is capable. The force of reason gives a certain beauty, mixed with the conscience of well-doing and thirst of glory, to all which before was terrible and ghastly to the imagination. Add to this, that the fellowship of danger, the common good of mankind, the general cause, and the manifest virtue you may observe in so many men, who made no figure till that day, are so many incentives to destroy the little consideration of their own persons. Such are the heroic part of soldiers who are qualified for leaders. As to the rest whom I before spoke of, I know not how it is, but they arrive at a certain habit of being void of thought, insomuch that on occasion of the most imminent danger they are still in the same indifference. Nay I remember an instance of a gay Frenchman', who was led on in battle by a superior officer, (whose conduct it was his custom to speak of always with contempt and raillery) and in the beginning of the action received a wound he was sensible was mortal; his reflection on this occasion was, I wish I could live another hour, to see how this blundering coxcomb will get clear of this business.'

' I remember two young fellows who rid in the same squadron of a troop of horse, who were ever together; they eat, they drank, they intrigued; in a word, all their passions and affections seemed to tend the same way, and they appeared serviceable to each other in them. We were in the dusk of the evening to march over a river, and the troop these gentlemen belonged to were to be transported in a ferry-boat, as fast as they could. One of the friends was now in the boat, while the other was drawn up with others

This was the Chevalier de Flourilles, a lieutenant-general under the prince of Conde, at the drawn battle of 'Senef, in Brabant, 1674.

by the water-side, waiting the return of the boat. A disorder happened in the passage by an unruly horse; and a gentleman who had the rein of his horse negligently under his arm, was forced into the water by his horse's jumping over. The friend on the shore cried out, Who is that is drowned, trow?' He was immediately answered, 'Your friend Harry Thompson.' He very gravely replied, 'Ay, he had a mad horse.' This short epitaph from such a familiar, without more words, gave me, at that time under twenty, a very moderate opinion of the friendship of companions. Thus is affection and every other motive of life in the generality rooted out by the present busy scene about them: they lament no man whose capacity can be supplied by another; and where men converse without delicacy, the next man you meet will serve as well as he whom you have lived with half your life. To such the devastation of countries, the misery of inhabitants, the cries of the pillaged, and the silent sorrow of the great unfortunate, are ordinary objects; their minds are bent upon the little gratifications of their own senses and appetites, forgetful of compassion, insensible of glory, avoiding only shame; their whole hearts taken up with the trivial hope of meeting and being merry. These are the people who make up the gross of the soldiery. But the fine gentleman in that band of men is such a one as I have now in my eye, who is foremost in all danger to which he is ordered. His officers are his friends and companions, as they are men of honour and gentlemen; the private men his brethren, as they are of his species. He is beloved of all that behold him. They wish him in danger as he views their ranks, that they may have occasions to save him at their own hazard. Mutual love is the order of the files where he commands; every man

afraid for himself and his neighbour, not lest their commander should punish them, but lest he should be offended. Such is his regiment who knows mankind, and feels their distresses so far as to prevent them. Just in distributing what is their due, he would think himself below their taylor to wear a snip of their clothes in lace upon his own; and below the most rapacious agent should he enjoy a farthing above his own pay. Go on, brave man, immortal glory is thy fortune, and immortal happiness thy reward 2.

STEELE.

T.

N° 153. SATURDAY, AUGUST 25, 1711.

Habet natura ut aliarum omnium rerum sic vivendi modum ; senectus autem peractio ætatis est tanquam fabulæ. Cujus defatigationem fugere debemus præsertim adjuncta satietate.

TULL. de Senect.

Life, as well as all other things, has its bounds assigned by nature; and its conclusion, like the last act of a play, is old age, the fatigue of which we ought to shun, especially when our appetites are fully satisfied.

Of all the impertinent wishes which we hear expressed in conversation, there is not one more unworthy a gentleman or a man of liberal education, than

2 This character has been supposed to allude to Lieutenant-general Cornelius Wood, mentioned by Prior, in his "Letter to Monsieur Boileau Despreaux, occasioned by the victory of Blenheim, 1704," with the epithet, "honest Wood."

that of wishing one's self younger. I have observed this wish is usually made upon sight of some object which gives the idea of a past action, that it is no dishonour to us that we cannot now repeat; or else on what was in itself shameful when we performed it. It is a certain sign of a foolish or a dissolute mind if we want our youth again only for the strength of bones and sinews which we once were masters of. It is (as my author has it) as absurd in an old man to wish for the strength of a youth, as it would be in a young man to wish for the strength of a bull or a horse. These wishes are both equally out of nature, which should direct in all things that are not contradictory to justice, law, and reason. But though every old man has been young, and every young one hopes to be old, there seems to be a most unnatural misunderstanding between those two stages of life. This unhappy want of commerce arises from the insolent arrogance or exultation in youth, and the irrational despondence or self-pity in age. A young man whose passion and ambition is to be good and wise, and an old one who has no inclination to be lewd or debauched, are quite unconcerned in this speculation; but the cocking young fellow who treads upon the toes of his elders, and the old fool who envies the saucy pride he sees him in, are the objects of our present contempt and derision. Contempt and derision are harsh words; but in what manner can one give advice to a youth in the pursuit and possession of sensual pleasures, or afford pity to an old man in the impotence and desire of enjoying them? When young men in public places betray in their deportment an abandoned resignation to their appetites, they give to sober minds a prospect of a despicable age, which, if not interrupted by death in the midst of their fol

lies, must certainly come. When an old man bewails the loss of such gratifications which are passed, he discovers a monstrous inclination to that which it is not in the course of Providence to recal. The state of an old man, who is dissatisfied merely for his being such, is the most out of all measures of reason and good sense of any being we have any account of from the highest angel to the lowest worm. How miserable is the contemplation to consider a libidinous old man (while all created beings, besides himself and devils, are following the order of Providence) fretting at the course of things, and being almost the sole malecontent in the creation. But let us a little reflect upon what he has lost by the number of years. The passions which he had in youth are not to be obeyed as they were then, but reason is more powerful now without the disturbance of them. An old gentleman the other day in discourse with a friend of his (reflecting upon some adventures they had in youth together) cried out, Oh Jack, those were happy days! That is true,' replied his friend, but methinks we go about our business more quietly than we did then.' One would think it should be no small satisfaction to have gone so far in our journey that the heat of the day is over with us. When life itself is a fever, as it is in licentious youth, the pleasures of it are no other than the dreams of a man in that distemper; and it is as absurd to wish the return of that season of life, as for a man in health to be sorry for the loss of gilded palaces, fairy walks, and flowery pastures, with which he remembers he was entertained in the troubled slumbers of a fit of sickness.

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As to all the rational and worthy pleasures of our being, the conscience of a good fame, the contempla. tion of another life, the respect and commerce of ho