about a hundred. As I was counting the arches, the genius told me that this bridge consisted at first of a thousand arches, but that a great flood swept away the rest, and left the bridge in the ruinous condition I now beheld it. "But tell me further," said he, "what thou discoverest on it." "I see multitudes of people passing over it," said I, "and a black cloud hanging on each end of it." As I looked more attentively, I saw several of the passengers dropping through the bridge into the great tide that flowed beneath it; and upon further examination, perceived there were innumerable trap-doors that lay concealed in the bridge, which the passengers no sooner trod upon but they fell through them into the tide and immediately disappeared. These hidden pitfalls were set very thick at the entrance of the bridge, so that throngs of people no sooner broke through the cloud, but many of them fell into them. They grew thinner toward the middle, but multiplied and lay closer together towards the ends of the arches that were entire.

There were indeed some persons, but their number was very small, that continued a kind of hobbling march on the broken arches, but fell through one after another, being quite tired and spent with so long a walk. . . . My heart was filled with a deep melancholy to see several dropping unexpectedly in the midst of mirth and jollity, and catching at everything that stood by them to save themselves. Some were looking up towards the heavens in a thoughtful posture, and, in the midst of a speculation, stumbled and fell out of sight. Multitudes were very busy in the pursuit of bubbles that glittered in their eyes and danced before them; but often when they thought themselves within the reach of them, their footing failed, and down they sank.

I here fetched a deep sigh. "Alas," said I, "man was made in vain!-how is he given away to misery and mortality! - tortured in life, and swallowed up in death!" The genius being moved with compassion towards me, bade me quit so uncomfortable a prospect. "Look no more," said he, "on man in the first stage of his existence, in his setting out for eternity, but cast thine eye on that thick mist into which the tide bears the several generations of mortals that fall into it." I directed my sight as i was ordered, and,-whether or no the good genius strengthened it with any supernatural force, or dissipated part of the mist that was before too thick for the eye to penetrate,— I saw the valley opening at the former end, and spreading forth into an immense ocean, that had a huge rock of adamant running through the midst of it, and dividing it into two equal parts. The cloud still rested on one half of it, insomuch that I could discover nothing in it, but the other appeared to me a vast ocean planted with innumerable islands that were covered with fruits and flowers, and interwoven with a thousand little shining seas that ran among them. I could see persons dressed in glorious habits, with garlands upon their heads, passing among the trees, lying down by the sides of fountains, or resting on beds of flowers, and could hear a confused harmony of singing-birds, falling waters, human voices, and musical instruments. Gladness grew in me upon the discovery of so delightful a scene. I wished for the wings of an eagle that I might fly away to those happy seats, but the genius told me there was no passage to them except through the Gates of Death that I saw opening every moment upon the bridge. "The islands," said he, "that lie so fresh and green before thee, and with which the whole face of the ocean appears spotted as far as thou canst see, are more in number than the sands on the sea-shore; there are myriads of islands behind those which thou here discoverest, reaching further than thine eye, or even thine imagination, can extend itself. These are the mansions of good men after death, who, according to the degree and kinds of virtue in which they excelled, are distributed among these several islands, which abound with pleasures of different kinds and degrees, suitable to the relishes and perfections of those who are settled in them. Every island is a paradise accommodated to its respective inhabitants. Are not these, O Mirza! habitations worth contending for? Does life appear miserable, that gives thee opportunities of earning such a reward? Is death to be feared, that will convey thee to so happy an existence? Think not man was made in vain, who has such an eternity preserved for him." I gazed with inexpressible pleasure on these happy islands. At length, said I: "Shew me now, I beseech thee, the secrets that be hid under those dark clouds which cover the ocean on the other side of the rock of adamant." The genius making me no answer, I turned about to address myself to him a second time, but I found that he had left me. I then turned again to the

vision which I had been so long contemplating, but instead of the rolling tide, the arcned bridge, and the happy islands, I saw nothing but the long hollow valley of Bagdat, with oxen, sheep, and camels grazing upon the sides of it.'

Style.-Luminous, graceful, vivid, elegant, familiar, and even, never blazing into unexpected splendor; the exact words, the clear contrasts, the harmonious periods, of classical refinement and finish, happy inventions threaded by the most amiable irony. His poems-Cato and the Hymns excepted-regular and frigid, like the rule-and-compass poetry of Pope.

Rank. A public favorite, an unrivalled satirist. The most charming of talkers, an unsullied statesman, a model of pure and elegant English, a consummate painter of human nature, and the greatest of English essayists, occupying a place in English literature only second to that of its great masters. A polished shaft in the temple of thought, whose workmanship is more striking than the weight supported.

Character. Without taint of perfidy, of cowardice, of cruelty, of ingratitude, or of envy; satirical without abuse, tempering ridicule with a tender compassion for all that is frail, and a profound reverence for all that is sublime. The greatest and most salutary reform of public morals and tastes ever effected by any satirist, he accomplished without a personal lampoon.

Himself a Whig, he was described by the bitterest Tories as a gentleman of wit and virtue, in whose friendship many persons of both parties were happy, and whose name ought not to be mixed up with factious squabbles.

