds himself at last undone. He first has learned from books, and then lays it down as a maxim, that all mankind are virtuous or vicious in excess; and he has been long taught to detest vice, and love virtue : warm, therefore, in attachments, and steadfast in enmity, he treats every creature as a friend or foe; expects from those he loves unerring integrity, and consigns his enemies to the reproach of wanting every virtue. On this principle he proceeds; and here begins his disappointments. Upon a closer inspection of human nature he perceives, that he should have moderated his friendship, and softened his severity; for he often finds the excellences of one part of mankind clouded with vice, and the faults of the other brightened with virtue; he finds no character so sanctified that has not its failings, none so infamous but has somewhat to attract our esteem: he beholds impiety in lawn and fidelity in fetters. He now, therefore, but too late, perceives that his regards should have been more cool, and his hatred less violent; that the truly wise seldom court romantic friendships with the good, and avoid, if possible, the resentment even of the wicked: every moment gives him fresh instances that the bonds of friendship are broken, if drawn too closely, and that those whom he has treated with disrespect more than retaliate the injury; at length, therefore, he is obliged to confess, that, he has declared war upon the vicious half of mankind, without being able to form an alliance among the virtuous to espouse his quarrel. Our book-taught philosopher, however, is now too far advanced to recede; and though poverty be the just consequence of the many enemies his conduct has created, yet he is resolved to meet it without shrinking. Philo. sophers have described poverty in most charming colours, and even his vanity is touched in thinking, that he shall show the world, in himself, one more example of patience, fortitude, and resignation. "Come, then, O Poverty! for what is there in thee dreadful to the WISE? Temperance, Health, and Frugality walk in thy train; Cheerfulness and Liberty are ever thy companions. Shall any be ashamed of thee, of whom Cincinnatus was not ashamed? The running brook, the herbs of the field, can amply satisfy nature; man wants but little, nor that little long :* Come, then, O Poverty, while kings stand by, and gaze with admiration at the true philosopher's resignation. * Our author has repeated this thought, nearly in the same words, in his HERMIT, Then, pilgrim, turn, thy cares forego; The goddess appears; for Poverty ever comes at the call; but, alas! he finds her by no means the charming figure books and his warm imagination had painted. As when an Eastern bride, whom her friends and relations had long described as a model of perfection, pays her first visit, the longing bridegroom lifts the veil to see a face he had never seen before; but instead of a countenance blazing with beauty like the sun, he beholds deformity shooting icicles to his heart; such appears Poverty to her new entertainer; all the fabric of enthusiasm is at once demolished, and a thousand miseries rise upon its ruins, while Contempt, with pointing finger, is foremost in the hideous procession. The poor man now finds, that he can get no kings to look at him while he is eating; he finds, that in proportion as he grows poor, the world turns its back upon him, and gives him leave to act the philosopher in all the majesty of solitude. It might be agreeable enough to play the philosopher while we are conscious that mankind are spectators; but what signifies wearing the mask of sturdy contentment, and mounting the stage of restraint, when not one creature will assist at the exhibition! Thus is he forsaken of men, while his fortitude wants the satisfaction even of self-applause; for he either does not feel his present calamities, and that is natural insensibility, or he disguises his feelings, and that is dissimulation. Spleen now begins to take up the man: not distinguishing in his resentments, he regards all mankind with detestation, and commencing man-hater, seeks solitude to be at liberty to rail. come from abroad! Like a skilful gardener, she invites them from every foreign climate to herself. Here every great exotic strikes root as soon as imported, and feels the genial beam of favour; while the mighty metropolis, like one vast munificent dung-hill, receives them indiscriminatly to her breast, and supplies each with more than native nourishment. In other countries, the physician pretends to cure disorders in the lump; the same doctor who combats the gout in the toe, shall pretend to prescribe for a pain in the head, and he who at one time cures a consumption, shall at another give drugs for a dropsy. How absurd and ridiculous! this is being a mere