cation, concluding after this manner : "I have no other way left of acknowledging my gratitude to Leontine than by marrying you to his daughter. He shall not lose the pleasure of being your father by the discovery I have 5 made to you. Leonilla, too, shall be still my daughter; her filial piety, though misplaced, has been so exemplary that it deserves the greatest reward I can confer upon it. You shall have the pleasure of seeing a great estate fall to you, which you would have lost the relish of had you Io known yourself born to it. Continue only to deserve it in the same manner you did before you were possessed of it. I have left your mother in the next room. Her heart yearns towards you. She is making the same discoveries to Leonilla which I have made to yourself." Florio was 15 so overwhelmed with this profusion of happiness that he was not able to make a reply, but threw himself down at his father's feet, and amidst a flood of tears kissed and embraced his knees, asking his blessing, and expressing in dumb show those sentiments of love, duty, and gratitude 20 that were too big for utterance. To conclude, the happy

pair were married, and half Eudoxus's estate settled upon them. Leontine and Eudoxus passed the remainder of their lives together; and received in the dutiful and affectionate behavior of Florio and Leonilla the just recom25 pense, as well as the natural effects, of that care which they had bestowed upon them in their education.

L.

My worthy friend, Sir Roger, when we are talking of the malice of parties, very frequently tells us an accident that happened to him when he was a schoolboy, which was at a time when the feuds ran high between the Roundheads and Cavaliers. This worthy knight, being then but a stripling, 5 had occasion to inquire which was the way to St. Anne's Lane upon which the person whom he spoke to, instead of answering his question, called him a young popish cur, and asked him who had made Anne a saint! The boy, being in some confusion, inquired of the next he met, 10 which was the way to Anne's Lane; but was called a prick-eared cur for his pains, and instead of being shown the way, was told that she had been a saint before he was born, and would be one after he was hanged. "Upon this," says Sir Roger, "I did not think fit to repeat the 15 former question, but going into every lane of the neighborhood, asked what they called the name of that lane." By which ingenious artifice, he found out the place he inquired after without giving offence to any party. Sir Roger generally closes this narrative with reflections on 20 the mischief that parties do in the country; how they spoil good neighborhood, and make honest gentlemen hate oneanother; besides that they manifestly tend to the prejudice of the land-tax, and the destruction of the game.

There cannot a greater judgment befall a country than 25 such a dreadful spirit of division as rends a government into two distinct people, and makes them greater strangers and more averse to one another than if they were

actually two different nations. The effects of such a division are pernicious to the last degree, not only with regard to those advantages which they give the common enemy, but to those private evils which they produce in the heart 5 of almost every particular person. This influence is very fatal both to men's morals and their understandings; it sinks the virtue of a nation, and not only so, but destroys

even common sense.

A furious party spirit, when it rages in its full violence, 10 exerts itself in civil war and bloodshed; and when it is under its greatest restraints naturally breaks out in falsehood, detraction, calumny, and a partial administration of justice. In a word, it fills a nation with spleen and rancor, and extinguishes all the seeds of good-nature, compassion, 15 and humanity.

Plutarch says, very finely, that a man should not allow himself to hate even his enemies; "Because," says he,

"if you indulge this passion in some occasions, it will rise of itself in others; if you hate your enemies, you will con20 tract such a vicious habit of mind as by degrees will break out upon those who are your friends, or those who are indifferent to you." I might here observe how admirably this precept of morality—which derives the malignity of hatred from the passion itself, and not from its object — answers to that great rule which was dictated to the world about an hundred years before this philosopher wrote; but instead of that, I shall only take notice, with a real grief of heart, that the minds of many good men among us appear soured with party principles, and alienated from 30 one another in such a manner as seems to me altogether inconsistent with the dictates either of reason or religion. Zeal for a public cause is apt to breed passions in the hearts of virtuous persons to which the regard of their own private interest would never have betrayed them. →

5

CIf this party spirit has so ill an effect on our morals, it
has likewise a very great one upon our judgments. We
often hear a poor, insipid paper or pamphlet cried up,
and sometimes a noble piece depreciated, by those who
are of a different principle from the author. One who is
actuated by this spirit is almost under an incapacity of
discerning either real blemishes or beauties.
A man
of merit in a different principle, is like an object seen in
two different mediums, that appears crooked or broken,
however straight or entire it may be in itself. For this ro
reason, there is scarce a person of any figure in England
who does not go by two contrary characters, as opposite
to one another as light and darkness. Knowledge and
learning suffer in a particular manner from this strange
prejudice, which at present prevails amongst all ranks and 15
degrees in the British nation. As men formerly became
eminent in learned societies by their parts and acquisi-
tions, they now distinguish themselves by the warmth and
violence with which they espouse their respective parties.
Books are valued upon the like consideration: an abusive, 20
scurrilous style passes for satire, and a dull scheme of
party notions is called fine writing

longer, praise and reproach will cease to be motives of action in good men.

There are certain periods of time in all governments when this inhuman spirit prevails. Italy was long torn in pieces 5 by the Guelphs and Ghibellines, and France by those who were for and against the League; but it is very unhappy for a man to be born in such a stormy and tempestuous season. It is the restless ambition of artful men that thus breaks a people into factions, and draws several wellIo meaning persons to their interest by a specious concern for their country. How many honest minds are filled with uncharitable and barbarous notions, out of their zeal for the public good! What cruelties and outrages would they not commit against men of an adverse party, whom they 15 would honor and esteem, if, instead of considering them as they are represented, they knew them as they are! Thus are persons of the greatest probity seduced into shameful errors and prejudices, and made bad men even by that noblest of principles, the "love of their country." 20 I cannot here forbear mentioning the famous Spanish proverb, "If there were neither fools nor knaves in the world, all people would be of one mind."

Refor

For my own part, I could heartily wish that all honest men would enter into an association for the support of one 25 another against the endeavors of those whom they ought to look upon as their common enemies, whatsoever side they may belong to. Were there such an honest body of neutral forces, we should never see the worst of men in great figures of life, because they are useful to a party; 30 nor the best unregarded, because they are above practicing those methods which would be grateful to their faction. We should then single every criminal out of the herd, and hunt him down, however formidable and overgrown he might appear: on the contrary, we shoul'd