As this summer may probably be the season of its recurring with violence, I take the present opportunity of warning my readers against the company of the infected; and even to these a regimen of temper and good-manners may be found a very powerful and salutary alterative. The feelings of an offence-taker are always very disagreeable; and as to the external effects of this mental malady, whether it go off in oblique reflections, or break out into scurrility and abuse, I need not, I fancy, enlarge on the danger of their consequences. To gentlemen concerned in politics and electioneering, I would particularly observe, that the period of their canvass is not the proper time for indulging any such freedoms in conversation or behaviour. When the contest is determined, the losers have some sort of privilege for railing; the successful candidates, as things go now-a-days, should keep all their foul language for that place to which the suffrages of their constituents are to send them.

I.

N° 106. SATURDAY, MAY 13, 1780.

Di tibi divitias dederant, artemque fruendi.

HOR.

THE importance of education to fit men for the world has been universally seen and acknowledged ; but I think it has not been always sufficiently at

tended to, as necessary to fit men for retiring from the world; as qualifying them to act their part with propriety when they retreat from the business of life, and to enjoy themselves, when enjoyment becomes their object. There is a certain time of life, when almost every man wishes to escape from the hurry and bustle of the world, and to taste the sweets of retirement and repose; but how few are there, who, when they have arrived at that period which they fixed for this retreat, and have put their designs in execution, meet with that enjoyment which they looked for! Instead of pleasure, they find satiety, weariness, and disgust; time becomes a heavy burden upon them, and in what way they may kill the tedious hours, grows, at length, their only object. But had these men received a good education, they would never be at a loss how to fill up their time; rich fields of entertainment would open to them from various sources. Company and conversation would receive a finer relish; books would give perpetual enjoyments; the gay prospects of the country, the romantic scenes which it affords, the adorning and beautifying those scenes, and the culture of all the elegant arts, would make that fortune, which many possess without knowing how to use, the minister of every thing that can afford delight.

I believe it may be true, that neither learning, nor a taste for the elegant arts, is requisite to enable a person engaged in the ordinary business of life, to succeed in his profession; and, while so engaged, the occupations of that profession will prevent his feeling any vacuity or suffering any inconvenience from his ignorance and want of refinement. But when such a person has acquired a fortune, and given up business, I have often observed, that from this uncultivated state of mind, he is at a loss how to

enjoy himself or his riches. He either becomes a prey to chagrin and ennui, or gives himself up to the coarsest intemperance; or, should he wish to figure as a man of taste or fashion, he receives but little entertainment himself, and his attempts are so absurd and preposterous, as to make him the object of scoff and ridicule to others.

Drexelius was put early to business: his whole learning consisted in being able to read English, to write, and keep accounts. He got soon into a very good branch of trade; his attention was unremitted; and his economy was equal to his attention. His labours, far from being a burden upon him, only gave him an exertion of mind, which kept him in an equal and unceasing flow of spirits. By the time he was fifty, Drexelius had acquired a fortune equal to that of the richest of his fellow-citizens. He now began to think seriously of enjoying it. The resolution which he had early formed of retiring to the country when he should have acquired a fortune, and which had supported him during the labours of acquiring it, he now determined to put in practice. He therefore wound up his business, sold off his stock, and purchased an estate in the country. The novelty of the situation, and the flattering thought that he was proprietor of so many acres, supported him for a while. But he soon began to find, that the fields, and woods, and rivers, gave him no sort of pleasure. He could

receive no amusement from farming, and books he was unable to enjoy. A volume of the Spectator, recommended to him by the clergyman of the parish, lay half-read upon the chimney-piece; and the prospects which he heard others admire, appeared to him not more beautiful than the front of the Exchange, or the pavement of the street on which he used to tread. Tired, therefore, of the country,

and weary of every thing, he began to long for the town which he had abandoned, and to become again a frequenter of the 'Change. Accordingly he hired a house in town, and resolved to spend in it the winter months at least. But the town had now also lost its charms, and he found it impossible to recover them. He had no longer business to occupy his mind: when he rose in the morning, he knew not what to do; he had no bargains to settle, and

no ships to insure. His acquaintance around him were busy, while he was idle; he found himself alone in the midst of a crowd, an uninterested spectator of what used to employ him. Change of situation, therefore, gave him no relief, for the town was now as dull as the country. The purchase he had made was a dear one; upon his estate, which had cost him more at first than he intended to give for it, he was obliged to build a house, and to make some other improvements, the expense of which, like that of all other buildings and improvements, greatly exceeded what their owner had made his account with. This, however, was little to one of Drexelius's fortune. On former occasions, he had lost more upon one adventure in trade, without being much affected by the loss; but then he had different objects to interest him, and he expected to make up by other adventures what he had lost upon one; now he had nothing else to think of but the daily expenditure. This took possession of his imagination; he thought he saw poverty and ruin before him; and his health began to sink under the vexations of his mind. In vain did his friends represent to him the greatness of his fortune; that the money he was laying out was a trifle to what he possessed; and that, after all his plans were finished, he would still have more than he could spend. It is to no purpose to reason with a diseased imagination; the

only thing which can relieve it is a change of objects and a variety of amusements. But this method could not be followed by Drexelius; there was no object to interest him; and his mind was incapable of amusement. His disease, therefore, increased upon him every day. The proprietor of a fine place, possessed of a great fortune, in short, with all the means of pleasure and enjoyment, he was haunted with the demon of Poverty, and actually believed, that, if he lived many years, he should die of want.

Clavius was a partner in trade with Drexelius, whose example he followed in the scheme of enjoying a retreat in the country. But his mind was as empty and uneducated as that of Drexelius, equally incapable of amusing itself in solitude, or of receiving pleasure from those enjoyments which a country life is calculated to bestow. He was, however, a man of greater natural spirits, and was not therefore so apt to become a prey to listlessness, or to the effects of gloomy avarice. Company was his resource; and that the hours might not lie heavy upon him, he took care never to be alone. But as he had no talent for conversation, every sort of company was equally welcome to him; and, where conversation was not the object, it became necessary to support the society by some adventitious aid. The bottle, therefore, was had recourse to. This was the employment during the finest summer-evenings; and the morning sun often rose upon the same company on which it had gone down. Men flocked to Clavius's country seat, not to enjoy the charms of the country, but the charms of society, and what they called good fellowship. Thus were Clavius's nights spent in getting intoxicated, and his mornings in sleeping off that intoxication. His constitution was not long able to support this course