to predict the fair weather of virtue and peace, or the storms of passion and vice, to which my microcosm shall be subject; but at the great luminaries of faith and conscience, in my understanding and heart. On these I endeavour to found my ephemerides and almanack; and it is only owing to a defect in my observations, or a neglect of my journal, that I am not as great an astronomer as Kepler or Newton, and even a much greater astrologer than Lilly. Hours, days, months, years, do not, of themselves, and as such, exercise any considerable influence over my affairs, my temper of mind, my,habit of body, or my religious principles, which prescribe, or ought to prescribe, every thing I think or do. By these are afforded the proper seasons and opportunities for the conduct that becomes a rational being; the spring for his labours, and the autumn for his fruits. How preposterous is it to strain or disjoint the tenor of our actions, that they may follow the hand of a clock, and to lose the occasion of succeeding in our schemes because the shadow on the dial is not yet come to the time! It stirs my indignation to hear a man say, he hath lived so many years, for, were life to be so computed, the visiting and carding lady, the sot, the saunterer, might be said to live as long, as he that hath, out of nothing, but his own industry, made competent provision for a large family of children, and trained them up to be useful members of society, and good servants to God; or as long as lady Arabella Denny. It is certain, let the vulgar era of life run as much as you please, on days and weeks, life is contracted by idleness, and extended by action. We lose all that space which passes while we are thoughtless or inactive. The action that preceded, closes. with the action that succeeds it, and expunges the intermediate vacuity from our account of time. Birth and death are drawn so much nearer together, and life consequently shortened, in proportion as less thought and action are interposed. On the contrary, the thinking and the active, as they force in thought between thought, and wedge in one action beside another, stretch their lives, and set their extremities at a greater distance. Admitting this method of computation, some surprising paradoxes will be established; such as, that many persons, who eat, drink, and digest victuals, are not alive; that the dead swallow nearly as much food

.

as the living; that one man may die extremely old at thirty, and another in his minority, though arrived at his ninetieth year; that the generality of the great ones do only lie in state, but not embowelled, to be gazed at by those who labour to feed, dress, and carry them about, just as if they were still in being; and that the greater part of mankind live and die by turns, it may be, twice or thrice a day, as they are murdered by inaction, or find a resurrection on a call of business or pleasure. If we are resolved however to receive the sun for the regulator of our time in the country, and the moon in town, what astronomer shall furnish us with an equation table, or rather each of us with an individual equation, to adjust his tardy motions to the impatient, or his too quick ones to the cunctator? Who shall regulate the too fugitive time of night between the moon and her lunar subjects, or teach them to set, ere the daylight arises to expose their horns? Fond of my own system, I cannot help asserting, that every man is a fool, or an almanack-maker.

160. We laugh at children for their ambitious emulation about who shall have the finer plaything; but do not consider, that the higher post or title is but the gewgaw of an older child. After all, it is among the bearded children nothing more, than who shall have the lobster's claw, or who shall be put off with that of the crab.

161. The very essence of affectation consists in impertinence, in looks, gesticulations, and modes of speaking, which have nothing to do, in the nature of things, with what we are about. Conceit gives silly people an unhappy fertility of invention in such matters, which may denominate a man or woman, a genius at affectation, an original of the most ridiculous sort. But there is an humble class of the affected, who are content to borrow a parcel of little airs and ways from the manner of others, on whom they sit naturally enough, but look wretchedly in the copy. He is silly, who hopes to look better in another's clothes, that do not fit him, than in his own which do. The open-mouthed laugh of Flavia is extremely awkward, and besides, exposes her ill-coloured and irregular teeth. She was not aware of this, when she copied it from Lydia, whose teeth are pearls, and whose cheek never discovers that deadly dimple, for which

HYLEMA.

she is so admired, but when she laughs. It is a poor thing to be a fool, but to be a fool by choice, and at second-hand, is the most despicable thing in the world. Could such a one bray himself in a mortar, and give a new form to the mass, it would not be half so graceful, as that which nature hath already given. A man is but a bungling man-maker.

