which both of them commended, and feasted on after the same manner. This was followed by an invisible dessert, no part of which delighted Schacabac so much as a certain lozenge, which the barmecide told him was a sweetmeat of his own invention. Schacabac at length, being courteously reproached by the barmecide, that he had no stomach, and that he ate nothing, and at the same time, being tired with moving his jaws up and down to no purpose, desired to be excused, for that really he was so full he could not eat a bit more. 'Come then,' says the barmecide, the cloth shall be removed, and you shall taste of my wines, which I may say, without vanity, are the best in Persia.' He then filled both their glasses out of an empty decanter. Schacabac would have excused himself from drinking so much at once, because he said he was a little quarrelsome in his liquor: however, being prest to it, he pretended to take it off, having before-hand praised the colour, and afterwards the flavour. Being plied with two or three other imaginary bumpers of different wines, equally delicious, and a little vexed with this fantastic treat, he pretended to grow flustered, and gave the barmecide a good box on the ear: but immediately recovering himself, Sir,' says he, I beg ten thousand pardons, but I told you before that it was my misfortune to be quarrelsome in my drink.' The barmecide could not but smile at the humour of his guest; and instead of being angry at him, 'I find,' says he, thou art a complaisant fellow, and deservest to be entertained in my house. Since thou canst accommodate thyself to my humour, we will now eat together in good earnest.' Upon which, calling for his supper, the rice-soup, the goose, the pistachio-lamb, the several other nice dishes, with the dessert, the lozenges, and all the variety of Persian wines, were served up successively, one after another; and Schacabac was feasted in reality, with those very things which he had before been entertained with in imagination."

ADDISON.

SPEECH OF PLUTO TO PROSERPINE. (No. 164).

THE beauty of the following translation is sufficient to recommend it to the public, without acquainting them that the translator is Mr. Eusden of Cambridge, who obliged them, in the Guardian of August the 6th, with the Court of Venus out of the same Latin poet, which was highly applauded by the best judges in performances of this nature.

The Speech of Pluto to Proserpine, from the second Book of her
Rape by Claudian.

Cease, cease, fair nymph, to lavish precious tears,
And discompose your soul with airy fears.
Look on Sicilia's glitt'ring courts with scorn;
A nobler sceptre shall that hand adorn.
Imperial pomp shall sooth a generous pride;
The bridegroom never will disgrace the bride.
If you above terrestrial thrones aspire,
From heaven I spring, and Saturn was my sire.
The power of Pluto stretches all around,
Uncircumscribed by nature's utmost bound:
Where matter mouldering dies, where forms decay,
Through the vast trackless void extends my sway.
Mark not with mournful eyes the fainting light,
Nor tremble at this interval of night;
A fairer scene shall open to your view,
An earth more verdant, and a heaven more blue.
Another Phoebus gilds those happy skies,
And other stars, with purer flames, arise.
There chaste adorers shall their praises join,
And with the choicest gifts enrich your shrine.
The blissful climes no change of ages knew,
The golden first began, and still is new.
That golden age your world a while could boast,
But here it flourish'd, and was never lost.

Perpetual zephyrs breathed through fragrant bowers:
And painted meads smile with unbidden flowers:
Flowers of immortal bloom and various hue;
No rival sweets in your own Enna grew.
In the recess of a cool sylvan glade

A monarch tree projects no vulgar shade.
Encumber'd with their wealth, the branches bend,
And golden apples to your reach descend.
Spare not the fruit, but pluck the blooming oar,
The yellow harvest will increase the more.
But I too long on trifling themes explain,
Nor speak the unbounded glories of your reign.
Whole nature owns your power: whate'er have birth,
And live, and move o'er all the face of earth;
Or in old ocean's mighty caverns sleep,
Or sportive roll along the foamy deep;
Or on stiff pinions airy journeys take,
Or cut the floating stream or stagnant lake;
In vain they labour to preserve their breath,
And soon fall victims to your subject, death.
Unnumber'd triumphs swift to you he brings,
Hail! goddess of all sublunary things!
Empires, that sink above, here rise again,
And worlds unpeopled crowd the Elysian plain.
The rich, the poor, the monarch, and the slave,
Know no superior honours in the grave.

