folation of ambition, the waste of magnificence, and the ruin of play?

MADAME Montefpan's coach and fix mice. was not a more idle, though it was a lefs mifchievous folly, than the armies of her lover, Lewis the fourteenth. The ambition of that monarch to emulate the conquerors of antiquity; of Cæfar to rival Alexander; of Alexander to resemble the hero of his darling poem, the Iliad; the defigns of Pyrrhus, and the projects of Xerxes; what were they but counterparts to a paffion for a Talking Bird, the Singing Tree, and the Yellow Water?

To defcend a little into private life, how many do we fee daily talked into a rage for building, gardening, painting, and divers other expences, to the embarraffing a fortune which would more than fufficiently fupply the neceffaries of life? Among the numbers who have changed a fober plan of living for one of riot and excefs, the greatest part have been converted by the arguments in a drinking fong. Thoufands have taken the fame fruitless and expenfive journey, because they have heard that it is very JOHN TROTT not to have vifited France, and that a perfon who has not been abroad has SEEN NOTHING. I was once told

by a gentleman, who had undone himfelf by keeping running horfes, that he owed his ruin to a strong impreffion made upon him, when a boy, by his father's butler, who happened to declare in his hearing, "that it was a creditable "thing to keep good cattle; and that if he was "a gentleman, he fhould take great pleasure in being always well mounted."

F 2

BUT

BUT to apply our fable to the most recent inftance of this fpecies of infatuation, how often have we feen an honeft country gentleman, who has lived a truly happy life, bleffed in his family, amufed with his farms and gardens, entertained by his own beneficence, ufefully employed in the adminiftration of justice, or in reconciling the differences of his litigious neighbours; but who being talked into an opinion of the great fervice a man might do his country as well as honour to himself by getting into parliament, has given up all his real enjoyments and ufeful occupations for this imaginary phantom, which has only taught him by experience, what he might have learnt from example, that the FAMILY INTEREST, as it is called, is too often the deftruction of the FAMILY ESTATE.

As to all thofe gentlemen who have gained their elections, I moft fincerely with them joy: and for those who have been difappointed, and who now may have leifure to turn their thoughts from their country to themselves, I beg leave to recommend to them the pleasures, and I may add, the duties of domeftic life: in comparifon of which all other advantages are nothing more than the Talking Bird, the Singing Tree, and the Yellow Water.

NUMB.

NUMB. 73. THURSDAY, May 23, 1754.

-Ille potens fui

Lætufque degit, cui licet in diem
Dixiffe, VIXI: cras vel atrâ
Nube polum Pater occupato,

Vel fole puro: non tamen irritum
Quodcunque retro est, efficiet.

HOR.

T was the faying of Epaminondas, upon being afked which of all his friends he esteemed moft, that "they must all die before fuch a quef"tion could be answered." But if Epaminondas had lived in this country, and in these times, he would have known that the greatest heroes at their deaths, are frequently those who have been the greateft villains in their lives. And yet most men are apt to think like Epaminondas,. and to pass their judgments upon a man's life from what he has faid and acted in the last scene of it; that feafon being thought the feafon of fincerity, because diffimulation is to no purpose, and because the confcience finds ease in difclofing crimes which can no longer profit us, and which threaten us with deftruction in the ftate to which we are haftening, unlefs truly confeffed and repented of in this. But of thofe who die in their beds, as well as malefactors, I have known and heard of many debauched and diffolute men, who have met death with the utmost patience and refignation; while the pious and moral chriftian, whofe life has been spent

in the conftant exercife of religion and virtue, has beheld its approaches with confufion; and from a confcioufnefs of not having done exactly as he ought to have done upon every occafion, has died fearful and defponding.

FROM hence it will appear that those who judge of men's lives by their behaviour at their deaths, will be fometimes miftaken. The contempt of death may be owing in many to infenfibility; in fome to a brutal courage; in others to the diflike of life; in a few to philofophy, as well as in many to a well-grounded hope of a happy hereafter. The jeft of Sir Thomas Moore upon the fcaffold, who after laying his head upon the block, bad the executioner stay till he had put afide his beard, because that had committed no treafon, was no more a proof of the goodness of his life (if there had been no other voucher) than that of the murderer at the gallows, who entreated the hangman not to touch his neck with his fingers, becaufe he was ticklifh. The thief, for the reputation of dying hard, as it is called, and the philofopher, to fupport the doctrine he has taught, that death is no evil, will rufh into eternity with an affected bravery, and offend Heaven rather than confefs their apprehenfions of diffolution.

MEN are fometimes hypocrites in their last moments through pride, as they have been all their lives through intereft; nor will it appear ftrange that they are fo: for as every man is defirous (if it can be done without much trouble) of leaving a good name behind him, he is unwilling to confefs at his death that he has been

a rogue

a rogue all his life. Upon principles like thefe have the worft of criminals gone to the gallows with as much triumph and exultation, as the martyrs of old did to the stake for the caufe of Heaven and religion.

FOR my own part (and I hope it will not be imputed to me as prefumption) I fhould think of death with much greater terror than I do, if I confidered it as the final end of being. The thought of annihilation to one whofe life has not been marked with any of the capital vices, and whose frailties, he humbly hopes, are no more than those which are incident to humanity; who has been unprofitable to his MAKER because he was human, and to mankind. because unfriended by fortune; and whofe connections in this life have been fuch as to make him defirous of their eternal duration; I fay, to one who thus thinks, and who hopes he has thus lived, the thought of annihilation would make death moft terrible. And yet in the circle of my own acquaintance, I have found a man of a decent life and conversation, who wished well to every body, and who loved and enjoyed his friends, but who, through a tedious and painful illness, had conceived fleep to be fo great a bleffing as to make him with for an eternity of it; and having taken pains to believe that death was such a fleep, he talked of it with pleasure, and within a very few hours of his exit, as a confirmation that he died in the opinion he had profeffed, he wrote the following epitaph upon himself, and directed it to a friend with his own hand.