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all things conspire to make his sick bed grievous and uneasy; nothing can then stand up against all these ruins, and speak life in the midst of death, but a clear

conscience.

' And the testimony of that shall make the comforts of heaven descend upon his weary head, like a refreshing dew, or shower upon a parched ground. It shall give him some lively earnests and secret anticipations of his approaching joy. It shall bid his soul go out of the body undaunted, and lift up his head with confidence before saints and angels.

Surely the comfort, which it conveys at this season, is something bigger than the capacities of mortality, mighty and unspeakable, and not to be understood until it comes to be felt.

And now, who would not quit all the pleasures and trash and trifles, which are apt to captivate the heart of man, and pursue the greatest rigours of piety, and austerities of a good life, to purchase to himself such a conscience, as at the hour of death, when all the friendship in the world shall bid him adieu, and the whole creation turns its back upon him, shall dismiss the soul and close his eyes with that blessed sentence, "Well done, thou good and faithful servant, enter thou into the joy of thy Lord!"

ADDISON.

No 136. MONDAY, AUGUST 17, 1713.

Noctes atque dies patet atri janua Ditis.

VIRG. En. vi. 127.

The gates of death are open night and day.

DRYDEN.

SOME of our quaint moralists have pleased themselves with an observation, that there is but one way of coming into the world, but a thousand to go out of it. I have seen a fanciful dream written by a Spaniard, in which he introduces the person of Death metamorphosing himself like another Proteus into innumerable shapes and figures. To represent the fatality of fevers and agues, with many other distempers and accidents that destroy the life of man, Death enters first. of all in a body of fire; a little after he appears like a man of snow, then rolls about the room like a cannon-ball, then lies on the table like a gilded pill; after this he transforms himself all of a sudden into a sword, then dwindles successively to a dagger, to'a bodkin, to a crooked pin, to a needle, to a hair. The Spaniard's design by this allegory, was to shew the many assaults to which the life of man is exposed, and to let his reader see that there was scarce any thing in nature so very mean and inconsiderable, but that it was able to overcome him, and lay his head in the dust. I remember Monsieur Paschal, in his reflections on Providence, has this observation upon Cromwell's death. That usurper, says he, who had destroyed the royal family in his own nation, who had made all the princes of Europe tremble, and struck a terror into Rome itself, was at last taken out of the world by a fit of the gravel. An atom, a grain

of sand, says he, that would have been of no significancy in any other part of the universe, being lodged in such a particular place, was an instrument of Providence to bring about the most happy revolutions, and to remove from the face of the earth this troubler of mankind. In short, swarms of distempers are every where hovering over us; casualties, whether at home or abroad, whether we wake or sleep, sit or walk, are planted about us in ambuscade; every element, every climate, every season, all nature is full of death.

There are more casualties incident to men than women, as battles, sea-voyages, with several dangerous trades and professions that often prove fatal to the practitioners. I have seen a treatise written by a learned physician on the distempers peculiar to those who work in stone or marble. It has been therefore observed by curious men, that upon a strict examination there are more males brought into the world than females. Providence, to supply this waste of the species, has made allowance for it by a suitable redundancy in the male sex. Those who have made the nicest calculations have found, I think, that taking one year with another, there are about twenty boys produced to nineteen girls. This observation is so well grounded, that I will at any time lay five to four, that there appear more male than female infants in every weekly bill of mortality. And what can be a more demonstrative argument for the superintendency of Providence?

There are casualties incident to every particular station and way of life. A friend of mine was once saying, that he fancied there would be something new and diverting in a country bill of mortality. Upon communicating this hint to a gentleman who was then going down to his seat, which lies at a considerable distance from London, he told me he would

make a collection, as well as he could, of the several deaths that had happened in his country for the space of a whole year, and send them up to me in the form of such a bill as I mentioned. The reader will here see that he has been as good as his promise. To make it the more entertaining, he has set down, among the real distempers, some imaginary ones, to which the country people ascribe the deaths of some of their neighbours. I shall extract out of them such only as seem almost peculiar to the country, laying aside fevers, apoplexies, small-pox, and the like, which they have in common with towns and cities. Of a six-bar gate fox-hunters...................

Of a quick-set hedge.......

Two duels, viz.

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First between a frying-pan and a pitch-fork...... 1 Second, between a joint-stool and a brown jug... Bewitched...

Of an evil tongue..

Crost in love........

Broke his neck in robbing a henroost.................

Cut finger turned to a gangrene by an old gen

tlewoman of the parish........

Surfeit of curds and cream.................................

Took cold sleeping at church....

Of a sprain in his shoulder by saving his dog at a bull-baiting......

Lady B's cordial water...........

Knocked down by a quart bottle......

Frighted out of his wits by a headless dog with

saucer eyes.......

Of October

Broke a vein in bawling for a knight of the shire
Old women drowned upon trial of witchcraft...
Climbing a crow's nest ......................
Chalk and green apples

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Led into a horsepond by a will of the whisp...... 1 Died of a fright in an exercise of the trained

bands........

Over-eat himself at a house-warming.

By the parson's bull.........

Vagrant beggars worried by the squire's housedog.....

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ADDISON.

N° 137. TUESDAY, AUGUST 18, 1713.

-sanctus haberi

Justitiæque tenax, factis dictisque mereris?

Agnosco procerem

JUV. Sat. viii. 4.

Convince the world, that you're devout and true,

Be just in all you say, in all you do ;

Whatever be your birth, you're sure to be

A peer of the first quality to me.

STEPNEY.

HORACE, Juvenal, Boileau, and indeed the greatest writers in almost every age, have exposed with all the strength of wit and good sense, the vanity of a man's valuing himself upon his ancestors, and endeavoured to shew that true nobility consists in virtue, not in birth. With submission however to so many great authorities, I think they have pushed this matter a little too far. We ought in gratitude to honour

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