Well, friend, says I, but how can you get money as a waterman? Does any body go by water these times? Yes, sir, says he, in the way I am employed there does. Do you see there, says he, five ships lie at anchor? pointing down the river a good way below the town; and do you see, says he, eight or ten ships lie at the chain there, and at anchor yonder? pointing above the town. All those ships have families on board, of their merchants and owners, and such like, who have locked themselves up, and live on board, close shut in, for fear of the infection; and I tend on them to fetch things for them, carry letters, and do what is absolutely necessary, that they may not be obliged to come on shore; and every night I fasten my boat on board one of the ship's boats, and there I sleep by myself; and blessed be God, I am preserved hitherto.

Well, said I, friend, but will they let you come on board after you have been on shore here, when this has been such a terrible place, and so infested as it is?

Why, as to that, said he, I very seldom go up the ship-side, but deliver what I bring to their boat, or lie by the side, and they hoist it on board; if I did, I think they are in no danger from me, for I never go into any house on shore, or touch any body, no, not of my own family; but I fetch provision for them.

Nay, says I, but that may be worse, for you must have those provisions of somebody or other; and since all this part of the town is so infected, it is dangerous so much as to speak with any body; for the village, said I, is, as it were, the beginning of London, though it be some distance from it.

That is true, added he, but you do not understand me right. I do not buy provisions for them here: I row up to Greenwich, and buy fresh meat there, and sometimes I row down the river to Woolwich, and buy there, then I go to single farmhouses on the Kentish side, where I am known, and buy fowls, and eggs, and butter, and bring to the ships, as they direct me, sometimes one, sometimes the other. I seldom come on shore here; and I came only now to call my wife, and hear how my little family do, and give them a little money which I received last night. Poor man! said I, and how much hast thou gotten for them?

I have gotten four shillings, said he, which is a great sum, as things go now with poor men; but they have given me a bag of bread too, and a salt fish, and some flesh so all helps out.

Well, said I, and have you given it them yet?

No, said he, but I have called, and my wife has answered that she can not come out yet; but in half an hour she hopes to come, and I am waiting for her. Poor woman! says he, she is brought sadly down; she has had a swelling, and it is broke, and I hope she will recover, but I fear the child will die; but it is the Lord! Here he stopt, and wept very much.

Well, honest friend, said I, thou hast a sure comforter, if thou hast brought thyself to be resigned to the will of God; he is dealing with us all in judgment.

Oh, sir, says he, it is infinite mercy if any of us are spared; and who am I to repine.

Say'st thou so, said I, and how much less is my faith than thine! And here my heart smote me, suggesting how much better this poor man's foundation was, on which he staid in the danger, than mine; that he had nowhere to fly; that he had a family to bind him to attendance, which I had not; and mine was mere presumption; his a true dependence and a courage resting in God; and yet, that he used all possible caution for his safety.

I turned a little way from the man while these thoughts engaged me; for, indeed, I could no more refrain from tears than he.

At length, after some farther talk, the poor woman opened the door, and called Robert, Robert; he answered, and bid her stay a few moments and he would come; so he ran down the common stairs to his boat, and fetched up a sack in which was the provisions he had brought from the ships; and when he returned, he hallooed

again; then he went to the great stone which he showed me, and emptied the sack, and laid all out, every thing by themselves, and then retired; and his wife came with a little boy to fetch them away; and he called, and said, such a captain had sent such a thing, and such a captain such a thing; and at the end adds, God has sent it all, give thanks to him. When the poor woman had taken up all, she was so weak, she could not carry it at once in, though the weight was not much neither; so she left the biscuit, which was in a little bag, and left a little boy to watch it till she came again.

Well, but, says I to him, did you leave her the four shillings too, which you said was your week's pay?

Yes, yes, says he, you shall hear her own it. So he calls again. Rachel, Rachel, which it seems was her name, did you take up the money? Yes, said she. How much was it? said he. Four shillings and a groat, said she. Well, well, says he, the Lord keep you all; and so he turned to go away.

As I could not refrain contributing tears to this man's story, so neither could I refrain my charity for his assistance; so I called him. Hark thee, friend, said I, come hither, for I believe thou art in health, that I may venture thee; so I pulled out my hand, which was in my pocket before. Here, says I, go and call thy Rachel once more, and give her a little more comfort from me; God will never forsake a family that trusts in him as thou dost: so I gave him four other shillings, and bid him go lay them on the stone, and call his wife.

I have not words to express the poor man's thankfulness, neither could he express it himself, but by tears running down his face. He called his wife, and told her God had moved the heart of a stranger, upon hearing their condition, to give them all that money; and a great deal more such as that he said to her. The woman, too, made signs of the like thankfulness, as well to Heaven as to me, and joyfully picked it up; and I parted with no money all that year that I thought better bestowed.

