wonted round of seasons, and think ourselves | liberally recompensed for the inconveniences of summer and winter, by new perceptions of the calmness and mildness of the intermediate variations. called in to assist the flight of time, they can find new subjects of inquiry, and preserve themselves from that weariness, which hangs always flagging upon the vacant mind. It cannot indeed be expected of all to be poets Every season has its particular power of strik- and philosophers; it is necessary that the greater ing the mind. The nakedness and asperity of part of mankind should be employed in the mithe wintry world always fill the beholder with nute business of common life; minute, indeed, pensive and profound astonishment; as the va- not if we consider its influence upon our happiriety of the scene is lessened, its grandeur is in-ness, but if we respect the abilities requisite to creased; and the mind is swelled at once by the conduct it. These must necessarily be more demingled ideas of the present and the past, of the pendent on accident for the means of spending beauties which have vanished from the eyes, and agreeably those hours which their occupations the waste and desolation that are now before leave unengaged, or nature obliges them to allow them. to relaxation. Yet even on these I would will ingly impress such a sense of the value of time, as may incline them to find out for their careless hours amusements of more use and dignity than the common games, which not only weary the mind without improving it, but strengthen the passions of envy and avarice, and often lead to fraud and to profusion, to corruption and to ruin. It is unworthy of a reasonable being to spend any of the little time allotted us, without some tendency, either direct or oblique, to the end o' our existence. And though every moment can not be laid out on the formal and regular improve ment of our knowledge, or in the stated practice of a moral or religious duty, yet none should be so spent as to exclude wisdom or virtue, or pass without possibility of qualifying us more or less for the better employment of those which are to come. It is observed by Milton, that he who neglects to visit the country in spring, and rejects the pleasures that are then in their first bloom and fragrance, is guilty of sullenness against nature. If we allot different duties to different scasons, he may be charged with equal disobedience to the voice of nature, who looks on the bleak hills and leafless woods, without seriousness and awe. Spring is the season of gayety, and winter of terror; in spring the heart of tranquillity dances to the melody of the groves, and the eye of benevolence sparkles at the sight of happiness and plenty. In the winter, compassion melts at universal calamity, and the tear of softness starts at the wailings of hunger, and the cries of the creation in distress. Few minds have much inclination to indulge heaviness and sorrow, nor do I recommend them beyond the degree necessary to maintain in its It is scarcely possible to pass an hour in honest full vigour that habitual sympathy and tender- conversation, without being able, when we rise ness, which, in a world of so much misery, is from it, to please ourselves with having given or necessary to the ready discharge of our most im- received some advantages; but a man may shufportant duties. The winter therefore is general-fle cards, or rattle dice, from noon to midnight, ly celebrated as the proper season for domestic merriment and gayety. We are seldom invited by the votaries of pleasure to look abroad for any other purpose, than that we may shrink back with more satisfaction to our coverts, and when we have heard the howl of the tempest, and felt the gripe of the frost, congratulate each other with more gladness upon a close room, an easy chair, a large fire, and a smoking dinner. Winter brings natural inducements to jollity and conversation. Differences, we know, are never so effectually laid asleep, as by some common calamity: an enemy unites all to whom he threatens danger. The rigour of winter brings generally to the same fire-side, those, who by the opposition of inclinations, or difference of employment, moved in various directions through the other parts of the year; and when they have met, and find it their mutual interest to remain together, they endear each other by mutual compliances, and often wish for the continuance of the social season, with all its bleakness and all its severities. without tracing any new idea in his mind, or be ing able to recollect the day by any other token than his gain or loss, and a confused remembrance of agitated passions and clamorous altercations. However, as experience is of more weight than precept, any of my readers, who are contriving how to spend the dreary months before them, may consider which of their past amusements fills them now with the greatest satisfaction, and resolve to repeat those gratifications of which the pleasure is most durable. a subject of dispute to men whose leisure