enabled him to make a quicker progress than ordinary through all the parts of his education. Before he was twenty years of age, having finished his studies and exercises with great applause, he was removed from the uni5 versity to the Inns of Court, where there are very few that make themselves considerable proficients in the study of the place, who know they shall arrive at great estates without them. This was not Florio's case; he found that three hundred a year was but a poor estate 10 for Leontine and himself to live upon; so that he studied without intermission, till he gained a very good insight into the constitution and laws of his country.

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I should have told my reader, that whilst Florio lived at the house of his foster-father, he was always an 15 acceptable guest in the family of Eudoxus, where he became acquainted with Leonilla from her infancy. His acquaintance with her by degrees grew into love, which in a mind trained up in all the sentiments of honour and virtue became a very uneasy passion. He despaired of gaining an heiress of so great a fortune, and would rather have died than attempted it by any indirect methods. Leonilla, who was a woman of the greatest beauty, joined with the greatest modesty, entertained at the same time a secret passion for Florio, but 25 conducted herself with so much prudence that she never gave him the least intimation of it. Florio was now engaged in all those arts and improvements that are proper to raise a man's private fortune, and give him a figure in his country, but secretly tormented with that. 30 passion, which burns with the greatest fury in a virtuous and noble heart, when he received a sudden summons

from Leontine, to repair to him in the country the next day. For it seems Eudoxus was so filled with the report of his son's reputation, that he could no longer withhold making himself known to him. The morning after his arrival at the house of his supposed father, Leontine 5 told him that Eudoxus had something of great importance to communicate to him; upon which the good man embraced him and wept. Florio was no sooner arrived at the great house that stood in his neighbourhood, but Eudoxus took him by the hand, after the first salutes 10 were over, and conducted him into his closet. He there opened to him the whole secret of his parentage and education, concluding after this manner: "I have no other way of acknowledging my gratitude to Leontine, than by marrying you to his daughter. He shall not 15 lose the pleasure of being your father by the discovery I have made to you. Leonilla too shall be still my daughter; her filial piety, though misplaced, has been so exemplary, that it deserves the greatest reward I can confer upon it. You shall have the pleasure of seeing 20 a great estate fall to you, which you would have lost the relish of, had you known yourself born to it. Continue only to deserve it in the same manner you did before you were possessed of it. I have left your mother in the next room. Her heart yearns towards you. She is 25 making the same discoveries to Leonilla which I have made to yourself." Florio was so overwhelmed with this profusion of happiness, that he was not able to make a reply, but threw himself down at his father's feet, and amidst a flood of tears kissed and embraced his knees, 30 asking his blessing, and expressing in dumb shew those

sentiments of love, duty, and gratitude, that were too big for utterance. To conclude, the happy pair were married, and half Eudoxus's estate settled upon them. Leontine and Eudoxus passed the remainder of their 5 lives together, and received in the dutiful and affectionate behaviour of Florio and Leonilla the just recompense, as well as the natural effects, of that care which they had bestowed upon them in their education.

L.

THE SPECTATOR ON-PARTY-SPIRIT. [ADDISON.]

No. 125. TUESDAY, JULY 24, 1711.

NE pueri, ne tanta animis assuescite bella:

Neu patriæ validas in viscera vertite vires. - VIRG. ÆN. vi. 832.

EMBRACE again, my sons, be foes no more,

Nor stain your country with her children's gore. - DRYDEN.

My worthy friend Sir Roger, when we are talking of the malice of parties, very frequently tells us an accident that happened to him when he was a school-boy, which was at a time when the feuds ran high between the round-heads and cavaliers. This worthy knight, 5 being then but a stripling, had occasion to inquire which was the way to St. Anne's Lane; upon which the person whom he spoke to, instead of answering his question, called him a young Popish cur, and asked him who had made Anne a saint! The boy, being in some confusion, 10 inquired of the next he met, which was the way to Anne's Lane; but was called a prick-eared cur for his pains, and instead of being shewn the way, was told that she had been a saint before he was born, and would be one after he was hanged. Upon this, says Sir 15 Roger, I did not think fit to repeat the former questions, but going into every lane of the neighbourhood, asked what they called the name of that lane. By which ingenious artifice he found out the place he in

quired after, without giving offence to any party. Sir Roger generally closes this narrative with reflexions on the mischief that parties do in the country; how they spoil good neighbourhood, and make honest gentlemen 5 hate one another; besides that they manifestly tend to the prejudice of the land-tax, and the destruction of the game.

There cannot a greater judgment befal a country than such a dreadful spirit of division as rends a government 10 into two distinct people, and makes them greater strangers and more averse to one another, than if they were actually two different nations. The effects of such a division are pernicious to the last degree, not only with regard to those advantages which they give the common. 15 enemy, but to those private evils which they produce. in the heart of almost every particular person. This influence is very fatal both to men's morals and their understandings; it sinks the virtue of a nation, and not only so, but destroys even common sense.

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A furious party-spirit, when it rages in its full violence, exerts itself in civil war and bloodshed; and when it is under its greatest restraints, naturally breaks out in falsehood, detraction, calumny, and a partial administration of justice. In a word, it fills a nation 25 with spleen and rancour, and extinguishes all the seeds of good-nature, compassion, and humanity.

Plutarch says very finely, that a man should not allow himself to hate even his enemies, because, says he, "if you indulge this passion on some occasions, it 30 will rise of itself in others; if you hate your enemies, you will contract such a vicious habit of mind, as by