views than only Cash Debtor, Per contra Creditor. Yours, RICHARD TRAFFICK." "N. B. Mr. Thomas Newman of Lime-street is entered among the heroes of domestic life. CHARLES LILLIE." N° 214. TUESDAY, AUGUST 22, 1710. From my own Apartment, August 21. In every party there are two sorts of men, the rigid and the supple. The rigid are an intractable race of mortals, who act upon principle, and will not, forsooth, fall into any measures that are not consistent with their received notions of honour. These are persons of a stubborn unpliant morality; that sullenly adhere to their friends, when they are disgraced, and to their principles, though they are exploded. I shall therefore give up this stiff-necked generation to their own obstinacy, and turn my thoughts to the advantage of the supple, who pay their homage to places, and not persons; and, without enslaving themselves to any particular scheme of opinions, are as ready to change their conduct in point of sentiment as of fashion. The well-disciplined part of a court are generally so perfect at their exercise, that you may see a whole assembly, from front to rear, face about at once to a new man of power, though at the same time they turn their backs upon him that brought them thither. The great hardship these complaisant members of society are under, seems to be the want of warning upon any approaching change or revolution; so that they are obliged in a hurry to tack about with every wind, and stop short in the midst of a full career, to the great surprize and derision of their beholders. 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 antient 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 misinformation in Dyer's Letter, that his noble patron was inade 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 already 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 Æneas's speech to the Sibyl: Non ulla laborum O virgo, nova mi facies inopinave surgit : Omnia præcepi, atque animo mecum ante peregi. VIRG, Æn. vi. 103. No terror to my view, No frightful face of danger can be new: 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 content 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 byepath 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 popular 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. From my own Apartment, August 23. LYSANDER 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 |