the goddess he celebrated. It was impossible to write the praises of one of those false deities, according to the pagan creed, without a mixture of impertinence and absurdity.

The Jews, who before the time of Christianity were the only people who had the knowledge of the true God, have set the Christian world an example how they ought to employ this divine talent of which I am speaking. As that nation produced men of great genius, without considering them as inspired writers, they have transmitted to us many hymns and divine odes, which excel those that are delivered down to us by the ancient Greeks and Romans, in the poetry, as much as in the subject to which it was consecrated. This I think might easily be shown, if there were occasion for it.

I have already communicated to the public some pieces of divine poetry; and, as they have met with a very favourable reception, I shall from time to time publish any work of the same nature, which has not yet appeared in print, and may be acceptable to my readers.

I.

"When all thy mercies, O my God,
My rising soul surveys;
Transported with the view, I'm lost
In wonder, love, and praise:

II.

"O how shall words with equal warmth
The gratitude declare,

That glows within my ravish'd heart?
But Thou canst read it there.

III.

'Thy providence my life sustain'd
And all my wants redrest,
When in the silent womb Ilay,
And hung upon the breast.

"Through hidden dangers, toils, and deaths, It gently clear'd my way,

And through the pleasing snares of vice,
More to be feared than they.

VIII.

"When worn with sickness, oft hast Thou
With health renew'd my face,
And, when in sins and sorrows sunk,
Review'd my soul with grace.

XII.

When nature fails, and day and night
Divide thy works no more,

My ever grateful heart, O Lord,
Thy mercy shall adore.

XIII.

"Through all eternity to Thee
A joyful song I'll raise,
For, oh! eternity's too short
To utter all thy praise.'

No. 454. MONDAY, AUGUST 11, 1712.

Sine me, vacivum tempus ne quod dem nihi

Laboris.

TER. Heaut. Act i. Sc. i.

Give me leave to allow myself no respite from labour.

Ir is an inexpressible pleasure to know a little of the world, and be of no character or significancy in it.

To be ever unconcerned, and ever looking on new objects with an endless curiosity, is a delight known only to those who are turned for speculation: nay, they who enjoy it must value things only as they are the objects of speculation, without drawing any worldly advantage to themselves from them, but just as they are what contribute to their amusement, or the improvement of the mind. I lay one night last week at Richmond; and being restless, not out of dissatisfaction, but a certain busy inclination one sometimes has, I rose at four in the morning and took boat for London with a resolution to rove by boat and coach for the next four-and-twenty hours, till the

many different objects I must needs meet with should tire my imagination, and give me an inclination to a repose more profound than I was at that time capable of. I beg people's pardon for an odd humour I am guilty of, and was often that day, which is saluting any person whom I like, whether I know him or not. This is a particularity would be tolerated in me, if they considered that the greatest pleasure I know I receive at my eyes, and that I am obliged to an agreeable person for coming abroad into my view, as another is for a visit of conversation at their own houses.

The hours of the day and night are taken up in the cities of London and Westminster, by people as different from each other as those who are born in different centuries. Men of six o'clock give way to those of nine, they of nine to the generation of twelve; and they of twelve disappear, and make room for the fashionable world, who have made two o'clock the noon of the day.

When we first put off from shore, we soon fell in with a fleet of gardeners, bound for the several market ports of London; and it was the most pleasing scene imaginable to see the cheerfulness with which those industrious people plyed their way to a certain sale of their goods. The banks on each side are as well peopled, and beautified with as agreeable plantations, as any spot on the earth: but the Thames itself, loaded with the product of each shore, added very much to the landscape. It was very easy to observe by their sailing, and the countenances of the ruddy virgins, who were supercargoes, the part of the town to which they were bound. There was an air in the purveyors for Covent-garden, who frequently converse with morning rakes, very unlike the seem、 Ing sobriety of those bound for Stocks-market.

Nothing remarkable happened in our voyage; but I landed with ten sail of apricot boats, at Strand-bridge, after having put in at Nine-Elms, and taken in melons, consigned by Mr. Cuffe, of that place, to Sarah Sewell and company, at their stall in Covent-garden. We arrived at Strandbridge at six of the clock, and were unloading; when the hackney-coachmen of the foregoing night took their leave of each other at the DarkHouse, to go to bed before the day was too far spent. Chimney-sweepers passed by us as we made up to the market, and some raillery happened between one of the fruit-wenches and the black men, about the Devil and Eve, with allusion to their several professions. I could not believe any place more entertaining than Covent-garden; where I strolled from one fruit shop to another, with crowds of agreeable young women around me, who were purchasing fruit for their respective families. It was almost eight of the clock before I could leave that variety of objects. I took coach and followed a young lady, who tripped into another just before me, attended by her maid. 'I saw immediately she was of the family of the Vainloves. There are a set of these, who, of all things, affect the play of Blindman's-buff, and leading men into love for they know not whom, who are fled they know not where. This sort of woman is usually a janty slattern; she hangs on her clothes, plays her head, varies her posture, and changes place incessantly, and all with an appearance of striving at the same time to hide herself, and yet give you to understand she is in humour to laugh at you. You must have often seen the coachmen make signs with their fingers, as they drive by each other, to intimate how much they have got that day. They can carry on that lan