matter so far, that he cannot endure to see a female eat with an appetite; and would no more allow his sister or his niece to associate with a woman of a good stomach, than with one of a tainted reputation.

In all these characters, I perceived, upon a little reflection, the same leading propensity to bring the happiness, the excellence, or the defects of others, to our own standard; and I am persuaded, were we narrowly to examine those around us, we should find among the busy, the idle, the ambitious, or the dissipated, the same colouring of objects, according to their own prevailing taste or humour; and that, though the examples might not sound so ludicrously, the principle would still be found the same, would still, in the eye of a philosopher, be the Old Hock of Symposius.

A

N° 87. SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 30, 1786,

-Sed in longum tamen ævum

Manserunt bodieque manent vestigia ruris.

HOR

THAT there is Nobody in town, is the observation of every person one has met for several weeks past, and though the word Nobody, like its fellow-vocable Everybody, has a great latitude of signification, and in this instance means upwards of threescore thousand people, yet undoubtedly, in a certain rank of life, one finds, at this season, a very great blank in one's accustomed society. He whom circumstances oblige to remain in town, feels a sort of imprisonment from which his more fortunate acquaintance have escaped to purer air, to fresher breezes, and a clearer sky.

He sees, with a very melancholy aspect, the close window-shutters of deserted houses, the rusted knockers, and mossy pavement of unfrequented squares, and the few distant scattered figures of empty walks; while he fancies, in the country, the joyousness of the reapers, and the shout of the sportsman enlivening the fields; and within doors, the hours made jocund by the festivity of assembled friends, the frolic, the dance, and the song.

Though the prevailing incidents of my latter part of life have fixed it almost constantly to a town, yet nobody is more enthusiastically fond of the country than I; and amidst all my banishment from it, I have contrived still to preserve a relish for its pleasures and an enjoyment of its sports, which few who visit it so seldom are able to retain. I can still weave an angling-line, or dress a fly, am at least a hit-andmiss man a-shooting, and have not forgotten the tune of a View Holla, or the encouraging Hark forward! to a cautious hound. But though these are a set of capacities which mark one's denizenship to the country, and which therefore I am proud to re tain, yet I confess I am more delighted with its quieter and less turbulent pleasures. There is a sort of moral use of the country, which every man who has not lost the rural sentiment will feel; a certain purity of mind and imagination which its scenes inspire, a simplicity, a colouring of nature on the objects around us, which correct the artifice and interestedness of the world. There is in the country a pensive vacancy (if the expression may be allowed me) of mind, which stills the violence of passion and the tumult of desire. One can hardly dream on the bank of some nameless brook without making a better and a wiser man., I early took the liberty of boasting to my readers, that, as a Lounger, I had learned to be idle without guilt, and indolent without

indifference. In the country, methinks, I find this disposition congenial to the place; the air which breathes around me, like that which touches the Eolian harp, steals on my soul a tender but varied tone of feeling, that lulls while it elevates, that soothes while it inspires. Not a blade that whistles

in the breeze, not a weed that spreads its speckled leaves to the sun, but may add something to the ideas of him who can lounge with all his mind open

about him.

I am not sure if, in the regret which I feel for my absence from the country, I do not rate its enjoyments higher, and paint its landscapes in more glowing colours, than the reality might afford. I have long cultivated a talent very fortunate for a man of my disposition, that of travelling in my easy-chair, of transporting myself, without stirring from my parlour, to distant places and to absent friends, of drawing scenes in my mind's eye, and of peopling them with the groups of fancy, or the society of remembrance. When I have sometimes lately felt the dreariness of the town, deserted by my acquaintance; when I have returned from the coffee-house where the boxes were unoccupied, and strolled out from my accustomed walk, which even the lame beggar had left; I was fain to shut myself up in my room, order a dish of my best tea (for there is a sort of melancholy which disposes one to make much of one's self), and calling up the powers of memory and imagination, leave the solitary town for a solitude more inseresting, which my younger days enjoyed in the country, which I think, and if I am wrong I do not wish to be undeceived, was the most elysian spot in the world.

'Twas at an old Lady's, a relation and god-mother of mine, where a particular incident occasioned my being left during the vacation of two successive sea

sons.

Her house was formed out of the remains of an old Gothic castle, of which one tower was still almost entire; it was tenanted by kindly daws and swallows. Beneath, in a modernized part of the building, resided the mistress of the mansion. The house was skirted with a few majestic elms and beeches, and the stumps of several others shewed that they had once been more numerous. To the west & clump of firs covered a rugged rocky dell, where the rooks claimed a prescriptive seignory. Through this a dashing rivulet forced its way, which afterwards grew quiet in its progress; and gurgling gently through a piece of downy meadow-ground crossed the bottom of the garden, where a little rustic paling inclosed a washing-green, and a wicker seat fronting the south was placed for the accommodation of the old Lady, whose lesser tour, when her fields did not require a visit, used to terminate in this spot. Here, too, were ranged the hives for her bees, whose hum, in a still, warm sunshine, soothed the good old Lady's indolence, while their proverbial industry was sometimes quoted for the instruction of her washers. The brook ran brawling through some underwood on the outside of the garden, and soon after formed a little cascade, which fell into the river that winded through a valley in front of the house When haymaking or harvest was going on, my god-mother took her long stick in her hand, and overlooked the labours of the mowers or reapers; though I believe there was little thrift in the superintendency, as the visit generally cost her a draught of beer or a dram, to encourage their diligence.

Within doors she had so able an assistant, that her labour was little. In that department an old manservant was her minister, the father of my Peter, who serves me not the less faithfully that we have gathered nuts together in my god-mother's bazel bank.

This old butler (I call him by his title of honour, though in truth he had many subordinate offices) had originally enlisted with her husband, who went into the army a youth, though he afterwards married and became a country gentleman, had been his servant abroad, and attended him during his last illness at home. His best hat which he wore a Sundays, with a scarlet waistcoat of his master's, had still a cockade in it.

Her husband's books were in a room at the top of a screw stair-case, which had scarce been opened since his death; but her own library for Sabbath or rainy days, was ranged in a little book-press in the parlour. It consisted, as far as I can remember, of several volumes of sermons, a Concordance, Thomas a' Kempis, Antoninus's Meditations, the Works of the Author of the Whole Duty of Man, and a translation of Boethius; the original editions of the Spectator and Guardian, Cowley's Poems, Dryden's Works (of which I had lost a volume soon after I first came about her house), Baker's Chronicle, Burnet's History of his own Times, Lamb's Royal Cookery, Abercromby's Scots Warriors, and Nisbet's Heraldry.

The subject of the last-mentioned book was my god-mother's strong ground; and she could disentangle a point of genealogy beyond any body I ever knew. She had an excellent memory for anecdote ; and her stories, though sometimes long, were never tiresome; for she had been a woman of great beauty and accomplishment in her youth, and had kept such company as made the drama of her stories respectable and interesting. She spoke frequently of such of her own family as she remembered when a child, but scarcely ever of those she had lost, though one could see she thought of them often. She had buried a beloved husband and four children. Her