intelligence, the whole fcheme is now fettled, and we fhall fee great events in another month.

Jack Sneaker is a hearty adherent to the prefent eftablishment; he has known thofe who faw the bed into which the pretender was conveyed in a warmingpan. He often rejoices that the nation was not enflaved by the Irish. He believes that king William never loft a battle, and that if he had lived one year longer he would have conquered France. He holds. that Charles the firft was a papift. He allows there were fome good men in the reign of queen Anne, but the peace of Utrecht brought a blaft upon the nation, and has been the cause of all the evil that we have fuffered to the prefent hour. He believes that the fcheme of the South Sea was well intended, but that it mifcarried by the influence of France. He confiders a ftanding army as the bulwark of liberty, thinks us fecured from corruption by feptennial parliaments, relates how we are enriched and ftrengthened by the electoral dominions, and declares that the publick debt is a bleffing to the nation.

Yet amidst all this profperity, poor Jack is hourly disturbed by the dread of popery. He wonders that fome ftricter laws are not made against papifts, and is fometimes afraid that they are bufy with French gold among the bishops and judges.

He cannot believe that the nonjurors are fo quiet. for nothing, they muft certainly be forming fome plot for the establishment of popery; he does not think the prefent oaths fufficiently binding, and wishes that fome better fecurity could be found for the fucceffion of Hanover. He is zealous for the

naturali

naturalization of foreign proteftants, and rejoiced at the admiffion of the Jews to the English privileges, because he thought a few would never be a papift.

NUMB. II. SATURDAY, June 24, 1758.

T is commonly obferved, that when two Englishmen meet, their first talk is of the weather; they are in hafte to tell each other, what each must already know, that it is hot or cold, bright or cloudy, windy

or calm.

There are, among the numerous lovers of fubtil→ ties and paradoxes, fome who derive the civil inftitutions of every country from its climate, who impute freedom and flavery to the temperature of the air, can fix the meridian of vice and virtue, and tell at what degree of latitude we are to expect courage or timidity, knowledge or ignorance.

From these dreams of idle fpeculation, a flight furvey of life, and a little knowledge of hiftory, is fufficient to awaken any enquirer, whofe ambition of distinction has not overpowered his love of truth. Forms of government are feldom the refult of much deliberation; they are framed by chance in popular affemblies, or in conquered countries by defpotick authority. Laws are often occafional, often capricious, made always by a few, and fometimes by a fingle voice. Nations have changed their characters; flavery is now no where more patiently en

dured,

dured, than in countries once inhabited by the zealots of liberty.

But national customs can arife only from general agreement; they are not impofed, but chofen, and are continued only by the continuance of their cause. An Englishman's notice of the weather, is the natural confequence of changeable fkies and uncertain feafons. In many parts of the world, wet weather and dry are regularly expected at certain periods; but in our inland every man goes to fleep, unable to guess whether he fhall behold in the morning a bright or cloudy atmosphere, whether his reft fhall be lulled by a fhower, or broken by a tempeft. We therefore rejoice mutually at good weather, as at an escape from fomething that we feared, and mutually complain of bad, as of the lofs of fomething that we hoped.

Such is the reason of our practice; and who fhall treat it with contempt? Surely not the attendant on a court, whofe business is to watch the looks of a being weak and foolifh as himfelf, and whofe vanity is to recount the names of men, who might drop into nothing, and leave no vacuity; nor the proprietor of funds, who ftops his acquaintance in the street to tell him of the lofs of half-a-crown; not the enquirer after news, who fills his head with foreign events, and talks of fkirmishes and fieges, of which no confequence will ever reach his hearers or himfelf. The weather is a nobler and more interesting fubject; it is the prefent ftate of the skies and of the earth, on which plenty and famine are fufpended, on which millions depend for the neceffaries of life.

The

The weather is frequently mentioned for another reason, lefs honourable to my dear countrymen. Our difpofitions too frequently change with the colour of the fky; and when we find ourselves cheerful and good-natured, we naturally pay our acknowledgments to the powers of fun-fhine; or if we fink into dullness and peevishnefs, look round the horizon. for an excufe, and charge our discontent upon an easterly wind or a cloudy day.

Surely nothing is more reproachful to a being endowed with reason, than to refign its powers to the influence of the air, and live in dependance on the weather and the wind, for the only bleffings which nature has put into our power, tranquillity and benevolence. To look up to the sky for the nutriment of our bodies, is the condition of nature; to call upon the fun for peace and gaiety, or deprecate the clouds left forrow fhould overwhelm us, is the cowardice of idleness, and the idolatry of folly.

Yet even in this age of enquiry and knowledge, when fuperftition is driven away, and omens and prodigies have loft their terrors, we find this folly countenanced by frequent examples. Thofe that laugh at the portentous glare of a comet, and hear a crow with equal tranquillity from the right or left, will yet talk of times and fituations proper for intellectual performances, will imagine the fancy exalted by vernal breezes, and the reason invigorated by a bright calm.

If men who have given up themselves to fanciful credulity would confine their conceits in their own minds, they might regulate their lives by the barometer, with inconvenience only to themselves; but

6

to

to fill the world with accounts of intellects fubject to ebb and flow, of one genius that awakened in the fpring, and another that ripened in the autumn, of one mind expanded in the fummer, and of another concentrated in the winter, is no lefs dangerous than to tell children of bugbears and goblins. Fear will find every houfe haunted, and idlenefs will wait for ever for the moment of illumination.

This diftinction of feafons is produced only by imagination operating on luxury. To temperance every day is bright, and every hour is propitious to diligence. He that fhall refolutely excite his faculties, or exert his virtues, will foon make himself fuperior to the feafons, and may fet at defiance the morning mift, and the evening damp, the blafts of the eaft, and the clouds of the fouth.

It was the boast of the Stoick philofophy, to make man unfhaken by calamity, and unelated by fuccefs, incorruptible by pleafure, and invulnerable by pain; thefe are heights of wifdom which none ever attained, and to which few can afpire; but there are lower degrees of conftancy neceffary to common virtue, and every man, however he may diftruft himself in the extremes of good or evil, might at least struggle against the tyranny of the climate, and refufe to enflave his virtue or his reafon to the most variable of all variations, the changes of the weather.