could say nothing more of his finest figures, than that they were agreeable monsters.

The fourth person I examined was very remarkable for his hasty hand, which left his pictures so unfinished that the beauty in the picture (which was designed to continue as a monument of it to posterity) faded sooner than in the per son after whom it was drawn. He made so much haste to despatch his business, that he neither gave himself time to clean his pencils, nor mix his colours. The name of this

expeditious workman was Avarice.

Not far from this artist I saw another of a quite different nature, who was dressed in the habit of a Dutchman, and known by the name of Industry. His figures were wonderfully laboured. If he drew the portraiture of a man, he did not omit a single hair in his face; if the figure of a ship, there was not a rope among the tackle that escaped him. He had likewise hung a great part of the wall with nightpieces, that seemed to shew themselves by the candles which were lighted up in several parts of them; and were so inflamed by the sunshine which accidentally fell upon them, that at first sight I could scarce forbear crying out, "Fire!"

The five foregoing artists were the most considerable on this side the gallery. There were, indeed, several others whom I had not time to look into. One of them, however, I could not forbear observing, who was very busy in retouching the finest pieces, though he produced no originals of his own. His pencil aggravated every feature that was before overcharged, loaded every defect, and poisoned every colour it touched. Though this workman did so much mischief on the side of the living, he never turned his eye towards that of the dead. His name was Envy.

Having taken a cursory view of one side of the gallery, I turned myself to that which was filled by the works of those great masters that were dead; when immediately I fancied myself standing before a multitude of spectators, and thousands of eyes looking upon me at once; for all before me appeared so like men and women, that I almost forgot they were pictures. Raphael's figures stood in one row, Titian's in another, Guido Rheni's in a third. One part of the wall was peopled by Hannibal Carracce, another by Correggio, and another by Rubens. To be short, there was not a great master among the dead who had not contributed to the embellishment of this side of the gallery. The persons that owed their being to these several masters, appeared all of them to be real and alive, and differed among one another only in the variety of their shapes, complexions, and clothes; so that they looked like different nations of the same species.

Observing an old man (who was the same person I before mentioned, as the only artist that was at work on this side of the gallery) creeping up and down from one picture to another, and re-touching all the fine pieces that stood before me, I could not but be very attentive to all his motions. I found his pencil was so very light that it worked imperceptibly, and, after a thousand touches, scarce produced any visible effect in the picture on which he was employed. However, as he busied himself incessantly, and repeated touch after touch without rest or intermission, he wore off insensibly every little disagreeable gloss that hung upon a figure. He also added such a beautiful brown to the shades, and mellowness to the colours, that he made every picture appear more perfect than when it came fresh from the master's pencil. I could not forbear looking upon

the face of this ancient workman, and immediately by the long lock of hair upon his forehead, discovered him to be Time.

Whether it were because the thread of my dream was at an end I cannot tell; but upon my taking a survey of this imaginary old man, my sleep left me.

ANIMAL INSTINCT.

"I deem their breasts inspired

With a divine sagacity."

VIRGIL.

FRIEND of mine is very often merry with me upon my passing so much of my time among his poultry. He has caught me twice or thrice looking after a bird's nest, and several times sitting an hour or two together near a hen and chickens. He tells me he believes I am personally acquainted with every fowl about his house; calls such a particular cock my favourite; and frequently complains that his ducks and geese have more of my company than himself.

I must confess I am infinitely delighted with those speculations of nature which are to be made in a country life; and as my reading has very much lain among books of natural history, I cannot forbear recollecting upon this occasion the several remarks which I have met with in authors, and comparing them with what falls under my own observation: the arguments for Providence drawn from the natural history of animals being, in my opinion, demonstrative.

The make of every kind of animal is different from that of every other kind; and yet there is not the least turn in the muscles or twist in the fibres of any one which does not render them more proper for that particular animal's

way of life than any other cast or texture of them would have been.

The most violent appetites in all creatures are lust and hunger. The first is a perpetual call upon them to propagate their kind; the latter to preserve themselves.

It is astonishing to consider the different degrees of care that descend from the parent to the young, so far as it is absolutely necessary for the leaving a posterity. Some creatures cast their eggs as chance directs them, and think of them no further as insects, and several kinds of fish. Others, of a nicer frame, find out proper beds to deposit them in, and there leave them-as the serpent, the crocodile, and ostrich. Others hatch their eggs and tend the birth until it is liable to shift for itself.

What can we call the principle which directs every different kind of bird to observe a particular plan in the structure of its nest, and directs all the same species to work after the same model? It cannot be imitation; for though you hatch a crow under a hen, and never let it see any of the works of its own kind, the nest it makes shall be the same, to the laying of a stick, with all the other nests of the same species. It cannot be reason; for were animals endued with it to as great a degree as man, their buildings would be as different as ours, according to the different conveniences that they would propose to themselves.

Is it not remarkable that the same temper of weather which raises this genial warmth in animals, should cover the trees with leaves, and the fields with grass, for their security and concealment, and produce such infinite swarms of insects for the support and sustenance of their respective broods?

Is it not wonderful that the love of the parent should be