races, only that he might show the gentlemen how a sailor sat upon a horse.

tages, which encouraged us to hope, that we should by degrees supplant our competitors. My father, by his profession, made himself necessary The old gentlewoman thought herself wiser in their affairs; for the sailor and the chamber- than both, for she lived with no servant but a maid, he inquired out mortgages and securities, maid, and saved her money. The others were and wrote bond and contracts; and had en-indeed sufficiently frugal; but the squire could deared himself to the old woman, who once not live without dogs and horses, and the sailor rashly lent a hundred pounds without consulting never suffered the day to pass but over a bowl him, by informing her that her debtor was on of punch, to which, as he was not critical in the the point of bankruptcy, and posting so expedi-choice of his company, every man was welcome tiously with an execution that all the other credi- that could roar out a catch, or tell a story. tors were defrauded.

All these, however, I was to please; an arTo the squire he was a kind of steward, and duous task; but what will not youth and avahad distinguished himself in his office by his ad- rice undertake? I had an unresisting suppleness dress in raising the rents, his inflexibility in dis- of temper, and an unsatiable wish for riches; I tressing the tardy tenants, and his acuteness in was perpetually instigated by the ambition of my setting the parish free from burdensome inhabit-parents, and assisted occasionally by their inants, by shifting them off to some other settle- structions. What these advantages enabled me to perform, shall be told in the next letter of, Yours, &c. CAPTATOR.

ment.

Business made frequent attendance necessary; trust soon produced intimacy; and success gave a claim to kindness; so that we had opportunity to practise all the arts of flattery and endearment. My mother, who could not support the thought of losing any thing, determined that all their fortunes should centre in me; and, in the prosecution of her schemes, took care to inform me that nothing cost less than good words, and that it is comfortable to leap into an estate which another has got.

She trained me by these precepts to the utmost ductility of obedience, and the closest attention to profit. At an age when other boys are sporting the fields, or murmuring in the school, I was contriving some new method of paying my court; inquiring the age of my future benefactors; or considering how I should employ their legacies.

If our eagerness of money could have been satisfied with the possessions of any one of my relations, they might perhaps have been obtained, but as it was impossible to be always present with all three, our competitors were busy to efface any trace of affection which we might have left behind; and since there was not, on any part, such superiority of merit as could enforce a constant and unshaken preference, whoever was the last that flattered or obliged had for a time the ascendant.

My relations maintained a regular exchange of courtesy, took care to miss no occasion of condolence or congratulation, and sent presents at stated times, but had in their hearts not much esteem for one another. The seaman looked with contempt upon the squire as a milksop and a landman, who had lived without knowing the points of the compass, or seeing any part of the world beyond the county-town; and, whenever they met, would talk of longitude and latitude, and circles and tropics, would scarcely tell him the hour without some mention of the horizon and meridian, nor show him the news without detecting his ignorance of the situation of other countries.

SIR, You, who must have observed the inclination which almost every man, however unactive or insignificant, discovers of representing his life as distinguished by extraordinary events, will not wonder that Captator thinks his narrative important enough to be continued. Nothing is more common than for those to teaze their com panions with their history, who have neither done nor suffered any thing that can excite curiosity, or afford instruction.

As I was taught to flatter with the first essays of speech, and had very early lost every other passion in the desire of money, I began my pur suit with omens of success; for I divided my officiousness so judiciously among my relations, that I was equally the favourite of all. When any of them entered the door, I went to welcome him with raptures; when he went away, I hung down my head, and sometimes entreated to go with him with so much importunity, that I very narrowly escaped a consent which I dreaded in my heart. When at an annual entertainment they were all together, I had a harder task; but plied them so impatiently with caresses, that none could charge me with neglect; and when they were wearied with my fondness and civilities, I was always dismissed with money to buy

The squire considered the sailor as a rude un-playthings. cultivated savage, with little more of human than his form, and diverted himself with his ignorance of all common objects and affairs; when he could persuade him to go into the fields, he always exposed him to the sportsmen, by sending him to look for game in improper places; and once prevailed upon him to be present at the

Life cannot be kept at a stand; the years of innocence and prattle were soon at an end, and other qualifications were necessary to recom mend me to continuance of kindness. It luckily happened that none of my triends had high notions of book-learning. The sailor hated to see tall boys shut up in a school, when they might

more properly be seeing the world, and making When she heard of my exploits in the field, she their fortunes; and was of opinion that, when would shake her head, inquire how much I should the first rules of arithmetic were known, all that be the richer for all my performances, and lament was necessary to make a man complete might that such sums should be spent upon dogs and be learned on ship-board. The squire only in-horses. If the sailor told her of my inclination sisted that so much scholarship was indispensably necessary as might confer ability to draw a lease and read the court-hands; and the old chambermaid declared loudly her contempt of books, and her opinion that they only took the head of the main chance.

