every opportunity of giving importance to the company of which it may be truly said, as it was of worldly wealth, "it is better to give than to receive." In our commerce with mankind, we are always to consider that their affairs are of more concern to them than ours are; and we should treat them on this principle, unless we are occasionally questioned, and directed to ourselves by the turn of the conversation. Discretion will always fix on some subject in which the company have a common share. Talk not of music to a physician, nor of medicine to a fiddler; unless the fiddler should be sick, and the physician at a concert. He that speaks only of such subjects as are familiar to himself, treats his company as the stork did the fox, presenting an entertainment to him in a deep pitcher, out of which no creature could feed but a long-billed fowl.

The rules I have laid down are such as take place chiefly in our conversation with strangers. Among friends and acquaintance, where there is freedom and pleasantry, daily practice will be attended with less reserve. But here let me give you warning, that too great familiarity, especially if attended with roughness and importunity, is always dangerous to friendship; which must be treated with some degree of delicacy and tenderness, if you wish it to be lasting. You are to keep your friend by the same behaviour that first won his esteem. And observe this as a maxim verified by daily experience, that men advance themselves more commonly by the lesser art of discretion, than by the more valuable endowments of wit and science; which without discretion to recommend them, are often left to disappointment and beggary.

The Earl of Chesterfield has given many directions, which have been much admired of late years; but his rules are calculated to form the petit-maître,

the debauchee, or the insidious politician, with whom it would be totally unprofitable, and even dangerous, to converse. My late friend, the learned Dr. Delany, at the end of his anonymous Observations on Lord Orrery's Remarks, published a short original discourse of Swift on Good Manners; which contains more to the purpose in one page of it, than you will find in the whole volume of the courtly earl, so highly applauded by ignorant people for his knowledge of the world.

We are apt to look upon good manners as a lighter sort of qualification, lying without the system of morality and Christian duty, which a man may possess or not possess, and yet be a very good man; but there is no foundation for such an opinion. The apostle St. Paul hath plainly comprehended it in his well-known description of charity, which signifies the friendship of Christians, and is extended to so many cases, that no man can practise that virtue and be guilty of ill-manners. Shew me the man, who in his conversation discovers no sign that he is puffed up with pride; who never behaves himself unseemly or with impropriety; who neither envies nor censures; who is kind and patient towards his friends; who seeketh not his own, but considers others rather than himself, and gives them the preference, -I say, that man is not only all that we intend by a gentleman, but, much more, he really is, what all artificial courtesy affects to be, a philanthropist, a friend to mankind; whose company will delight, while it improves, and whose good will rarely be evil spoken of. Christianity, therefore, is the best foundation of what we call good manners; and of two persons who have equal knowledge of the world, he that is the best Christian will be the best gentleman.

9. The same (on Temperance).

A HEALTHY body and a sedate mind are blessings, without which this life, considered in itself, is little better than a punishment: and you should reflect on this while you are young, before intemperance has brought you into bondage; for it will be too late to persuade, when the judgment is depraved and weakened by ill habits. The epicure, by attempting to make too much of this life, shortens its period, and lessens its value. Instead of being the life of man, it is scarcely so much as the life of a beast; for most beasts know when to be satisfied.

The

I have been led into these reflections by seeing in the newspapers the death of Gulosus, a country gentleman in the west of England, a man of good parts, a friendly disposition, and agreeable conversation. He was naturally of a strong constitution, and might have lasted to a good old age; but he is gone before his time through an error in opinion, which has destroyed more than the sword. sports of the field, to which he was much addicted, procured him a great appetite; and by the favour of a neighbour, who had the 'merit of keeping a full table, he had daily opportunities of gratifying it at an easy rate. He asked a friend, how much port a man may drink without hurting himself? This question was put to a valetudinarian, who gave it as his private opinion, that a pint in a day was more than would do any man good. "There," says he, "you and I differ; for I am convinced that one bottle after dinner will never hurt any man that uses exercise." Under this persuasion he persevered in his custom of eating and drinking as much as he could; though the excess of one day obliged him to take a large dose of rhubarb the next: so that his life was a continual struggle between fulness and physic, till

nature was wearied out, and he sunk all at once, at the age of forty, under the stroke of an apoplexy.

When nature fails in a strong man, the change is often very sudden. I, who am obliged to live by rule, and am hitherto alive beyond hope, have seen the end of many younger and stronger men, who have unhappily presumed upon their strength, and have persevered in a constant habit of eating and drinking without reserve, till their digestive powers have failed, and their whole constitution has been shattered; so that either death or incurable infirmity has been the consequence.

What can be the reason why the French people are so much less troubled with distempers, and are so much more lively in their spirits than the English? A gentleman of learning with whom I had the pleasure of conversing at Paris, made this observation on the subject: "You English people give no rest to your faculties; you take three meals every day, and live in constant fulness, without any relief: thus nature is overcharged, crudities are accumulated in the vessels of the body, and you fall early into apoplexies, palsies, insanity, or helpless stupidity. Whereas, if we are guilty of any excess, our meagre days, which are two in a week, bring us into order again; and if these should be insufficient, the season of Lent comes in to our relief, which is pretty sure to answer the purpose."

It is much to be lamented, and we are suffering for it in mind and body, that in these latter days of the reformation we have been so dreadfully afraid of superstition, that we have at length discarded every wholesome and necessary regulation; and because we do not whip our skins like the monks of antiquity, we stuff them till they burst. The consumption of animal food in England is by far too great for the enjoyment of health and public good

of the community. The price of provisions becomes much more unreasonable, our fishery is neglected, and no one benefit arises, but that of putting money into the pockets of physicians and lawyers; which they never fail to do, who with constant fulness are sick in their bodies and quarrelsome in their tempers. The calendar of the Church of England, which is moderate enough in its restrictions, would be of infinite service to us, if it were duly observed. I once met with a wise and good man, far advanced in years, and of an infirm constitution, who assured me he neither used nor wanted any other physician. If we were to adopt his rule, nature would have that seasonable relief which is necessary; our health and our spirits would be better; suicide, a growing and tremendous evil, would be less frequent; our fishery would have better encouragement, a matter of no small weight to a maritime people, whose navigation is their natural defence; provisions would be cheaper; the nation in general would be wiser; and perhaps we should also have a better claim to the blessing of Heaven, if we shewed a more pious regard to the wholesome regulations of the Christian Church-which are now so shockingly neglected, that our feasts and merry-meetings are on Wednesdays and Fridays (perhaps on Good Friday itself), when our forefathers of the Reformation, who kept up to what they professed, were praying and fasting.

The time hath come upon many great nations, when ill principles and self-indulgence, and that infatuation which is the natural consequence of both, have brought them to ruin; and in all appearance that time is now coming upon us. I am persuaded we have sunk more hastily into universal corruption from the sanctified fasting of our Puritans in the days of Cromwell; whose rapine and violence, when compared with their affected mortifications, brought