162. There is not an objection urged against Christianity more frequently, nor with greater force, than the divisions in principle, and the animosities among churches, so shamefully visible wherever it is professed. The professors of other religions, we are told, and it is confessed, have not differed so widely, nor contended so bitterly with one another, when they did differ about their credenda, or modes of worship. Now among the many unanswerable arguments for Christianity, this objection to it is not one of the meanest, considered, as its effect upon weak understandings, or irregular tempers. It is only its interesting weight, which gives occasion to the close and minute scrutiny into its doctrines, and afterward to that fury, with which the disputes about those doctrines, when differently understood, Mankind never fall out about what they are maintained. do not value. Do we ever see a polemical book or pamphlet, which does not set forth the opinions of its author, as so many fundamental articles of Christianity, and as absolutely necessary to salvation? Is not heaven and hell brought into every controversy? Did not our religion go deeper into the heart, and more affectingly engage our pas sions, than any other, it would never excite a greater warmth in disputation, than other religions have done; it would not be better worth a dispute, than others. The heathens who are capable of argumentation, could have found a pleasure, and gratified their ambition, by striking out new opinions, and leading parties, as well as our Christian controvertists; but they held their religion in too great contempt to hope for a name by any exercise of their talents upon the modes, or even articles, of a system so perfectly absurd and insignificant. They saw plainly, that diversity, and conformity, in downright stupidity, were not worth minding; so they suffered time, poetry, legislation, whim, to make a thousand changes in it every day. Had not this been the case, we should have heard of some bickerings about the gods of na

tions, who often went to war about their sheep. No, their gods were of a very pacific nature. The deity of wood gave no disturbance to the divinity of stone; nor did he envy the magnificence of him, who stood in brass, silver, or gold. They could keep the peace in one country, in one temple, and even in one hearth. Their worshippers too, who dug them out of the quarry, or cut them out of the tree, were not in haste to butcher one another about them. It was not for Apollo, but the wealth of his temple, that the Phocian war was kindled. We do not fight about a little dirt or stubble, but about gold and silver. Yet I hardly think the objector will throw away his money, because many individuals, nay, and so many nations every day, knock one another on the head about money. What we graft on a strong stem is apt to grow bigger and bear more fruit, whether good or bad, than if grafted on a dwindling stock. It is from the root of truth and importance that the heresies and schisms of our religion draw their strength, and shew the vigour of the root in the wide spread of their branches, the profusion of their leaves, and the load of fruits, sweet or sour, nutritious ar poisonous, according to the canals that convey the sap which they produce. Religion is not the worse for being abused by ignorant, designing, or contentious men; and if it is attended with violent effects when misconceived by the wrong-headed, or misapplied by wrong-hearted persons, it shews at least, that the cannon could fire home, and wanted only to be properly pointed. It is an old adage, and a true one, that the corruption of the best things, is the worst sort of corruption. This applied to all religions, will do particular honour to the Christian.

163. An upright is always an easier than a stooping posture, because it is more natural, and one part is better supported by another; so it is easier to be an honest man than a knave. It is also more graceful.

164. Life is a game you must play, and requires a great deal of skill to play it well, for many of the people you are to play with are sharpers. If you would succeed in it, you must practise it much. Looking on will never do. The best gamesters are those who have lost most. If you are obliged to play before you understand the game, get an old hand to direct you, or play for little. If you would take a

short way to be easy about it, and to make an amusement of that which others make their business, despise the world, and play for nothing.

165. Eunomus and Ismenias seem to be possessed of the same talent for humour, which consists in exposing the absurdities of others, whether as to their discourse or actions. But their talents are very different. That of Eunomus is nothing else than clear judgment, which measuring every thing by a straight and perfect rule, quickly discovers its crookedness and deviation, which expressed, affords that entertainment so liked by the generality of companies he goes into. Whereas the distorted head of Ismenias distorts all the persons and actions that fall under his observations, and this imputative deformity never fails to excite a laugh. His talent lies in caracatura. Eunomus sets before you the pictures of objects deformed, but Ismenias shews you deformed pictures of objects.

166. Bigotry is a strong and furious attachment to opinions, adopted by prejudice, party, affection, aversion, chance, and nursed by time and habit. All parties fling the imputation of bigotry bitterly in one another's faces, and are in the right, for, she is of all sides; scolds, contends, fights, for all sides; gives demonstration to arguments on all sides; makes every body in the right, levels truth and error, and brings them to be matches. She raises no differences herself, but foments all that are raised by interest, education, &c. She can blow up a slight dispute, once kindled, into a war, such as that between the Swiss cantons and Charles duke of Burgundy, about a load of dry skins, which ended in the ruin of the Burgundian family. She can make two political writers embroil two nations, or two polemical divines two churches, and lead them out to fire their powder and ball, or their still hotter invectives, one on the other, with no larger a weapon than a goose-quill. She is in her element, when on the wrong side of a debate, and looks awkwardly on the right. One bigoted to the truth, looks like a sound-limbed man on crutches, or a seeing man led by a blind. She is so heady, that her slaves must not assist themselves with reason, though it is for them; so blind, that she strikes herself against all obstacles; runs into all difficulties; opposes the tenets she would establish;