dure to fee a female eat with an appetite; and would no more allow his fifter or his niece to atleciate with a woman of a good ftomach, than with one of a tainted reputation.

In all thefe characters, I perceived, upon a Ettle reflection, the fame leading propensity to bring the happiness, the excellence, or the defects of others, to our own ftandard, and I am perfuaded, were we narrowly to examine thofe around us, we should find among the busy, the idle, the ambitious, or the diffipated, the fame colouring of objects, according to their own prevailing talte or humour; and that, though the examples might not found so ludicroufly, the principle would still be found the fame, would ftill, in the eye of a philofopher, be the Old Hack of Sympofius.

N° 87. SATURDAY, September 30, 1786.

-Sed in longum tamen ævum

Manferunt bodieque manent veftigia ruris.

HOR.

THAT

HAT there is Nobody in town, is the obfervation of every person one has met for feveral weeks paft; and though the word Nobody, like its fellow-vocable Everybody, has a great latitude of fignification, and in this inftance means upwards of threefcore thousand people, yet undoubtedly, in a certain rank of life, one finds, at this season, a very great blank in one's accustomed fociety. He whom circumftances oblige to remain in town, feels a fort of imprisonment from which his more fortunate acquaintance have escaped to purer air, to fresher breezes, and a clearer fky. He fees, with a very melancholy aspect, the close window-fhutters of deferted houfes, the rusted knockers, and moffy pavement of unfrequented fquares, and the few diftant fcattered figures of empty walks; while he fancies, in the country, the joyousness of the reapers, and the shout

of

of the sportsman enlivening the fields; and within doors, the hours made jocund by the festivity of affembled friends, the frolic, the dance, and the fong.

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 banifhment from it, I have contrived ftill to preserve a relish for its pleasures, and an enjoyment of its fports, which few who vifit it fo feldom are able to retain. I can ftill weave an angling-line, or drefs a fly, am at least a hitand-miss 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 fet of capacities, which mark one's denizenship to the country, and which therefore I am proud to retain, yet I confefs I am more delighted with its quieter and lefs turbu lent pleasures. There is a fort of moral ufe of the country, which every man who has not loft the rural fentiment will feel; a certain purity of mind and imagination which its scenes inspire, a fimplicity, 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 expreffion may be allowed me) of mind, which stills the violence

of

of paffion and the tumult of defire. One can hardly dream on the bank of fome nameless brook without waking a better and a wifer 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, fteals on my foul a tender, but varied tone of feeling, that lulls while it elevates, that foothes while it inspires. Not a blade that whiftles in the breeze, not a weed that spreads its fpeckled leaves to the fun, 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 difpofition, that of travelling in my easy-chair, of transporting myfelf, without ftirring from my parlour, to distant places and to abfent friends, of drawing fcenes in my mind's eye, and of peopling them with the groups of fancy, or the fociety of remembrance. When I have fometimes lately felt the drearinefs of the town, deferted by my acquaintance;

when

when I have returned from the coffeehouse where the boxes were unoccupied, and strolled out from my accustomed walk, which even the lame beggar had left; I was fain to fhut myself up in my room, order a difh of my best tea (for there is a fort of melancholy which difpofes one to make much of one's felf), and calling up the powers of memory and imagination, leave the folitary town for a folitude more interesting, 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 godmother of mine, where a particular incident occafioned my being left during the vacation of two fucceffive seasons. Her houfe was formed out of the remains of an old Gothic castle, of which one tower was ftill almost entire; it was tenanted by kindly daws and fwallows. Beneath, in a modernized part of the building, refided the mistress of the mansion. The house was fkirted with a few majestic elms and beeches, and the stumps of feveral others fhewed that they had once been more numerous. To the weft a clump of firs covered a ragged rocky dell, where the rooks claimed a prefcriptive feignory. Through this a dashing rivulet forced its way, which afterwards grew quiet in its

progrefs;