He fixes on his choice abode, Not half a furlong from the road; The stages pafs it ev'ry day ; Well then, fuppose them fix'd at last, Well; to be fure, it must be own'd, It is a charming spot of ground: So fweet a distance for a ride, • And all about fo countrify'd; • "Twould come but to a trifling price • To make it quite a paradise ! I cannot bear those nafty rails, • Thofe ugly, broken, mouldy pales: Suppose, my dear, instead of these, We build a railing all Chinese; Altho' one hates to be expos'd, • "Tis dismal to be thus enclos'd: One hardly any objects fees 'I wish you'd fell thofe odious trees. • Were fomething to amuse the eye; • Should on our little mansion gaze; For Madam's TASTE can never fail. When noble and ignoble herd Are govern'd by a single word;. TASTE, and the modern tafteful tribe.. Now bricklay'rs, carpenters, and joiners, With Chinese artists and defigners, The useful dome, which fecret ftood, A ditch of water, four feet wide, Without a fhrub upon the green; Where Tafte would want its firft great law, But for the skulking, fly ha-ha; By whofe miraculous affistance You gain a profpect two fields distance. 1 And there, without the pow'r to fly, The villa thus compleatly grac'd, ; All own, that Thrifty has a tafte Flock ev'ry Sunday to the feat, To ftare about them, and to eat. NUMBER XXV. O! that men fhould put an enemy into their mouths to fteal away their brains. ON INTEMPERANCE IN DRINKING. EVERY reader has found the Spartans mentioned, as inculcating fobriety on their children, by exposing to their notice the behaviour of their flaves in a drunken fit. They thought, that were they to apply wholly to the reafon of the youths, it might be to little purpose: as the force of the arguments, which they used, might not be sufficiently apprehended, or the impreffion thereof might be foon effaced: but when they made them frequently eye-witnesses of all the madnefs and abfurdities, and at length the perfect fenfeleffnefs, which the immoderate draught occafioned; the idea of the vile change would be so fixed in the minds of its beholders, as to render them utterly averfe from its cause. And may we not justly conclude it to be from hence, that the offspring of the persons who are accustomed thus to difguife themfelves, often prove remarkably fober? They avoid, in their riper years, their parent's crime, from the deteftation of it, which they contracted in their earlier. As to most other vices, their debafing circumftances are not fully known to us, till we have attained a maturity of age, nor can be then, till they have been duly attended to: but in our very childhood, at our first beholding the effects of drunkennefs, we are ftruck with aftonishment, that a reasonable being fhould be thus changed-fhould be induced to make himself fuch an object of contempt and fcorn. And, indeed, we must have the man in the utmost contempt, whom we hear and fee in his progress to excefs; at first, teazing you with his contentioufnefs or impertinence-mistaking your meaning, and hardly knowing his own-then, faultering in his fpeech-unable to get through an entire fentence-his hands trembling-his eyes fwimming his legs too feeble to fupport him; till, at length, you only know the human creature by his shape. I cannot but add, that were one of any fenfe to have a just notion of all the filly things he |