jack-of-all trades. Is the animal machine less complicated than a brass pin? Not less than ten different hands are required to make a pin; and shall the body be set right by one single operator ? The English are sensible of the force of this reasoning; they have, therefore, one doctor for the eyes, another for the toes; they have their sciatica doctors, and concluding doctors; they have one doctor who is modestly content with securing them from bug bites, and five hundred who prescribe for the bite of mad dogs. The learned are not here retired, with vicious modesty, from public view; for every dead wall is covered with their names, their abilities, their amazing cures, and places of abode. Few patients can escape falling into their hands, unless blasted by lightning, or struck dead with some sudden disorder. It may sometimes happen, that a stranger, who does not understand English, or a countryman who cannot read, dies, without ever hearing of the vivifyIt has been said, that he who retires to soli-ing drops, or restorative electuary; but, for my tude is either a beast or an angel. The censure is too severe, and the praise unmerited: the discontented being who retires from society, is generally some good-natured man who has begun life without experience, and knew not how to gain it in his intercourse with mankind. Adieu. LETTER LXVII. FROM LIEN CHI ALTANGI, TO FUM HOAM, FIRST PEKIN IN CHINA. I FORMERLY acquainted thee, most grave Fum, with the excellence of the English in the art of healing. The Chinese boast their skill in pulses, the Siamese their botanical knowledge, but the English advertising physicians alone of being the great restorers of health, the dispensers of youth, and the insurers of longevity. I can never enough admire the sagacity of this country for the encouragement given to the professors of this art; with what indulgence does she foster up those of her own growth, and kindly cherish those that part, before I was a week in town, I had learned to bid the whole catalogue of disorders defiance, and was perfectly acquainted with the names and the medicines of every great man. or great woman of them all. But as nothing pleases curiosity more than anecdotes of the great, however minute or trifling, I must present you, inadequate as my abilities are to the subject, with some account of those personages who lead in this honourable profession. The first upon the list of glory is doctor Richard Rock, F. U. N. This great man, short of stature, is fat, and waddles as he walks. He always wears a white three-tailed wig nicely combed, and frizzed upon each cheek; sometimes he carries a cane, but a hat never. It is indeed very remarkable, that this extraordinary personage should never wear a hat, but so it is, he never wears a hat. He is usually drawn at the top of his own bills, sitting in his arm-chair, holding a little bottle between his finger and thumb, and surrounded with rotten teeth, nippers, pills, packets, and gallipots. No man can promise fairer nor better than he; for, as he observes, "Be your disorder never so far gone, be under no uneasiness, make your. self quite easy; I can cure you." The next in fame, though by some reckoned | ho. In the very teeth of opposition I will of equal pretensions, is doctor Timothy Franks, maintain, "That the heart is the son of the F.O. G. H., living in a place called the Old liver, which has the kidneys for its mother, Bailey. As Rock is remarkably squab, his and the stomach for its wife."* I have theregreat rival Franks is as remarkably tall. He fore, drawn up a disputation challenge, which was born in the year of the Christian era, 1692, is to be sent speedily, to this effect: and is, while I now write, exactly sixty-eight years, three months, and four days old. Age, however, has no way impaired his usual health and vivacity: I am told he generally walks with his breast open. This gentleman, who is of a mixed reputation, is particularly remarkable for becoming assurance, which carries him gently through life; for, except doctor Rock, none are more blest with the advantages of face than doctor Franks. And yet the great have their foibles as well as the little. I am almost ashamed to mention it; let the foibles of the great rest in peace. Yet I must impart the whole to my friend. These two great men are actually now at variance: yes, my dear Fum Hoam, by the head of our grandfather, they are now at variance like mere men, mere common mortals. The champion Rock advises the world to beware of bog-trotting quacks, while Franks retorts the wit and the sarcasm (for they have both a world of wit) by fixing on his rival the odious appellation of Dumplin Dick. He calls the serious doctor Rock, Dumplin Dick! Head of Confucius, what profanation! Dumplin Dick! What a pity, ye powers, that the learned, who