sent them out into the intellectual world in search of employment, and who have, perhaps, been sometimes withheld from the practice of their favour ite duty, by zeal for its advancement, and dili gence in its celebration. AMONG questions which have been discussed, without any approach to decision, may be numbered the precedency, or superior excellence of To the men of study and imagination the win-one virtue to another, which has long furnished ter is generally the chief time of labour. Gloom and silence produce composure of mind and concentration of ideas; and the privation of external pleasure naturally causes an effort to find entertainment within. This is the time, in which those whom literature enables to find amusements for themselves, have more than common convictions of their own happiness. When they are condemned by the elements to retirement, and debarred from most of the diversions which are R The intricacy of this dispute may be alleged as a proof of that tenderness for mankind which Providence has, I think, universally displayed, by making attainments easy in proportion as they are necessary. That all the duties of mo- | bearance as may promote wickedness, and lessen rality ought to be practised, is without difficulty the general confidence and security in which all discoverable, because ignorance or uncertainty have an equal interest, and which all are therewould immediately involve the world in confu- fore bound to maintain. For this reason the sion and distress; but which duty ought to be state has not a right to erect a general sanctuary most esteemed, we may continue to debate with- for fugitives, or give protection to such as have out inconvenience; so all be diligently performed forfeited their lives by crimes against the laws of as there is opportunity or need: for upon prac- common morality equally acknowledged by all tice, not upon opinion, depends the happiness of nations, because no people can, without infracmankind; and controversies, merely speculative, tion of the universal league of social beings, inare of small importance in themselves, however | cite, by prospects of impunity and safety, those they may have sometimes heated a disputant, or practices in another dominion, which they would provoked a faction. themselves punish in their own. One occasion of uncertainty and hesitation, mented and dilated, is the confusion of what the exacter casuists are careful to distinguish, debts of justice, and debts of charity. The immediate and primary intention of this precept is to establish a rule of justice; and I know not whether invention, or sophistry, can start a single difficulty to retard its application, when it is thus expressed and explained, let every man allow the claim of right in another, which he should think himself entitled to make in the like circumstances. Of the Divine Author of our religion it is impossible to peruse the evangelical histories, with-in those by whom this great rule has been com out observing how little he favoured the vanity of inquisitiveness; how much more rarely he condescended to satisfy curiosity than to relieve distress; and how much he desired that his followers should rather excel in goodness than in knowledge. His precepts tend immediately to the rectification of the moral principles, and the direction of daily conduct, without ostentation, without art, at once irrefragable and plain, such as well-meaning simplicity may readily conceive, and of which we cannot mistake the meaning, but when we are afraid to find it. The measure of justice prescribed to us, in our transactions with others, is remarkarkably clear and comprehensive: Whatsoever ye would that men should do unto you, even so do unto them. A law by which every claim of right may be immediately adjusted as far as the private conscience requires to be informed; a law, of which every man may find the exposition in his own breast, and which may always be observed without any other qualifications than honesty of intention, and purity of will. The discharge of the debts of charity, or duties which we owe to others, not merely as required by justice, but as dictated by benevolence, ad. mits in its own nature greater complication of circumstances, and greater latitude of choice. Justice is indispensably and universally necessary, and what is necessary must always be limited, uniform and distinct. But beneficence, though in general equally enjoined by our religion, and equally needful to the conciliation of the Divine favour, is yet, for the most part, with regard to its single acts, elective and voluntary. We may certainly, without injury to our fellow-beings, alOver this law, indeed, some sons of sophistry low in the distribution of kindness something to have been subtle enough to throw mists, which our affections, and change the measure of our have darkened their own eyes. To perplex this liberality, according to our opinions and prosuniversal principle, they have inquired whether a pects, our hopes and fears. This rule therefore