Exhausted, has had genius to supply;

And, studious of mutation still, discard
A real elegance, a little us'd,

For monstrous novelty and strange disguise.
We sacrifice to dress, till household joys

And comforts cease. Dress drains our cellar dry,

And keeps our larder lean; puts out our fires; And introduces hunger, frost, and wo,

Where peace and hospitality might reign.

What man that lives, and that knows how to live,
Would fail t' exhibit at the public shows

A form as splendid as the proudest there,
Though appetite raise outcries at the cost?

A man o' th' town dines late, but soon enough,
With reasonable forecast and dispatch,

T' insure a side-box station at half price.

You think, perhaps, so delicate his dress,
His daily fare as delicate. Alas!

He picks clean teeth, and, busy as he seems
With an old tavern quill, is hungry yet!

The rout is folly's circle, which she draws
With magic wand. So potent is the spell,
That none, decoy'd into that fatal ring,
Unless by heaven's peculiar grace, escape.

There we grow early gray, but never wise;

There form connexions, but acquire no friend; Solicit pleasure, hopeless of success;

Waste youth in occupations only fit

For second childhood, and devote old age

To sports which only childhood could excuse.
There they are happiest who dissemble best
Their weariness; and they the most polite
Who squander time and treasure with a smile,
Though at their own destruction. She, that asks
Her dear five hundred friends, contemns them all,
And hates their coming. They (what can they

less?)

Make just reprisals; and, with cringe and shrug, And bow obsequious, hide their hate of her.

All catch the frenzy, downward from her grace,

Whose flambeaux flash against the morning skies,

And gild our chamber ceilings as they pass,
To her who, frugal only that her thrift
May feed excesses she can ill afford,

Is hackney'd home unlacquey'd; who, in haste
Alighting, turns the key in her own door,
And, at the watchman's lantern borrowing light,
Finds a cold bed her only comfort left.
Wives beggar husbands, husbands starve their

wives,

On fortune's velvet altar off ring up

Their last poor pittance-fortune, most severe

Of goddesses yet known, and costlier far

Than all that held their routs in Juno's heav'n.

So fare we in this prison house the world.

And 'tis a fearful spectacle to see

So

many

maniacs dancing in their chains.

They gaze upon the links that hold them fast

With eyes of anguish, execrate their lot,

Then shake them in despair, and dance again!

Now basket up the family of plagues
That waste our vitals; peculation, sale

Of honour, perjury, corruption, frauds
By forgery, by subterfuge of law,

By tricks and lies as num'rous and as keen
As the necessities their authors feel;

Then cast them, closely bundled, ev'ry brat
At the right door. Profusion is the sire.
Profusion unrestrain'd, with all that's base
In character, has litter'd all the land,
And bred, within the mem'ry of no few,
A priesthood such as Baal's was of old,
A people such as never was till now.
It is a hungry vice:-it eats up all
That gives society its beauty, strength,
Convenience, and security, and use:
Makes men mere vermin, worthy to be trapp'd

And gibbetted as fast as catchpole claws

Can seize the slipp'ry prey: unties the knot

Of union, and converts the sacred band