Puslapio vaizdai
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I mounted a phaëton with Attalus, and we set forward in a broiling day: my conductor immediately began to vent his angry humour upon the wrong object, and plied his thong at such a furious rate upon his unoffending horses, that the high mettled animals so resented the unjust correction, that after struggling and kicking under the lash for some time, one of them reared across the pole of the chaise, and snapped it: this produced a storm of passion more violent than the first, and though it was evident the servant had put the horses on their proper sides at first, the fault was charged upon him with vehement imprecations, and this produced a second halt longer and more disagreeable than our setting out had been: our purpose, however, was not to be defeated, and we must positively proceed: Attalus was not in a humour to submit with patience to disappointments, so that having ordered two of his servants to dismount, we took their horses and set off upon our tour; the beauties of nature were before us, but that serenity of mind, which should ever accompany the contemplation of those beauties, was wanting; Attalus was one of Fortune's spoilt children, and his temper, grown irritable by indulgence and humoursome by prosperity, had lost its relish for simplicity, and was wholly given up to a silly passion for ostentation and parade; he immediately began to harangue upon the many evil qualities of servants, a topic at the best unedifying and commonly most disgusting to the hearers; he bewailed his own ill-fortune in that respect very bitterly, and so much of the way passed off before this philippic was concluded, that I began to think I had been carried out for no better purpose than to hear a declamation in the open air: I brought him at last to a stop, by observing, he had a paradise about him, and that it was a pity his vexations did

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not suffer him to enjoy it-Upon this hint he seemed to recollect himself, and proceeded to expatiate upon his own improvements, pointing out to me what he had done, and what he had more in mind to do, if his overseer had obeyed his instructions, and proper people had been found to execute his designs.

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I took notice of a group of neat cottages, which had a very picturesque and pleasing appearance, for they were deliciously situated, and had all the air, as I observed, of happy habitations- No matter for that,' replied Attalus, down they must all come, for they are cruelly in my eye, and I purpose to throw all that hill into wilderness with plantations of pine, where you see the rock and broken ground, which will be a bold and striking contrast to the ornamented grounds about it-I am surprised,' added he, you can see any beauty in those paltry huts." -Before I could make reply, an old peasant had approached us, and humbly inquired of Attalus, when he was to be dislodged from his cottage-' İ have ordered the workmen to take it down next week,' said he,' the season is favourable for your removal, and you must seek out elsewhere.' The decree was heard without an effort to reply; a sigh was all the plea the poor man offered, and with that sigh he sent alook to Heaven that in its passage rent my heart: I determined to be gone next morning.

We proceeded in our circuit till we were crossed by a high enclosure, which awkwardly enough separated a pasture of about three acres, in which was a brick-kiln too conspicuously placed not to annoy the sight, and at that very moment too furiously employed in the act of duty, not to be excessively offensive to the smell; we found ourselves involved in columns of thick smoke,which were not of the most grateful odour in the world; I confess I was not a little surprised at the location of this flaming

nuisance, and as we were making our way through the smothering cloud, remarked to Attalus that ornament must give place to use.-' I brought you hither,' says he, purposely to show you how I am treated by a surly obstinate fellow in my neighbourhood, who has not another foot of land in the world, but this cursed patch of ground, and which the rascal keeps on purpose to spite me, though I have bidden three times the value of it: indeed, it is indispensably necessary to me, as you may well believe by the annoyance it produces in his hands: I have tried all means to get it from him, rough and smooth, and if a prosecution would have laid against it, I would have driven him out of it by the expenses of a suit; but all to no purpose; I am so tormented by the fellow's obstinacy, and my comforts are so sacrificed by the nuisance, that I have no longer any enjoyment in my place; nay, I have stopped most of my works, and discharged my labourers; for what signifies carrying on improvements, when I can no longer live in my house with that cursed brick-kiln for ever in my eye, and with little intermission, in my nostrils also?'

A new theme of discontent was now started, which the unhappy Attalus pursued with heavy complaints as we travelled down a stream of smoke, which seemed as if maliciously to pursue us, determined not to quit its execrator, till he left off his execrations; at last they both ceased in the same moment and parted by consent. As soon as Attalus desisted from his invectives, I took up my reflections, and if a wish could have purchased his possessions, encumbered with the vexations of their owner, I would not have taken them at the price. Down sunk the vision of prosperity; swifter than the shifting of a play-house scene vanished all the enchanting prospect; a naked lodge in a warren

with content had been more enviable in my eye than his palace haunted with disgust; I saw Attalus, the veriest darling of Fortune, sickening and surfeited with prosperity; peevish with his servants, unsociable to his neighbours, a slave to fashions, which he obeyed and disapproved, unfeeling to the poor, tired with the splendour of a magnificent house and possessing an extensive territory, yet sighing after a small nook of land, the want of which poisoned all his comforts.-And what then are riches? said I within myself. The disturbers of human happiness; the corrupters of human nature. member this Attalus in his youth; I knew him intimately at school and college; he was of a joyous, social temper; placid, accommodating, full of resource; always in good humour with himself and the world, and he had a heart as liberal and compassionate as it was sincere and open; this great estate was then out of sight; it must be this estate then, which has wrought the unhappy change in his manners and disposition; and if riches operate thus upon a nature like his, where is the wonder if we meet so many wretches who derive their wants from their abundance.

EELY

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How beautiful is the maxim of Menander !— Fany Eely deï #hovo-enrich your mind!' Riches,' says the same elegant and moral dramatist, no better than an actor's wardrobe,' the paltry tinsel, that enables him to glitter for a few minutes in a counterfeited character

To fret and strut his hour upon the stage,

And then be heard no more,

In another place he says, they transform a man into a different kind of being from what he was originally'

Εἰς ἕτερον ἦθος, οὐκ ἐν ᾧ τὸ πρόσθεν ἦνα

and then concludes with that Attic simplicity, so neatly turned and elegantly expressed as to distance all translation.

Κρεῖστον γάρ ἐστω, ἃ σκόπῃ τὶς κατὰ λόγου,
Μὴ πολλ ̓ ἀηδῶς, ὀλίγα δ ̓ ἡδέως ἔχειν.

Better to choose, if you would choose the best,
A cheerful poverty, than wealth unblest.

NUMBER LIX.

Omnes eodem cogimur; omnium
Versatur urna, serius, ocyus

Sors exitura.

`HORAT. CARM. 2, 3, 25.

All to the same last home are bound;

Time's never-weary wheel runs round;
And life at longest or at shortest date

Snaps like a thread betwixt the shears of Fate.

I REMEMBER to have been told of a certain humourist, who set up a very singular doctrine upon the subject of death, asserting that he had discovered it to be not a necessary and inevitable event, but an act of choice and volition; he maintained that he had certain powers and resources within himself sufficient to support him in his resolution of holding out against the summons of death, till he became weary of life; and he pledged himself to his friends, that he would in his own person give experimental proof of his hypothesis.

What particular address death made use of, when this ingenious gentleman was prevailed upon to step out of the world, I cannot take upon myself to

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