I considered that they were very often blemishes in the characters of men of excellent sense, and helped to keep up the reputation of the Latin proverb, which Mr. Dryden has translated in the following lines:

Great wit to madness sure is near allied,

And thin partitions do their bounds divide. My reader does, I hope, perceive that I distinguish a man who is absent because he thinks of something else, from one who is absent because he thinks of nothing at all. The latter is too innocent a creature to be taken notice of; but the distractions of the former may, I believe, be generally accounted for from one of these reasons.

Either their minds are wholly fixed on some particular science, which is often the case of mathematicians and other learned men, or are wholly taken up with some violent passion, such as anger, fear, or love, which ties the mind to some distant object; or, lastly, these distractions proceed from a certain vivacity and fickleness in a man's temper, which, while it raises up infinite numbers of ideas in the mind, is continually pushing it on, without allowing it to rest on any particular image. Nothing, therefore, is more unnatural than the thoughts and conceptions of such a man, which are seldom occasioned either by the company he is in, or any of those objects which are placed before him. While you fancy he is admiring a beautiful woman, it is an even wager that he is solving a position in Euclid; and while you imagine he is reading the Paris Gazette, it is far from being impossible that he is pulling down and rebuilding the front of his country-house.

At the same time that I am endeavouring to expose this weakness in others, I shall readily con

fess that I once laboured under the same infirmity myself. The method I took to conquer it was a firm resolution to learn something from whatever I was obliged to see or hear. There is a way of thinking, if a man can attain to it, by which he may strike somewhat out of any thing. I can at present observe those starts of good sense, and struggles of unimproved reason, in the conversation of a clown, with as much satisfaction as the most shining periods of the most finished orator; and can make a shift to command my attention at a puppet-show or an opera, as well as at Hamlet or Othello. I always make one of the company I am in; for though I say little myself, my attention to others, and those nods of approbation which I never bestow unmerited, sufficiently show that I am among them; whereas Will Honeycomb, though a fellow of good sense, is every day doing and saying a hundred things which he afterwards confesses, with a well-bred frankness, were somewhat mal a propos, and undesigned

I chanced the other day to get into a coffeehouse where Will was standing in the midst of several auditors, whom he had gathered round him, and was giving them an account of the person and character of Moll Hinton. My appearance before him just put him in mind of me, without making him reflect that I was actually present; so that, keeping his eyes full upon me, to the great surprise of his audience, he broke off his first ha rangue, and proceeded thus:-"Why, now, there's my friend," mentioning me by name, "he is a fellow that thinks a great deal, but never opens his mouth. I warrant you he is now thrusting his short face into some coffee-house about 'Change. I was his bail in the time of the Popish plot, when

he was taken up for a Jesuit." If he had looked on me a little longer, he had certainly described me so particularly, without ever considering what led him into it, that the whole company must certainly have found me out; for which reason, remembering the old proverb, "out of sight, out of mind," I left the room, and, upon meeting him an hour afterwards, was asked by him, with a great deal of good humour, in what part of the world I lived, that he had not seen me these three days. ADDISON.

CAPTAIN BROWN'S RETURN.

As we stood at the window of an inn that fronted the public prison, a person arrived on horseback, genteelly, though plainly, dressed in a ⚫ blue frock, with his own hair cut short, and a goldlaced hat upon his head. Alighting and giving his horse to the landlord, he advanced to an old man, who was at work in paving the street, and accosted him in these words: "This is hard work for such an old man as you." So saying, he took the instrument out of his hand, and began to thump the pavement. After a few strokes, "Have you never a son," said he, "to case you of this labour?" Yes, an' please your honour," replied the senior, "I have three hopeful lads, but at present they are out of the way." "Honour not me," cried the stranger; "it more becomes me to honour your gray hairs. Where are those sons you talk of?" The ancient paviour said, his eldest son was a captain in the East Indies, and the youngest had lately enlisted as a soldier, in hopes of prospering like his brother. The gentleman desiring to know

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what was become of the second, he wiped his eyes, and owned he had taken upon him his old father's debts, for which he was now in prison hard by.

The traveller made three quick steps towards the gaol, then turning short, "Tell me," said he, "has that unnatural captain sent you nothing to relieve your distresses?" "Call him not unnatural," replied the other: "God's blessing be upon him! he sent me a great deal of money; but I made a bad use of it. I lost it by being security for a gentleman that was my landlord, and was stripped of all I had in the world besides." At that instant a young man, thrusting out his head and neck between two iron bars in the prisonwindow, exclaimed, "Father! father! if my brother William is in life, that is he!" "I am!" cried the stranger, clasping the old man in his arms, and shedding a flood of tears, "I am your son Willy, sure enough!" Before the father, who was quite confounded, could make any return to this tenderness, a decent old woman, bolting out from the door of a poor habitation, cried, "Where is my bairn? where is my dear Willy?" The captain no sooner beheld her, than he quitted his father, and ran to her embrace.

I can assure you, my uncle, who saw and heard every thing that passed, was as much moved as any one of the parties concerned in this pathetic recognition. He sobbed, and wept, and clasped his hands, and hallooed, and finally ran down into the street. By this time, the captain had retired with his parents, and all the inhabitants of the place were assembled at the door. Mr. Bramble, nevertheless, pressed through the crowd, and enred the house "Captain," said he, "I beg the

favour of your acquaintance. I would have trav elled a hundred miles to see this affecting scene; and I shall think myself happy, if you and your parents will dine with me at the public house." The captain thanked him for his kind invitation, which, he said, "he would accept with pleasure; but, in the mean time, he could not think of eating or drinking, whilst his poor brother was in trouble." He forthwith deposited a sum, equal to the debt, in the hands of the magistrate, who ventured to set his brother at liberty, without further process; and then the whole family repaired to the inn with my uncle, attended by the crowd, the individuals of which shook their townsman by the hand, while he returned their caresses without the least sign of pride or affectation.

This honest favourite of fortune, whose name was Brown, told my uncle, that he had been bred a weaver, and, about eighteen years ago, had, from a spirit of idleness and dissipation, enlisted as a soldier in the service of the East India Company; that, in the course of duty, he had the good fortune to attract the notice and approbation of Lord Clive, who preferred him from one step to another, till he had attained the rank of captain and pay. master to the regiment, in which capacities he had honestly amassed about twelve thousand pounds, and, at the peace, resigned his commission. He had sent several remittances to his father, who received the first only, consisting of one hundred pounds; the second had fallen into the hands of a bankrupt; and the third had been consigned to a gentleman of Scotland, who died before it arrived, so that it still remained to be accounted for by his executors. He now presented the old man with fifty pounds for his present occasions, over and