man, conscious to himself of unreasonable wishes, is not equally determinate and absolute, with rebe bound to gratify them in another. But surely spect to offices of kindness, and acts of liberality; there needed no long deliberation to conclude that because liberality and kindness, absolutely deter the desires, which are to be considered by us as mined, would lose their nature; for how could the measure of right, must be such as we approve. we be called tender, or charitable, for giving that and that we ought to pay no regard to those ex- which we are positively forbidden to withhold? pectations in others, which we condemn in our- Yet, even in adjusting the extent of our bene selves, and which, however they may intrudeficence, no other measure can be taken than this upon our imagination, we know it our duty to resist and suppress. One of the most celebrated cases which have been produced as requiring some skill in the direction of conscience to adapt them to this great rule, is that of a criminal asking mercy of his judge, who cannot but know, that if he was in the state of the supplicant he should desire that pardon which he now denies. The difficulty of this sophism will vanish, if we remember that the parties are, in reality, on one side the criminal, and on the other the community, of which the magistrate is only the minister, and by which he is intrusted with the public safety. The magistrate, therefore, in pardoning a man unworthy of pardon, betrays the trust with which he is invested, gives away what is not his own, and, apparently, does to others what he would not that others should do to him. Even the community, whose right is still greater to arbitrary grants of mercy, is bound by those laws which regard the great republic of mankind, and cannot justify such for precept affords us, for we can only know what others suffer for want, by considering how we should be affected in the same state; nor can we proportion our assistance by any other rule than that of doing what we should then expect from others. It indeed generally happens that the giver and receiver differ in their opinions of generosity; the same partiality to his own interest inclines one to large expectations, and the other to sparing distributions. Perhaps the infirmity of human nature will scarcely suffer a man groaning under the pressure of distress, to judge rightly of the kindness of his friends, or think they have done enough till his deliverance is completed; not therefore what we might wish, but what we could demand from others, we are obliged to grant, since, though we can easily know how much we might claim, it is impossible to determine what we should hope. But in all inquiries concerning the practice of voluntary and occasional virtues, it is safest for minds not oppressed with superstitious fears to determine against their own inclinations, and secure themselves from deficiency, by doing more than they believe strictly necessary. For of this every man may be certain, that if he were to exchange conditions with his dependent, he should expect more than, with the utmost exertion of his ardour, he now will prevail upon himself to perand when reason has no settled rule, and our passions are striving to mislead us, it is surely the part of a wise man to err on the side of safety. form; hear me offering for the sting of a hornet, though it was a cold moist summer, in which very few hornets had been seen. He often recommended to me the study of physic, in which, said he, you may at once gratify your curiosity after natural history, and increase your fortune by benefiting mankind. I heard him, Mr. Rambler, with pity, and, as there was no prospect of elevating a mind formed to grovel, suffered him to please himself with hoping that I should some time follow his advice. For you know that there are men with whom, when they have once settled a notion in their heads, it is to very little purpose to dispute. Being now left wholly to my own inclinations, MART and contented myself no longer with such rariI very soon enlarged the bounds of my curiosity, ties as required only judgment and industry, and when once found, might be had for nothing. I now turned my thoughts to exotics and antiques, and became so well known for my generous patronage of ingenious men, that my levee was crowded with visitants; some to see my museum, and others to increase its treasures, by selling me whatever they had brought from other countries It will not be necessary to solicit your good-will by any formal preface, when I have informed you, that I have long been known as the most laborious and zealous virtuoso that the present age has had the honour of producing, and that inconveniences have been brought upon me by an unextinguishable ardour of curiosity, and an unshaken perseverance in the acquisition of the productions of art and nature. I had always a contempt for that narrowness of conception, which contents itself with culti vating some single corner of the field of science, I took the whole region into my view, and