To unite, as well as we could, all their systems, I was bred at home. Each was taught to believe that I followed his directions, and I gained likewise, as my mother observed, this advantage, that I was always in the way; for she had known many favourite children sent to schools or academies, and forgotten.

As I grew fitter to be trusted to my own discretion, I was often despatched upon various pretences to visit my relations, with directions from my parents how to ingratiate myself, and drive away competitors.

to travel, she was sure there was no place like England, and could not imagine why any man that can live in his own country should leave it. This sullen and frigid being I found means, however, to propitiate by frequent commendations of frugality, and perpetual care to avoid expense.

From the sailor was our first and most considerable expectation; for he was richer than the chambermaid, and older than the squire. He was so awkward and bashful among women, that we concluded him secure from matrimony; and the noisy fondness with which he used to welcome me to his house, made us imagine that he would look out for no other heir, and that we had nothing to do but wait patiently for his death. But in the midst of our triumph, my uncle saluted us one morning with a cry of transI was, from my infancy, considered by the port, and clapping his hand hard on my shoulder, sailor as a promising genius, because I liked told me, I was a happy fellow to have a friend punch better than wine; and I took care to im-like him in the world, for he came to fit me out prove this prepossession by continual inquiries about the art of navigation, the degree of heat and cold in different climates, the profits of trade, and the dangers of shipwreck. I admired the courage of the seaman, and gained his heart by importuning him for a recital of his adventures, and a sight of his foreign curiosities. I listened with an appearance of close attention to stories which I could already repeat, and at the close never failed to express my resolution to visit distant countries, and my contempt of the cowards and drones that spend all their lives in their native parish; though I had in reality no desire of any thing but money, nor ever felt the stimulations of curiosity or ardour of adventure, but would contentedly have passed the years of Nestor in receiving rents, and lending upon mortgages.

The squire I was able to please with less hy pocrisy, for I really thought it pleasant enough to kill the game and eat it. Some arts of falsehood, however, the hunger of gold persuaded me to practise, by which, though no other mischief was produced, the purity of my thoughts was vitiated, and the reverence for truth gradually destroyed. I sometimes purchased fish, and pretended to have caught them; I hired the countrymen to show me partridges, and then gave my uncle intelligence of their haunt; I learned the seats of hares at night, and discovered them in the morning with a sagacity that raised the wonder and envy of old sportsmen. One only obstruction to the advancement of my reputation I could never fully surmount; I was naturally a coward, and was therefore always left shamefully behind, when there was a necessity to leap a hedge, to swim a river, or force the horses to their utmost speed; but as these exigencies did not frequently happen, I maintained my honour with sufficient success, and was never left out of a hunting party.

The old chambermaid was not so certainly, nor so easily pleased, for she had no predominant passion but avarice, and was therefore cold and inaccessible. She had no conception of any virtue in a young man but that of saving his money.

for a voyage with one of his old acquaintances. I turned pale and trembled; my father told him that he believed my constitution not fitted to the sea; and my mother, bursting into tears, cried out that her heart would break if she lost me. All this had no effect; the sailor was wholly insusceptive of the softer passions, and, without regard to tears or arguments, persisted in his resolution to make me a man.

We were obliged to comply in appearance, and preparations were accordingly made. I took leave of my friends with great alacrity, proclaimed the beneficence of my uncle with the highest strains of gratitude, and rejoiced at the opportunity now put into my hands of gratifying my thirst of knowledge. But a week before the day appointed for my departure I fell sick by my mother's direction, and refused all food but what she privately brought me; whenever my uncle visited me I was lethargic or delirious, but took care in my raving fits to talk incessantly of travel and merchandize. The room was kept dark; the table was filled with vials and gallipots; my mother was with difficulty persuaded not to endanger her life with nocturnal attendance; my father lamented the loss of the profits of the voyages; and such superfluity of artifices was employed, as perhaps might have discovered the cheat to a man of penetration. But the sailor, unacquainted with subtilties and stratagems, was easily deluded; and as the ship could not stay for my recovery, sold the cargo, and left me to reestablish my health at leisure.

I was sent to regain my flesh in a purer air, lest it should appear never to have been wasted, and in two months returned to deplore my disappointment. My uncle pitied my dejection, and bid me prepare myself against next year, for no land-lubber should touch his money.