were born mutually to assist in enlightening the world, should thus differ among themselves, and make even the profession ridiculous. Sure the world is wide enough, at least, for two great personages to figure in men of science should leave controversy to the little world below them; and then we might see Rock and Franks walking together hand in hand, smiling onward to immortality. Next to these is doctor Walker, preparator of his own medicines. This gentleman is remarkable for an aversion to quacks; frequently cautioning the public to be careful into what hands they commit their safety; by which he would insinuate, that if they do not employ him alone, they must be undone. His public spirit is equal to his success. Not for himself, but his country, is the gallipot prepared, and the drops sealed up with proper directions, for any part of the town or country. All this is for his country's good; so that he is now grown old in the practice of physic and virtue; and, to use his own elegance of expression, "There is not such another medicine as his in the world again." "I, Lien Chi Altangi, , N, K. H. native of Honan in China, to Richard Rock, F. U. N. native of Garbage-alley, in Wapping, defiance.-Though, Sir, I am perfectly sensible of your importance, though no stranger to your studies in the path of nature, yet there be many things in the art of physic with which you are yet unacquainted. I know full well a doctor thou art great Rock, and so am I. Wherefore, I challenge, and do hereby invite you to a trial of learning upon hard problems, and knotty physical points. In this debate we will calmly investigate the whole theory and practice of medicine, botany, and chemistry: and I invite all the Philomaths, with many of the lecturers in medicine, to be present at the dispute; which, I hope, will be carried on with due decorum, with proper gravity, and as befits men of erudition and science, among each other. But before we meet face to face, I would thus publicly, and in the face of the whole world, desire you to answer me one question; I ask it with the same earnestness with which you have often solicited the public ; answer me, I say, at once, without having recourse to your physical dictionary, which of those three disorders, incident to the human body, is the most fatal, the syncope, parenthesis, or apoplexy? I beg your reply may be as public as this my demand. † I am, as hereafter may be, your admirer, or your rival. Adieu. LETTER LXVIII. FROM THE SAME. INDULGENT Nature seems to have exempted this island from many of those epidemic evils which are so fatal in other parts of the world. A want of rain but for a few days beyond the expected season in China, spreads famine, desolation and terror, over the whole country; the winds that blow from the brown bosom of the western desert are impregnated with death in every gale; but, in this fortunate land of Britain, the inhabitant courts health in every breeze, and the husbandman ever sows in joyful expectation. But though the nation be exempt from real evils, think not, my friend, that it is more happy on this account than others. They are afflicted, it is true, with neither famine nor pestilence, but then there is a disorder peculiar to the country, which every season makes This, my friend, is a formidable triumvirate; and yet, formidable as they are, I am resolved to defend the honour of Chinese physic against them all. I have made a vow to summon doctor Rock to a solemn disputation in all the mysteries of the profession, before the face of every Philomath, student in astrology, and *See Du Halde, vol. ii. fol. p. 185. member of the learned societies. I adhere to, The day after this was published the editor re and venerate the doctrines of old-Wang-shu-ceived an answer, in which the Doctor seems to be of opinion that the apoplexy is most fatal. strange ravages among them; it spreads with | The terror at first feebly enters with a disrepestilential rapidity, and infects almost every garded story of a little dog, that had gone rank of people; what is still more strange, the through a neighbouring village, that was natives have no name for this peculiar malady, thought to be mad by several that had seen though well known to foreign physicians by him. The next account comes, that a mastiff the appellation of the epidemic terror. ran through a certain town, and had bit five geese, which immediately ran mad, foamed at the bill, and died in great agony soon after. Then comes an affecting history a little boy bit in the leg, and gone down to be dipt in the salt water. When the people have sufficiently shuddered at that, they are next congealed with a frightful account of a man who was said lately to have died from a bite he had received some years before. This relation only prepares the way for another