we were resolved to take all we could get. I played capital characters there too, and came off with my usual brilliancy. I sincerely believe I should have been the first actor in Europe, had my growing merit been properly cultivated; but there came an unkind frost which nipped me in the bud, and levelled me once more down to the common standard of humanity. I played Sir Harry Wildair; all the country ladies were charmed: if I drew out my snuff-box, the whole house was in a roar of rapture; when I exercised my cudgel, I thought they would have fallen into convulsions.

"There was here a lady who had received an education of nine months in London; and this gave her pretensions to taste, which rendered her the indisputable mistress of ceremonies wherever she came. She was informed of my merits; every body praised me; yet she refused at first going to see me perform; she could not conceive, she said, any thing but stuff from a stroller; talked something in praise of Garrick, and amazed the ladies with her skill in enunciations, tones, and cadences; she was at last, however, prevailed upon to go; and it was privately intimated to me, what a judge was to be present at my next exhibition. However, no way intimidated, I came on in Sir Harry, one hand stuck in my breeches and the other in my bosom, as usual at Drury-Lane; but instead of looking at me, I perceived the whole audience had their eyes turned upon the lady who had been nine months in London; from her they expected the decision which was to secure the general's truncheon in my hand, or sink me down into a theatrical letter-carrier. I opened my snuff-box, took snuff; the lady was solemn, and so were the rest; I broke my cudgel on alderman Smuggler's back: still gloomy, melancholy all, the lady groaned and shrugged her shoulders; I attempted, by laughing myself, to excite a smile; but the devil a cheek

could I perceive wrinkle into sympathy: I found it would not do: all my good-humor now became forced; my laughter was converted into hysteric grinning; and while I pretended spirits, my eye showed the agony of my heart: in short, the lady came with an intention to be displeased, and displeased she was; my fame expired; I am here, and the tankard is no more!"

ESSAY XIV.

ON THE APPROACHING CORONATION.

That a time of war is a time of parsimony, is a maxim which patriots and senators have had often in their mouths, and which I do not remember ever to have been denied. I know not whether by the acute inquiries of the present age, this opinion has been discovered to be groundless, and is therefore thrown aside among obsolete follies; or whether it happened on this, as on other occasions, that conviction is on one side, and practice on the other; but so it is, that this war, whatever it has taken from the wealth, has added nothing to our frugality. Every place of splendid pleasure is filled with assemblies; every sale of expensive superfluities is crowded with buyers; and war has no other effect, than that of enabling us to show that we can be at once military and luxurious, and pay soldiers and fiddlers at the same time.

Among other changes which time has effected, a new species of profusion has been produced. We are now, with an emulation never known before, outbidding one another for a sight of the Coronation; the annual rent of palaces is offered for a single room for a single day.*

* [The coronation took place on the 22d of September, 1761. The front seats in the gallery of Westminster Abbey were let at ten guineas each, and those in the houses along the procession at the same price. Some of them cleared upwards of a thousand pounds. See Ann. Reg. vol. iv. p. 218.]

I am far from desiring to repress curiosity, to which we owe so great a part of our intellectual pleasures; nor am I hardy enough to oppose the general practice of mankind, so much as to think all pomp or magnificence useless or ridiculous. But all passions have their limits, which they cannot exceed without putting our happiness in danger; and although a fine show be a fine thing, yet, like other fine things, it may be purchased too dear. All pleasures are valuable in proportion to their greatness and duration that the pleasure of a show is not of any long continuance, all know, who are now striving for places; for if a show was long, it would not be rare. This is not the worst, the pleasure while it lasts will be less than is expected. No human performance can rise up to human ideas. Grandeur is less grand, and finery less fine than it is painted by the fancy; and such is the difference between hope and possession, that, to a great part of the spectators, the show will cease as soon as it appears.

Let me yet not deceive my readers to their disadvantage, or represent the little pleasures of life as less than they are. Those who come to see come likewise to be seen, and will, for many hours before the procession, enjoy the eyes of innumerable gazers. Nor will this be the last or the longest gratification; those who have seen the coronation, will have whole years of triumph over those who saw it not. They will have an opportunity of amusing their humble friends and rustic acquaintances with narratives, often heard with envy, and often with wonder; and when they hear the youth of the next generation boasting the splendor of any future procession, they will talk with contemptuous superiority of the Coronation of George the Third.*

*["I am going to let London cool, and will not venture into it again this fortnight. O the buzz, the prattle, the crowds, the noise, the hurry! If I was to entitle ages, I would call this the century of crowds.' For the coro

As you seem by your writings to have a just regard and filial affection for your country, and as your monthly lucubrations are widely diffused over all the dominions of Great Britain, I take the liberty to communicate to the public, through your channel, a few loose thoughts upon a subject, which, though often handled, has not yet, in my opinion, been fully discussed; I mean national concord, or unanimity, which, in this kingdom, has been generally considered as a bare possibility, that existed nowhere but in speculation. Such a union is, perhaps, neither to be expected nor wished for, in a country whose liberty depends rather upon the genius of the people than upon any precautions which they have taken in a constitutional way, for the guard and preservation of this inestimable blessing.

There is a very honest gentleman with whom I have been acquainted these thirty years, during which there has not been one speech uttered against the ministry in parliament; nor a struggle at an election for a burgess to serve in the House of Commons; nor a pamphlet published in opposition to any measure of the administration; nor even a private censure passed in his hearing upon the misconduct of any person concerned in public affairs-but he is immediately alarmed, and loudly exclaims against such factious doings, in order to set the people by the

nation, if a puppet-show could be worth a million, that is. The multitudes, balconies, guards, and processions, made Palace-yard the liveliest spectacle in the world the hall was the most glorious. The blaze of lights, the richness and variety of habits, the ceremonial, the benches of peers and peeresses, frequent and full, was as awful as a pageant can be; and yet, for the king's sake and my own, I never wish to see another."-Horace Walpole, Sept. 24, 1761.] * [Written in December, 1760.]

ears together at such a delicate conjuncture.

"At any other time," says he, "such opposition might not be improper, and I do not question the facts that are alleged; but at this crisis, sir, to inflame the nation!-the man deserves to be punished as a traitor to his country." In a word, according to this gentleman's opinion, the nation has been in a violent crisis at any time these thirty years; and were it possible for him to live another century, he would never find any period at which a man might with safety impugn the infallibility of a minister.

The case is no more than this: my honest friend has invested his whole fortune in the stocks, on government security, and trembles at every whiff of popular discontent. Were every British subject of the same tame and timid disposition, Magna Charta (to use the coarse phrase of Oliver Cromwell) would be no more regarded by an ambitious prince than magna fta, and the liberties of England expire without a groan. Opposition, when restrained within due bounds, is the salubrious gale that ventilates the opinions of the people, which might otherwise stagnate into the most abject submission. It may be said to purify the atmosphere of politics; to dispel the gross vapors raised by the influence of ministerial artifice and corruption, until the constitution, like a mighty rock, stands full disclosed to the view of every individual who dwells within the shade of its protection. Even when this gale blows with augmented violence, it generally tends to the advantage of the commonwealth; it awakes the apprehension, and consequently arouses all the faculties, of the pilot at the helm, who redoubles his vigilance and caution, exerts his utmost skill, and becoming acquainted with the nature of the navigation, in a little time learns to suit his canvas to the roughness of the sea, and the trim of the vessel. Without these intervening storms of opposition to exercise his faculties, he would become enervate, negligent, and presumptuous; and in the wan