wished it of yet greater extent. But no man's power can be equal to his will. I was forced to proceea by slow degrees, and to purchase what chance or kindness happened to present. I did not however proceed without some design, or imitate the indiscretion of those who begin a thousand collections, and finish none. Having been always a lover of geography, I determined to collect the maps drawn in the rude and barbarous times, be. fore any regular surveys, or just observations; and have, at a great expense, brought together a volume, in which, perhaps, not a single country is laid down according to its true situation, and by which, he that desires to know the errors of the ancient geographers may be amply informed. It was observed, from my entrance into the world, that I had something uncommon in my disposition, and that there appeared in me very early tokens of superior genius. I was always an enemy to trifles; the playthings which my mother bestowed upon me I immediately broke, that I might discover the method of their structure, and the causes of their motions: of all the toys with which children are delighted I valued only my coral, and as soon as I could speak, asked like Pieresc, innumerable questions, which the maids about me could not resolve. As I grew older I was more thoughtful and serious, and instead of amusing myself with puerile diversions, made collections of natural rarities, and But my ruling passion is patriotism: my chief never walked in the fields without bringing care has been to procure the products of our own home stones of remarkable forms, or insects of country; and as Alfred received the tribute of some uncommon species. I never entered an the Welsh in wolves' heads, I allowed my teold house, from which I did not take away the nants to pay their rents in butterflies, till I had painted glass, and often lamented that I was not exhausted the papilionaceous tribe. I then dione of that happy generation who demolished rected them to the pursuit of other animals, and the convents and monasteries, and broke win-obtained, by this easy method, most of the grubs dows by law. Being thus early possessed by a taste for solid knowledge, I passed iny youth with very little disturbance from passions and appetites; and having no pleasure in the company of boys and girls, who talked of plays, politics, fashions, or love, I carried on my inquiries with incessant diligence, and had amassed more stones, mosses, and shells, than are to be found in many celebrated collections, at an age in which the greatest part of young men are studying under tutors, or endeavouring to recommend themselves to notice by their dress, their air, and their levities. and insects, which land, air, or water, can supply. I have three species of earth-worms not known to the naturalists, have discovered a new ephemera, and can show four wasps that were taken torpid in their winter quarters. I have, from my own ground, the longest blade of grass upon record, and once accepted, as a half year's rent for a field of wheat, an ear containing more grains than had been seen before upon a single stem. One of my tenants so much neglected his own interest, as to supply me, in a whole summer, with only two horse-flies, and those of little more than the common size; and I was upon the brink of seizing for arrears, when his good fortune threw a white mole in his way, for which he was not only forgiven, but rewarded. When I was two-and-twenty years old, I became, by the death of my father, possessed of a small estate in land, with a very large sum of money in the public funds, and must confess These, however, were petty acquisitions, and that I did not much lament him, for he was a made at small expense; nor should I have venman of mean parts, bent rather upon growing tured to rank myself among the virtuosi without rich than wise. He once fretted at the expense better claims. I have suffered nothing worthy of only ten shillings, which he happened to over- I the regard of a wise man to escape my notice: I THE RAMBLER. have ransacked the old and the new world, and been equally attentive to past ages and the present. For the illustration of ancient history, I can show a marble, of which the inscription, though it is not now legible, appears from some broken remains of the letters, to have been Tuscan, and therefore probably engraved before the foundation of Rome. I have two pieces of porphyry found among the ruins of Ephesus, and three letters broken off by a learned traveller from the monuments of Persepolis; a piece of stone which paved the Areopagus of Athens, and a plate without figures or characters, which was found at Corinth, and which I therefore be lieve to be that metal which was once valued before gold. I have sand gathered out of the Granicus; a fragment of Trajan's bridge over the Danube; some of the mortar which cemented the watercourse of Tarquin; a horse-shoe broken on the Flaminian way; and a turf with five daisies dug from the field of Pharsalia. I do not wish to raise the envy