pose a favourable disposition of mind, which it is in no man's power to command, unless he can bring every circumstance that appertains to him under perfect controul. It is a mark of a poor and debauched spirit to trust to wine for its happiness: besides, it can only be half the man that is made happy by such methods; that half which is stripped of our highest nature, our noblest attributes and properties, our judgement and our memory.

We are told by Lonicerus of a man who was violently urged by the temptation of the Devil to the commission of one of these three sins; to be once drunk, or to pollute his neighbour's bed, or to murder a certain person. At length the tempter gained so far upon him as to prevail upon him to commit the sin of drunkenness, as apparently involving the smallest guilt. No sooner, however, was the poor wretch completely inebriated, but the temptation to adultery became irresistible, which ended in the murder of the husband, to prevent the consequences of his resent

ment.

There is certainly no poorer picture of the human mind, than what hourly exhibits itself in the complaints of those martyrs to the indulgence of their appetites, whom no warnings can reduce to any measures of forbearance, while they are carrying their puny lamentations from house to house, as if they were persons robbed of the rights of their nature, and curtailed in the privileges of humanity. Every man's stomach is doubtless his best physician; but unhappily its doom is, like that of the prophetess Cassandra, always to speak the truth, but never to be believed. We have surely no right to bewail our condition, when we reflect how much of our misery is of our own making, and how few of those ills are attached to our nature, which are the theme of our constant

complaint: nor, on the contrary, can we soberly presume much upon the elevation of our fortunes, when we regard the train of sorrows by which they are accompanied; when we consider how little riches, or titles, or empires, can balance against the disabilities

and tortures of sickness and disease.

I met with a comical little fable the other day, which perhaps may be as new to my readers, as it was to myself.

It happened on a certain day, that Gout and a Flea took it into their heads to travel together. They proceeded sociably enough on their way till night drew on, and it became necessary to think of repose. As it was perfectly dark when they entered a large town, where they proposed to rest themselves, it was too late to seek for acquaintances, or to be particular about accommodations. That they might find a more easy reception, they agreed to go separately in search of lodgings; and it so fell out that the Flea took up his quarters at the house of the worshipful mayor, while Gout was entertained by a poor fisherman who lived in the suburbs. The next morning our travellers met by times to prosecute their journey. After the first compliments had passed, they began to be particular in their mutual inquiries as to the manner in which the preceding night had been spent; for nothing could be more apparent than that neither had had his needful repose."A murrain take this inhospitable town!" cries Gout, as he limped along with pain and difficulty: I never have been so scurvily treated in all my life. I had hardly got footing in the house of that rascally fisherman, before I was clapped into a jack boot, and, tired as I was, carried out by this inhuman fellow into the midst of an eel pond, where I was kept three miserable hours up to my calf in water: judge if I have enjoyed a very refreshing repose.

I never was happy in low company. Give me a gentleman, say I." "And give me," returned the Flea, rubbing his eyes, and yawning piteously, "give me any thing rather than a gentleman. No sooner had I begun to stretch myself between the shoulderblades of Monsieur the Mayor, and taken a mouthful of supper, before such a riot was commenced, as was never heard before in the world: I thought all the elements were coming together to destroy me. The bell was rung a dozen times in a minute, and the room was presently filled with a set of the most determined assassins that were ever met for the purposes of destruction. After being bruised in every part of my body, and hunted about for the space of two hours, I with great difficulty escaped with my life. My dear friend, we must contrive better in future: you are always boasting of your reception among the great, where you are seated on satin sofas, and have your toes as much regarded as if they were the Pope's. In God's name keep these elegancies to yourself; but give me content and a cottage as long as I live."

As I reckon the concerns of eating and drinking to involve a question of the most general consequence to my readers, I design to continue my remarks through next Saturday's Paper, in which I shall touch again on the uses and abuses of good dinners, and enter into a farther delineation of my theory of the comfortable, and the nature and criteria of true hospitality.

VOL. XLII.

No 59. SATURDAY, JUNE 29.

Non aliá bibam

Mercede.

On these terms only will I dine,
However excellent your wine.

HORAT.

It was my intention to have offered in this Paper such rules of hospitality as I thought might help to ascertain and fix its true character; but upon reflection it occured to me, that where there is the want of openness of heart and accuracy of feeling, rules could be of but little benefit, while they are necessarily bred in the mind where these requisites subsist. There is frequently a crossness in the decrees of nature, which maintains a pertinacious struggle with the dispositions of civilised life. Thus she continually withholds from the rich and lofty that liberal conformation of mind which is so essential to the dignity of their stations, while she lavishes her finest qualities on the children of obscurity and want. I look with no common compassion on those indigent souls which are poverty-struck amidst piles of riches, and, encumbered with their own magnificence, move heavily under the weight of their trappings and insignia; condemned, by an in-born obtuseness and contractedness of feeling, to be without grace in their gifts, or welcome in their hospitality; to be sordidly sumptuous, and penuriously prodigal.

I have always thought that the worst qualities a

dish can have is the sour taste of obligation; and he who lets it appear that his friendship and affection is typified in his table, makes his meat cost more to a spirited guest, than its price in the dearest market. This poor appreciation of friendship, was reprobated by Juvenal as common among his countrymen. "Fructus amicitiæ magnæ-cibus." And I fear the

present age is not yet corrected of these illiberal notions. Friendship and a good dinner, though things perfectly consistent, cannot be representative of each other, and if friendship will not satisfy a man who comes hungry within our threshold, so neither are the demands of friendship to be paid with the hospitalities of our board.

When I enter the house of one of these wealthy plebeians, I am almost frozen at the entrance; and, however magnificently furnished his parlour may be, however briskly his fire may burn, there is the gloom of a prison in my imagination; and when I place myself at table, I sit under the sword of Damocles, or, like the Governor of Barataria, amidst contraband delicacies. The real source of half the prodigality in the world, is not in the excess of generosity, or a constitutional negligence of mind, but in a contractedness of spirit, that cannot embrace the right and rational uses of wealth, and a certain disproportion between the man and his circumstances. Thus we should not be prodigal, if we knew how to be generous; and a man is frequently luxurious or ostentatious, for want of knowing how to be noble and hospitable.

DEMADES is a person of great property, and has an undoubted share of good-nature; he looks on nothing with so much abhorrence as the character of a covetous man; and, rather than be thought to want hospitality, would make his whole neighbourhood swim in an ocean of Madeira. Nothing can be more