A reprieve however was obtained, and perhaps some new stratagem might have succeeded another spring; but my uncle unhappily made amorous advances to my mother's maid: who, to promote so advantageous a match, discovered the secret with which only she had been entrusted. He stormed, and raved, and declaring that he

would have heirs of his own, and not give his less under the shock of electricity; I have twice substance to cheats and cowards, married the dislocated my limbs, and once fractured my skull in essaying to fly, and four times endan girl in two days, and has now four children. Cowardice is always scorned, and deceit uni-gered my life by submitting to the transfusion of versally detested. I found my friends, if not blood.

wholly alienated, at least cooled in their affec- In the first period of my studies I exerted the tion; the squire, though he did not wholly dis-powers of my body more than those of my mind, card me, was less fond, and often inquired when and was not without hopes that fame might be I would go to sea. I was obliged to bear his in- purchased by a few broken bones without the sults, and endeavoured to rekindle his kindness toil of thinking; but having been shattered by by assiduity and respect; but all my care was some violent experiments; and constrained to vain; he died without a will, and the estate de- confine myself to my books, I passed six and volved to the legal heir. thirty years in searching the treasures of ancient wisdom, but am at last amply recompensed for all my perseverance.

Thus has the folly of my parents condemned me to spend in flattery and attendance those years in which I might have been qualified to place myself above hope or fear. I am arrived at manhood without any useful art or generous sentiment; and if the old woman should likewise at last deceive me, am in danger at once of beggary and ignorance. I am, &c.

CAPTATOR.

TO THE RAMBLER.

SIR, THOUGH you have seldom digressed from moral subjects, I suppose you are not so rigorous or cynical as to deny the value or usefulness of natural philosophy; or to have lived in this age of inquiry and experiment, without any attention to the wonders every day produced by the pokers of magnetism and the wheels of electricity. At least, I may be allowed to hope that, since nothing is more contrary to moral excellence than envy, you will not refuse to promote the happiness of others, merely because you cannot partake of their enjoyments.

In confidence, therefore, that your ignorance has not made you an enemy to knowledge, I offer you the honour of introducing to the notice of the public an adept, who, having long laboured for the benefit of mankind, is not willing, like too many of his predecessors, to conceal his secrets in the grave.

The curiosity of the present race of philosophers, having been long exercised upon electricity, has been lately transformed to magnetism; the qualities of the loadstone have been investigated, if not with much advantage, yet with great applause; and as the highest praise of art is to imitate nature, I hope no man will think the makers of artificial magnets celebrated or reverenced above their deserts.

I have for some time employed myself in the same practice, but with deeper knowledge and more extensive views. While my contempora ries were touching needles and raising weights, or busying themselves with inclination and variation, I have been examining those qualities of magnetism which may be applied to the accommodation and happiness of common life. I have left to inferior understandings the care of conducting the sailor through the hazards of the ocean, and reserved to myself the more difficult and illustrious province of preserving the connubial compact from violation, and setting mankind free for ever from the danger of supposititious children, and the torments of fruitless vigilance and anxious suspicion.

To defraud any man of his due praise is un worthy of a philosopher; I shall therefore openly confess, that I owe the first hint of this inestimable secret to the rabbi Abraham Ben Hannase, who, in his treatise of precious stones, has left this account of the magnet: "The calamita, or loadstone that attracts iron, produces many bad fantasies in man. Women fly from this stone. If therefore any husband be disturbed with jealousy, and fear lest his wife converses with other men, let him lay this stone upon her while she is asleep. If she be pure, she will, when she wakes, clasp her husband fondly in her arms; but if she be guilty, she will fall out of bed, and

run away."

When I first read this wonderful passage, I could not easily conceive why it had remained hitherto unregarded in such a zealous competition for magnetical fame. It would surely be unjust to suspect that any of the candidates are strangers to the name or works of rabbi Abraham, or to conclude, from a late edict of the Royal Society in favour of the English language, that philosophy and literature are no longer to act in concert. Yet, how should a quality so useful escape promulgation, but by the obscurity of the language in which it was delivered? Why are footmen and chambermaids paid on every

Many have signalized themselves my melting their estates in crucibles. I was born to no fortune, and therefore had only my mind and my body to devote to knowledge, and the gratitude of posterity will attest that neither mind nor body has been spared. I have sat whole weeks without sleep by the side of an athanor, to watch the movement of projection; I have made the first experiment in nineteen diving-engines of new house with a man who broke his legs in attempting to construction; I have fallen eleven times speech-fly.-C.

*It is said that Dr. Johnson once lodged in the same

These observations discouraged me, till I began to consider what reception I was likely to find among the ladies, whom I have reviewed No. 200.] SATURDAY, FEB. 15, 1752. under the three classes of maids, wives and widows, and cannot but hope that I may obtain some countenance among them. The single ladies I suppose universally ready to patronize my method, by which connubial wickedness may be detected, since no woman marries with a previous design to be unfaithful to her husband. And, to keep them steady in my cause, I promise never to sell one of my magnets to a man who steals a girl from school, marries a woman forty years younger than himself, or employs the authority of parents to obtain a wife without her