of unsuccessful collectors, by too pompous a display of my scientific wealth, but cannot forbear to observe, that there are few regions of the globe which are not honoured with some memorial in my cabinets. The Persian monarchs are said to have boasted the greatness of their empire, by being served at their tables with drink from the Ganges and the Danube; I can show one vial, of which the water was formerly an icicle on the crags of Caucasus, and another that contains what once was snow on the top of Atlas; in a third is dew brushed from a banana in the gardens of Ispahan; and, in another, brine that has rolled in the Pacific ocean. I flatter myself that I am writing to a man who will rejoice at the honour which my labours have procured to my country; and therefore I shall tell you that Britain can, by my care, boast of a snail that has crawled upon the wall of China; a humming bird which an American princess wore in her ear; the tooth of an elephant who carried the Queen of Siam; the skin of an ape that was kept in the palace of the great Mogul; a riband that adorned one of the maids of a Turkish sultana; and a scimitar once wielded by a soldier of Abas the Great. In collecting antiquities of every country, I have been careful to choose only by intrinsic worth, and real usefulness, without regard to party or opinions. I have therefore a lock of Cromwell's hair in a box turned from a piece of the royal oak; and keep in the same drawers, sand scraped from the coffin of King Richard, and a commission signed by Henry the Seventh. I have equal veneration for the ruff of Elizabeth, and the shoe of Mary of Scotland; and should lose, with like regret, a tobacco-pipe of Raleigh, and a stirrup of King James. I have paid the same price for the glove of Lewis, and a thimble of Queen Mary; for a fur cap of the Czar, and, a boot of Charles of Sweden. You will easily imagine that these accumulations were not made without some diminution of my fortune; for I was so well known to spare no cost, that at every sale some bid against me for hire, some for sport, and some for malice; and if I asked the price of any thing, it was sufficient to double the demand. For curiosity, trafficing thus with avarice, the wealth of India had not been enough; and I, by little and little, transferred all my money from the funds to my closet: here I was inclined to stop, and live TUESDAY, JAN. 1, 1751. Nisi utile est quod facias, stulta est gloria. PHED. All useless science is an empty boast. THE publication of the letter in my last paper has naturally led me to the consideration of that thirst after curiosities, which often draws contempt and ridicule upon itself, but which is per haps no otherwise blameable, than as it wants those circumstantial recommendations which add lustre even to moral excellences, and are absolutely necessary to the grace and beauty of indifferent actions. Learning confers so much superiority on those who possess it, that they might probably have escaped all censures had they been able to agree among themselves; but as envy and competition have divided the republic of letters into factions, they have neglected the common interest; each has called in foreign aid, and endeavoured to strengthen his own cause by the frown of power, the hiss of ignorance, and the clamour of popularity. They have all engaged in feuds, till by mutual hostilities they demolished those outworks which veneration had raised for their security, and exposed themselves to barbarians, by whom every region of science is equally laid waste. Between men of different studies and professions, may be observed a constant reciprocation of reproaches. The collector of shells and stones derides the folly of him who pastes leaves and flowers upon paper, pleases himself with colours that are perceptibly fading, and amasses with care what cannot be preserved. The hunter of insects stands amazed that any man can waste his short time upon lifeless matter, while many tribes of animals yet want their history. Every one is inclined not only to promote his own study, but to exclude all others from regard, and having heated his imagination with some favourite pursuit, wonders that the rest of mankind are not seized with same passion. There are, indeed, many subjects of study which seem but remotely allied to useful knowledge, and of little importance to happiness or virtue; nor is it easy to forbear some sallies of merriment, or expressions of pity, when we see a man wrinkled with attention, and emaciated with solicitude, in the investigation of questions, of which, without visible inconvenience, the world may expire in ignorance. Yet it is dangerous to discourage well-intended labours or innocent cu riosity; for he who is employed in searches, the knowledge of the natural commodities of the which by any deduction of consequences tend to country, or of the genius and customs of its in the benefit of life, is surely laudable, in compari- habitants. son of those who spend their time in counteract- Rarities there are