Proud tyrants once, and laurell'd chiefs shall come,
And kneel, and trembling wait from you their doom.
The impious, forced, shall then their crimes disclose,
And see past pleasures teem with future woes;
Deplore in darkness your impartial sway,
While spotless souls enjoy the fields of day.
When ripe for second birth, the dead shall stand
In shivering throngs on the Lethean strand,
That shade whom you approve shall first be brought,
To quaff oblivion in the pleasing draught.
Whose thread of life, just spun, you would renew,
But nod, and Clotho shall re-wind the clue.

Let no distrust of power your joys abate,
Speak what you wish, and what you speak is fate.

The ravisher thus soothed the weeping fair,
And check'd the fury of his steeds with care :
Possest of beauty's charms, he calmly rode,
And love first soften'd the relentless god.

L. EUSDEN.

THE PHILOSOPHER'S STONE. (No. 166).

CHARITY is a virtue of the heart, and not of the hands, says an old writer. Gifts and alms are the expressions, not the essence, of this virtue. A man may bestow great sums on the poor and indigent without being charitable, and may be charitable when he is not able to bestow anything. Charity is therefore a habit of good will, or benevolence, in the soul, which disposes us to the love, assistance, and relief of mankind, especially of those who stand in need of it. The poor man who has this excellent frame of mind, is no less entitled to the reward of this virtue than the man who

founds a college. For my own part, I am charitable to an extravagance this way. I never saw an indigent person in my life, without reaching out to him some of this imaginary relief. I cannot but sympathise with every one I meet that is in affliction; and if my abilities were equal to my wishes, there should be neither pain nor poverty in the world.

To give my reader a right notion of myself in this parti cular, I shall present him with the secret history of one of the most remarkable parts of my life.

I was once engaged in search of the philosopher's stone. It is frequently observed of men who have been busied in this pursuit, that though they have failed in their principal design, they have, however, made such discoveries in their way to it, as have sufficiently recompensed their inquiries. In the same manner, though I cannot boast of my success in that affair, I do not repent of my engaging in it, because it produced in my mind such an habitual exercise of charity,

as made it much better than perhaps it would have been, had I never been lost in so pleasing a delusion.

As I did not question but I should soon have a new Indies in my possession, I was perpetually taken up in considering how to turn it to the benefit of mankind. In order to it, I employed a whole day in walking about this great city, to find out proper places for the erection of hospitals. I had likewise entertained that project, which has since succeeded in another place, of building churches at the court end of the town,-with this only difference, that instead of fifty I intended to have built a hundred, and to have seen them all finished in less than one year.

I had with great pains and application got together a list of all the French Protestants; and, by the best accounts I could come at, had calculated the value of all those estates and effects which every one of them had left in his own country for the sake of his religion, being fully determined to make it up to him, and return some of them the double of what they had lost.

As I was one day in my laboratory, my operator, who was to fill my coffers for me, and used to foot it from the other end of the town every morning, complained of a sprain in his leg, that he had met with over against St. Clement's church. This so affected me, that as a standing mark of my gratitude to him, and out of compassion to the rest of my fellow-citizens, I resolved to new pave every street within the liberties, and entered a memorandum in my pocket-book accordingly. About the same time I entertained some thoughts of mending all the highways on this side the Tweed, and of making all the rivers in England navigable.

But the project I had most at heart was the settling upon every man in Great Britain three pounds a year (in which sum may be comprised, according to Sir William Pettit's observations, all the necessities of life), leaving to them whatever else they could get by their own industry to lay out on superfluities.

I was about a week debating in myself what I should do in the matter of impropriations; but at length came to a