When a man foresees a decaying ministry, he has leisure to grow a malecontent, reflect upon the present conduct, and by gradual murmurs fall off from his friends into a new party, by just steps and measures. For want of such notices I have formerly known a very well-bred person refuse to return a bow of a man whom he thought in disgrace, that was next day made secretary of state; and another, who after a long neglect of a minister, came to his levee, and made professions of zeal for his service the very day before he was turned out. This produces also unavoidable confusions and mistakes in the descriptions of great men's parts and merits. That ancient Lyric, Mr. D'Urfey, some years ago writ a dedication to a certain lord, in which he celebrated him for the greatest poet and critic of that age, upon a misinfor- . mation in Dyer's Letter, that his noble patron was made lord-chamberlain. In short, innumerable votes, speeches, and sermons, have been thrown away and turned to no account, merely for want of due and timely intelligence. Nay, it has been known, that a panegyric has been half printed off, when the poet, upon the removal of the minister, has been forced to alter it into a satire. For the conduct therefore of such useful persons, as are ready to do their country service upon all occasions, I have an engine in my study, which is a sort of a Political Barometer, or, to speak more intelligibly, a State Weather-glass, that, by the rising and falling of a certain magical liquor, presages all changes and revolutions in government, as the common glass does of the weather. This Weather-glass is said to have been invented by Cardan, and given by him as a present to his great countryman and contemporary, Machiavel; which, by the way, may serve to rectify a received error in chronology, that places one of these some years after the other. How or when it came into my hands, I shall desire to be excused, if I keep to myself; but so it is, that I have walked by it for the better part of a century to my safety at least, if not to my advantage; and have among my papers a register of all the changes that have happened in it from the middle of queen Elizabeth's reign. In the time of that princess it stood long at Settled Fair. At the latter end of King James the First, it fell to Cloudy. It held several years after at Stormy: insomuch, that at last, despairing of seeing any clear weather at home, I followed the royal exile, and some time after finding my Glass rise, returned to my native country with the rest of the loyalists. I was then in hopes to pass the remainder of my days in Settled Fair: but alas! during the greatest part of that reign the English nation lay in a dead calm, which, as it is usual, was followed by high winds and tempests, until of late years; in which, with unspeakable joy and satisfaction, I have seen our political weather returned to Settled Fair. I must only observe, that for all this last summer my Glass has pointed at Changeable Upon the whole, I often apply to Fortune Eneas's speech to the Sibyl: Non ulla laborum, O virgo, nova mi facies inopinave surgit : No terror to my view, No frightful face of danger can be new: VIRG. Æn. vi. 103. The mind foretells whatever comes to pass; A thoughtful mind is Fortune's weather-glass. The advantages, which have accrued to those whom I have advised in their affairs, by virtue of this sort of prescience, have been very considerable. A nephew of mine, who has never put his money into the stocks, or taken it out, without my advice, has in a few years raised five hundred pounds to almost so many thousands. As for myself, who look upon riches to consist rather in con tent than possessions, and measure the greatness of the mind rather by its tranquillity than its ambition, I have seldom used my Glass to make my way in the world, but often to retire from it. This is a by-path to happiness, which was first discovered to me by a most pleasing. apophthegm of Pythagoras; "When the winds," says he, "rise, worship the echo." That great philosopher (whether to make his doctrines the more venerable, or to gild his precepts with the beauty of imagination, or to awaken the curiosity of his disciples, for I will not suppose, what is usually said, that he did it to conceal his wisdom from the vulgar) has couched several admirable precepts in remote allusions, and mysterious sentences. By the winds in this apophthegm, are meant state hurricanes and popu lar tumults. "When these rise," says he, "worship the echo;" that is, withdraw yourself from the multitude into deserts, woods, solitudes, or the like retirements, which are the usual habitations of the echo. N° 215. THURSDAY, AUGUST 24, 1710. L YSANDER has writ to me out of the country, and tells me, after many other circumstances, that he had passed a great deal of time with much pleasure and tranquillity; until his happiness was interrupted by an indiscreet flatterer, who came down into those parts to visit a relation. With the circumstances in which he represents the matter, he had no small provocation to be offended; for he attacked him in so wrong a season, that he could not have any relish of pleasure in it; though, perhaps, at another time it might have passed upon him without giving him much uneasiness. Lysander had, after a long satiety of the town, been so happy as to get to a solitude he extremely liked, and recovered a pleasure he had long discontinued, that of reading. He was got to the bank