of yet a lower rank, which ing happiness, and filling the world with wrong owe their worth merely to accident, and which and danger, confusion and remorse. No man can perform so little as not to have reason to tional desire. Such are many fragments of antican convey no information, nor satisfy any ra congratulate himself on his merits, when he be-quity, as urns and pieces of pavement; and things holds the multitudes that live in total idleness, and have never yet endeavoured to be useful. It is impossible to determine the limits of inquiry, or to foresee what consequences a new discovery may produce. He who suffers not his faculties to lie torpid, has a chance, whatever be his employment, of doing good to his fellow-creatures. The man that first ranged the woods in search of medicinal springs, or climbed the mountains for salutary plants, has undoubtedly merited the gratitude of posterity, how much soever his frequent miscarriages might excite the scorn of his contemporaries. If what appears little be universally despised, nothing greater can be attained; for all that is great was at first little, and rose to its present bulk by gradual accessions, and accumulated labours. held in veneration only for having been once the Those who lay out time or money in assembling matter for contemplation, are doubtless entitled to some degree of respect, though in a flight of gayety, it be easy to ridicule their treasure, or in a fit of sullenness to despise it. A The virtuoso, therefore, cannot be said to be man who thinks only on the particular object wholly useless; but perhaps he may be somebefore him, goes not away much illuminated by times culpable, for confining himself to business having enjoyed the privilege of handling the tooth below his genius, and losing, in petty speculaof a shark, or the paw of a white bear; yet there tions, those hours by which, if he had spent them is nothing more worthy of admiration to a philo- in nobler studies, he might have given new light sophical eye than the structure of animals, by to the intellectual world. It is never without which they are qualified to support life in the grief that I find a man capable of ratiocination/ elements or climates to which they are appropria- or invention enlisting himself in this secondary ted; and of all natural bodies, it must be general- class of learning; for when he has once discoverly confessed that they exhibit evidences of infi-ed a method of gratifying his desire of eminence nite wisdom, bear their testimony to the supreme reason, and excite in the mind new raptures of gratitude and new incentives to piety. by expense rather than by labour, and known the sweets of a life blessed at once with the ease To collect the productions of art, and exam- will not easily be brought to undergo again the of idleness, and the reputation of knowledge, he ples of mechanical science or manual ability, is toil of thinking, or leave his toys and trinkets for unquestionably useful, even when the things arguments and principles; arguments which rethemselves are of small importance, because it is quire circumspection and vigilance, and princialways advantageous to know how far the hu- ples which cannot be obtained but by the drudg man powers have proceeded, and how much ex-ery of meditation. He will gladly shut himself perience has found to be within the reach of diligence. Idleness and timidity often despair without being overcome, and forbear attempts for fear of being defeated; and we may promote the invigoration of faint endeavours, by showing what has been already performed. It may sometimes happen that the greatest efforts of ingenuity have been exerted in trifles; yet the same principles and expedients may be applied to more valuable purposes, and the movements, which put into action machines of no use but to raise the wonder of ignorance, may be employed to drain fens, or manufacture metals, to assist the architect, or preserve the sailor. up for ever with his shells and metals, like the companions of Ulysses, who, having tasted the fruit of Lotos, would not, even by the hope of seeing their own country, be tempted again to the dangers of the sea. 'Αλλ ̓ αὐτοῦ βούλοντο μετ' ἄνδρασι Λωτοφάγοισι, -Whoso tastes POPE. Collections of this kind are of use to the learn cessary to the architect. But to dig the quarry or to search the field, requires not much of any quality beyond stubborn perseverance; and For the utensils, arms, or dresses of foreign na-ed, as heaps of stones and piles of timber are netions, which make the greatest part of many collections, I have little regard, when they are valued only because they are foreign, and can suggest no improvement of our own practice. Yet they are not all equally useless, nor can it be always safely determined which should be rejected or retained: for they may sometimes unexpectedly contribute to the illustration of history, and to sage in Dr. Johnson's "Journey to the Western Islands," See this sentiment illustrated by a most splendid pasvol. viii. p. 395-6.—C. |