still more hideous, as how the master of a family, with seven small children, were all bit by a mad lapdog; and how the poor father first perceived the infection, by calling for a draught of water, where he saw the lapdog swimming in the cup. A season is never known to pass in which the people are not visited by this cruel calamity in one shape or another, seemingly different though ever the same one year it issues from a baker's shop in the shape of a sixpenny loaf; the next, it takes the appearance of a comet with a fiery tail; a third, it threatens like a flat-bottomed boat; and a fourth, it carries consternation at the bite of a mad dog. The people when once infected, lose their relish for happiness, saunter about with looks of despondency, ask after the calamities of the day, and receive no comfort but in heightening each other's distress. It is insignificant how remote or near, how weak or powerful the objects of terror may be; when once they resolve to fright and be frighted, the merest trifles sow consternation and dismay: each proportions his fears, not to the object, but to the dread he discovers in the countenance of others; for when once the fermentation is begun, it goes on of itself, though the original cause be discontinued which first set it in motion. A dread of mad dogs is the epidemic terror which now prevails; and the whole nation is at present actually groaning under the malignity of its influence. The people sally from their houses with that circumspection which is prudent in such as expect a mad dog at every turning. The physician publishes his prescription, the beadle prepares his halter, and a few of unusual bravery arm themselves with boots and buff gloves, in order to face the enemy if he should offer to attack them. In short, the whole people stand bravely upon their defence, and seem, by their present spirit, to show a resolution of not being tamely bit by mad dogs any longer. Their manner of knowing whether a dog be mad or not, somewhat resembles the ancient European custom of trying witches. The old woman suspected was tied hand and foot, and thrown into the water. If she swam, then she was instantly carried off to be burnt for a witch; if she sunk, then indeed she was acquitted of the charge, but drowned in the experiment. In the same manner a crowd gathers round a dog suspected of madness, and they begin by teasing the devoted animal on every side; if he attempts to stand upon the defensive and bite, then he is unanimously found guilty, for a mad dog always snaps at every thing; if, on the contrary, he strives to escape by running away, then he can expect no compassion, for mad dogs always run straight forward before them. It is pleasant enough for a neutral being like me, who has no share in these ideal calamities, to mark the stages of this national disease. When epidemic terror is thus once excited, every morning comes loaded with sor.e new disaster: as, in stories of ghosts, each loves to hear the account, though it only serves to make him uneasy, so here each listens with eagerness, and adds to the tidings new circumstances of peculiar horror. A lady, for instance, in the country, of very weak nerves, has been frightened by the barking of a dog; and this, alas! too frequently happens. The story soon is improved and spreads, that a mad dog had frightened a lady of distinction. These circumstances begin to grow terrible before they have reached the neighbouring village, and there the report is, that a lady of quality was bit by a mad mastiff. This account every moment gathers new strength; and grows more dismal as it approaches the capital; and by the time it has arrived in town, the lady is described, with wild eyes, foaming mouth, running mad upon all-fours, barking like a dog, biting her servants, and at last smothered between two beds by the advice of her doctors; while the mad mastiff is in the meantime ranging the whole country over, slavering at the mouth, and seeking whom he may devour. My landlady, a good-natured woman, but a little credulous, waked me some mornings ago before her usual hour, with horror and astonishment in her looks; she desired me, if I had any regard for my safety to keep within; for a few days ago so dismal an accident had happened, as to put all the world upon their guard. A mad dog down in the country, she assured me, had bit a farmer, who soon becoming mad, ran into his own yard, and bit a fine brindled cow; the cow quickly became as mad as the man, began to foam at the mouth, and raising herself up, walked about on her hind legs, sometimes barking like a dog, and sometimes attempting to talk like the farmer. Upon examining the grounds of this story, I found my landlady had it from one neighbour, who had it from another neighbour, who heard it from very good authority. |