Lecture the Chirty-Fifth.

SIR RICHARD STEELE-JOHN HUGHES-EUSTACE BUDGELL-BERNARD MANDEVILLE -EARL OF SHAFTESBURY-LAURENCE ECHARD-JOHN POTTER-BASIL KENNETT -LORD BOLINGBROKE-SAMUEL CLARKE-BENJAMIN HOADLY-GEORGE BERKELEY-LADY MARY WORTLEY MONTAGU.

WE

E had occasion to allude, in our remarks on Defoe, at the close of the last lecture, to the publication of a semi-weekly periodical by that author, under the title of 'The Review,' as the source whence the idea of the 'Tatler,' and the 'Spectator' was derived. The credit of pursuing the idea thus suggested, and of carrying it to perfection, is due to Sir Richard Steele, to whom, and to whose important publications, our attention must now be directed.

RICHARD STEELE, the son of an English barrister, was born in Dublin, in 1671. His father was secretary to the Duke of Ormond, Lord Lieutenant of Ireland; and through the duke's influence, Steele was placed at the Charter-house school, in London, where that warm and lasting friendship originated between him and Addison, to which we have already alluded. In 1692, he was removed to Merton College, Oxford; but after having spent several years in desultory study, he became so enamored of the military profession, that, notwithstanding the dissuasion of his friends, and his failure. to procure an appointment, he enlisted as a private soldier in the horseguards. In this step, by which the succession to the estate of a relative in Wexford was lost, he gave a striking manifestation of that recklessness which unfortunately marked his whole course through life. In the army, his wit, vivacity, and good-humor, soon rendered him so great a favorite, that the officers of his regiment, in order that they might enjoy his society, procured for him the commission of an ensign. Thus situated, he plunged deeply into the fashionable follies and vices of the age, enlarging, however, by such conduct, that knowledge of life and character which proved so useful to him in the composition of his various works. During this course of dissipation, being often visited by reproaches of conscience, he drew up, for the purpose of self-admonition, a small treatise entitled The Christian Hero, and after

wards published it as a still more powerful check upon his irregular passions. Yet it does not appear that even the attention thus drawn to his conduct, and the ridicule excited by the contrast between his principles and his practice, led to any perceptible improvement. The truth is, throughout his whole life, Steele, so far as the principles and practices of moral and religious conduct are concerned,

Knew the right, but still the wrong pursued.

In 1701, Steele turned his attention to the drama, and produced a comedy under the title of The Funeral, or Grief à-la-mode, in which, with much humor, is combined a moral tendency superior to most of the dramatic pieces of that period. Though personally a rake, he made it a matter of principle, to employ his literary talents only in the service of virtue. In 1703, he produced another successful comedy, The Tender Husband, or The Accomplished Fools; and in the year following was represented his third, entitled, The Lying Lover; the strain of which proved too serious for the public taste. The ill success which attended his last play deterred Steele from again appearing as a dramatist, till 1722, when his admirable comedy, The Conscious Lovers, was represented with unbounded applause. "The great, the appropriate praise of Steele,' says Dr. Drake, 'is to have been the first who, after the licentious age of Charles the Second, endeavored to introduce the Virtues on the stage. He clothed them with the brilliancy of genius; he placed them in a situation the most interesting to the human heart; and he taught the audience not to laugh at, but to execrate vice, to despise the lewd fool and witty rake, to applaud the efforts of the good, and to rejoice in the punishment of the wicked.'

In order to introduce all Steele's dramatic works in connection, we have, in thus early noticing his Conscious Lovers,' somewhat anticipated the order of time, in his literary history. Immediately after the failure of 'The Lying Lovers,' which, he says, 'was damned for its piety,' and which to him was a source of deep mortification, he conceived the idea of attacking the vices and follies of the age through the medium of a lively periodical paper. Accordingly, on the twelfth of April, 1709, he commenced the publication of the Tatler, a small sheet designed to appear three times a week, to expose,' as he stated in his introductory number, the false arts of life, to pull off the disguises of cunning, vanity, and affectation, and to recommend a general simplicity in our dress, our discourse, and our behaviour.' Having now reached his thirty-eighth year, Steele was well qualified, by a thorough knowledge of the world, and a large fund of natural humor, for the task he had undertaken; and his sketches, anecdotes, and remarks, are, accordingly, very entertaining. At first, he endeavored to conceal himself under a foreign name; but he soon became known, and his friend Addison then came in to his assistance, and wrote a few papers for him upon more serious subjects than he himself was able or inclined to discuss, and also with various articles of a humorous character.