and calls for the continuance of their care and indulgence from the slowness of its capacity, or the weakness of its body. But there is no enduring to see men enamoured only at the sight of their own impertinences repeated, and to observe, as we may sometimes, that they have a secret dislike of their children for a degeneracy from their very crimes. Commend me to Lady Goodly; she is equal to all her own children, but prefers them to those of all the world beside. My lady is a perfect hen in the care of her brood; she fights and squabbles with all that appear where they come, but is wholly unbiassed in dispensing her favours among them. It is no small pains she is at to defame all the young' women in her neighbourhood, by visits, whispers, intimations, and hearsays; all which she ends with thanking Heaven, "that no one living is so blessed with such obedient and well-inclined children as herself. Perhaps," says she, "Betty cannot dance like Mrs. Frontinet, and it is no great matter whether she does or not; but she comes into a room with a good grace; though she says it that should not, she looks like a gentlewoman. Then, if Mrs. Rebecca is not so talkative as the mighty wit Mrs. Clapper, yet she is discreet, she knows better what she says when she does speak. If her wit be slow, her tongue never runs before it." This kind parent lifts up her eyes and hands in congratulation of her own good fortune, and is maliciously thankful that none of her girls are like any of her neighbours: but this preference of her own to all others is grounded upon an impulse of nature; while those, who like one before another of their own, are so unpardonably unjust, that it could hardly be equalled in the children, though they preferred all the rest of the world to such parents. It is no unpleasant entertainment to see a ball at a dancing-school, and observe the joy of relations when the young ones, for whom they are concerned, are in motion. You need not be told whom the dancers belong to. At their first appearance, the passions of their parents are in their faces, and there is always a nod of approbation stolen at a good step, or a graceful turn. I remember, among all my acquaintance, but one man whom I have thought to live with his children with equanimity and a good grace. He had three sons and one daughter, whom he bred with all the care imaginable in a liberal and ingenuous way. I have often heard him say, " he had the weakness to love one much better than the other, but that he took as much pains to correct that as any other criminal passion that could arise in his mind." His method was, to make it the only pretension in his children to his favour, to be kind to each other; and he would tell them, "that he who was the best brother, he would reckon the best son." This turned their thoughts into an emulation for the superiority in kind and tender affection towards each other. The boys behaved themselves very early with a manly friendship; and their sister, instead of the gross familiarities, and impertinent freedoms in behaviour, usual in other houses, was always treated by them with as much complaisance as any other young lady of their acquaintance. It was an unspeakable pleasure to visit, or sit at a meal, in that family. I have often seen the old man's heart flow at his eyes with joy, upon occasions which would appear indifferent to such as were strangers to the turn of his mind; but a very slight accident, wherein he saw his children's good-will to one another, created in him the godlike pleasure of loving them because they loved each other. This great command of himself, in hiding his first impulse to partiality, at last improved to a 1 steady justice towards them; and that, which at first was but an expedient to correct his weakness, was afterwards the measure of his virtue. The truth of it is, those parents who are interested in the care of one child more than that of another, no longer deserve the name of parents, but are, in effect, as childish as their children, in having such unreasonable and ungoverned inclinations. A father of this sort has degraded himself into one of his own offspring; for none but a child would take part in the passions of children. N° 236. THURSDAY, OCTOBER 12, 1710. Nescio qua natale solum dulcedine mentem OVID. Ep. ex Pont. I. 111. A nameless fondness for our native clime R. WYNNE. From my own Apartment, October 11. I FIND in the registers of my family, that the branch of the Bickerstaffs, from which I am descended, came originally out of Ireland. This has given me a kind of natural affection for that country. It is therefore with pleasure that I see not only some of the greatest warriors, but also of the greatest wits, to be natives of that kingdom. The gentleman who writes the following letter is one of these last. The matter of fact contained in it is literally true, though the diverting manner in which it is told may give it the colour of a fable. "TO ISAAC BICKERSTAFF, Esquire, at his House in GREAT-BRITAIN. "SIR, Dublin. Finding by several passages in your Tatlers, that you are a person curious in natural knowledge, I thought it would not be unacceptable to you to give you the following history of the migration of frogs into this country. There is an antient tradition among the wild philosophers of this kingdom, that the whole island was once as much infested by frogs, as that, wherein Whittington made his fortune, was by mice. Insomuch that it is said, Macdonald the First could no more sleep, by reason of these Dutch nightingales, as they are called at Paris, than Pharaoh could when they croaked in his bed-chamber. It was in the reign of this great monarch, that St. Patrick arrived in Ireland, being as famous for destroying vermin as any rat-catcher of our times. If we may believe the tradition, he killed more in one day than a flock of storks could have done in a twelvemonth. From that time for about five hundred years, there was not a frog to be heard in Ireland, notwithstanding the bogs still remained, which in former ages had been so plentifully stocked with those inhabitants. "When the arts began to flourish in the reign of King Charles II. and that great monarch had placed himself at the head of the Royal Society, to lead them forward into the discoveries of Nature, it is said, that several proposals were laid before his majesty, for the importing of frogs into Ireland. In order to it, a virtuoso of known abilities was unanimously. elected by the Society, and intrusted with the whole management of that affair. For this end, he took along with him a sound able-bodied frog, of a strong hale constitution, that had given proofs of his vigour by several leaps that he made before that learned body. They took ship, and sailed together until they came within sight of the hill of Hoath, before the frog discovered any symptoms of being indisposed by his voyage: but as the wind chopped about, and began to blow from the Irish coast, he grew sea-sick, or rather land-sick; for his learned companion ascribed it to the particles of the soil with which the wind was impregnated. He was confirmed in his conjecture, when, upon the wind's turning about, his fellow-traveller sensibly recovered, and continued in good health until his arrival upon the shore, where he suddenly relapsed, and expired upon a Ring's-End car in his way to Dublin. The same experiment was repeated several times in that reign, but to no purpose. frog was never known to take three leaps upon Irish turf, before he stretched himself out, and died. A "Whether it were that the philosophers on this side the water despaired of stocking the island with this useful animal, or whether, in the following reign, it was not thought proper to undo the miracle of a popish saint; I do not hear of any further progress made in this affair until about two years after the battle of the Boyne. "It was then that an ingenious physician, to the honour as well as improvement of his native country, performed what the English had been so long attempting in vain. This learned man, with the hazard of his life, made a voyage to Liverpool, where he filled several barrels with the choicest spawn of frogs that could be found in those parts. |