of a rivulet, covered by a pleasing shade, and fanned by a soft breeze: which threw his mind into that sort of composure and attention, in which a man, though with indolence, enjoys the utmost liveliness of his spirits, and the greatest strength of his mind at the same time. In this state, Lysander represents that he was reading Virgil's Georgics, when on a sudden the gentleman abovementioned surprised him; and without any manner of preparation falls upon him at once: "What! I have found you at last, after searching all over the wood! we wanted you at cards after dinner; but you are much better employed. I have heard indeed that you are an excellent scholar. But at the same time, it is not a little unkind to rob the ladies, who like you so well, of the pleasure of your company ? But that is indeed the misfortune of you great scholars; you are seldom so fit for the world as those who never trouble themselves with books. Well, I see you are taken up with your learning there, and I will leave you." Lysander says, he made him no answer, but took a resolution to complain to me. It is a substantial affliction, when men govern themselves by the rules of good-breeding, that by the very force of them they are subjected to the insolence of those, who either never will, or never can, understand them. The superficial part of mankind form to themselves little measures of behaviour from the outside of things. By the force of these narrow conceptions, they act among themselves with applause; and do not apprehend they are contemptible to those of higher understanding, who are restrained by decencies above their knowledge from shewing a dislike. Hence it is, that because complaisance is a good quality in conversation, one impertinent takes upon him on all occasions to commend; and because mirth is agreeable, another thinks fit eternally to jest. I have of late received many packets of letters, complaining of these spreading evils. A lady who is lately arrived at the Bath acquaints me, there were in the stage.coach wherein she went down, a common flatterer, and a common jester. These gentlemen were, she tells me, rivals in her favour; and adds, if there ever happened a case wherein of two persons one was not liked more than another, it was in that journey. They differed only in proportion to the degree of dislike between the nauseous and the insipid. Both these characters of men are born out of a barrenness of imagination. They are never fools by nature; but become such out of an impotent ambition of being, what she never intended them, men of wit and conversation. I therefore think fit to declare, that according to the known laws of this land, a man may be a very honest gentleman, and enjoy himself and his friend, without being a wit; and I absolve all men from taking pains to be such for the future. As the present case stands, is it not very unhappy that Lysander must be attacked and applauded in a wood, and Corinna jolted and commended in a stage-coach; and this for no manner of reason, but because other people have a mind to shew their parts? I grant, indeed, if these people, as they have understanding enough for it, would confine their accomplishments to those of their own degree of talents, it were to be tolerated; but when they are so insolent as to interrupt the meditations of the wise, the conversations of the agreeable, and the whole behaviour of the modest, it becomes a grievance naturally in my jurisdiction. Among them selves, I can not only overlook, but approve it. I was present the other day at a conversation, where a man of this height of breeding and sense told a young woman of the same form, "To be sure, Madam, every thing must please that comes from a lady." She answered, "I know, Sir, you are so much a gentleman that you think Why this was very well on both sides; and it is impossible that such a lady and gentleman should do otherwise than think well of one another. These are but loose hints of the disturbances in human society for which there is no remedy; but I shall in a little time publish tables of respect and civility, by which persons may be instructed in the proper times and seasons, as well as at what degree of intimacy a man may be allowed to commend or rally his companions; the promiscuous licence of which is, at present, far from being among the small errors in conversation. So. P. S. The following letter was left, with a request to be immediately answered, lest the artifices used against a lady in distress may come into common practice. My eldest sister buried her husband about six months ago; and at his funeral, a gentleman of more art than honesty, on the night of his interment, while she was not herself, but in the utmost agony of her grief, spoke to her of the subject of love. In that weakness and distraction. which my sister was in, as one ready to fall is apt to lean on any body, he obtained her promise of marriage, which was accordingly consummated eleven weeks after. There is no affliction comes alone, but one brings another. My sister is now ready to lie-in. She humbly asks of you, as you are a friend to the sex, to let her know, who is the lawful father of this child, or whether she may not be relieved from this second marriage; considering it was promised under such circumstances as one may very well suppose she did not what she did voluntarily, but because she was helpless otherwise. She is advised something about engagements made in jail, which she thinks the |