In the heat of controversy, no outrage could provoke him to a retaliation unworthy of a Christian and a gentleman. With a boundless power of abusing men, he never used it. His modesty amounted to bashfulness. He once rose in debate, in the House of Commons, but could not conquer his diffidence, and ever after remained silent. As an Oxford student, he was gentle and meditative, loving solitary walks under the elms that fringe the banks of the Cherwell. Is it not prophetic-a commentary in itself— that he loved the quietness of nature? May we not hence expect the music of long cadenced and tranquil phrases, the measured harmonies of noble images, and the grave sweetness of moral sentiments?

He stood fast by the altar of worship. God was his loving

friend, who had tenderly watched over his cradle, who had preserved his youth, and richly blessed his manhood. His favorite psalm was that which represents the Deity under the endearing image of a Shepherd. On his death-bed, he called himself to a strict account, sent for Gay, and asked pardon for an injury which it was not even suspected that he had committed; sent for young Warwick, to whom he had been tutor, and whom he had vainly endeavored to reclaim from an irregular life; told him, when he desired to hear his last injunction, 'I have sent for you that you may see how a Christian can die.'

Influence. - Seen best in the purpose which inspired his papers. The great and only end of these speculations,' says Addison, in a number of the Spectator, 'is to banish vice and ignorance out of the territories of Great Britain.' He was a successful reformer. He made morality fashionable, and it remained in fashion. The Puritans had divorced elegance from virtue - he reconciled them; genius was still thought to have some natural connection with profligacy-he divorced them; pleasure was subservient to passion - he made it subservient to reason:

'It was said of Socrates that he brought Philosophy down from heaven to inhabit among men and I shall be ambitious to have it said of me, that I have brought Philosophy out of closets and libraries, schools and colleges, to dwell in clubs and assemblies, at tea-tables, and in coffee-houses.'

His essays are, directly or indirectly, moral rules of propriety, precepts on when to speak, when to be silent, how to refuse, how to comply; reprimands to thoughtless women, raillery against fashionable young men, a portrait of an honest man, attacks against the conceit of rank, epigrams on the frivolity of etiquette, advice to families, consolations to the sorrowing, reflections on God, the future life.

A good and happy man, he scattered freely the blessings of a kind and generous nature. His satire, always directed against every form of social offence, was of that genial kind which, wooing the reader along a sunny path, awakens attention to his faults without friction or irritation. He was the first to make of prose a fine art, and elegant culture has ever since found constant expression in prose.

Human immortality is of three kinds: objective in God—the immortality of conscious existence; subjective in the minds of

men- the immortality of fame; subjective in the life of the world the immortality of energy, energy that expends itself in good works, and, by the natural transmission of force, lives to perish never. These three were the inheritance of Addison, and are possible to few; the last is the privilege of all. No particles of him will ever be lost. Ever since he died there has been a growth of the Christ-like. The seeds he dropped took root in the soul of man, have grown apace, flowering every spring, fruiting every autumn, spreading in the very air the odor of the bloom and the flavor of the fruit. No good thing is lost. Forty-four years after his death, the Council of Constance ordered the bones of Wycliffe to be dug up and burned. The vultures of the law took what little they could find, burned it, and cast the ashes into the Swift, a little brook running hard by, and thought they had made away with both his bones and his doctrines. How does it turn out? The historian says: 'The brook took them into the Avon, the Avon into the Severn, the Severn into the narrow seas, they into the main ocean; and thus the ashes of Wycliffe are the emblems of his doctrine, which is now dispersed all the world over.'

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You and I may not have much intellectual power, our thought may never fill the world's soul; but, if we have stimulated a generous wish or a noble aspiration, if we have ever furnished a medium in which handsome things may be projected and performed,—if we have added one leaf to the tree of humanity, one blossom to its wealth of bloom, or aught to its harvest of fruit, we may rely upon the eternal law that neither things present nor things to come can deprive these outgoing particles of their immortality. More fitting and enduring epitaph than this Addison could not have: He lived wisely and usefully.'

1 See Vol. I, p. 203.

DE FOE.

His imagination was that of a man of business, not of an artist, crammed, and as it were jammed down with facts. He tells them as they come to him, without arrangement or style, like a conversation. . . . Never was such a sense of the real before or since. Taine.

Biography.-Born in 1661, the son of a London butcher named Foe. Disliking the family name, he added a prefix to suit his own taste. Studied five years, at a Dissenters' academy, for the Presbyterian ministry. Joined the Monmouth insurrection, and escaped hanging or transportation. Became a hosier, and failed. Became a merchant-adventurer, visiting Spain and Portugal, and absconded from his creditors in 1692. Subsequently paid their entire claims, when legally relieved of the obligation to do so. Became an accountant under William III, but lost his appointment in 1699 by suppression of the Glass Duty. Became a tile-maker, and lost three thousand pounds in the undertaking. Explains in 1705, 'How, with a numerous family and no help but his own industry, he had forced his way with undiscouraged diligence through a sea of misfortunes.' Writes a pamphlet against the High Church party, is misunderstood, fined, pilloried, his ears cut off, imprisoned two years,- charity preventing his wife and six children from dying of hunger during his imprisonment. Caricatured, robbed, and slandered, he withdrew from politics, and at fifty-five, poor and burdened, turned to fiction. Wrote in prose, in verse, on all subjects, in all two hundred and fifty-four works! and, struck down with apoplexy, died in 1731, penniless, insolvent, immortal.

Appearance.-Under order of arrest on the charge of sedition, he was described by the Gazette of January, 1702, as ‘a middle-sized spare man, about forty years old, of a brown complexion, and dark brown hair, though he wears a wig, having a hook nose, a sharp chin, grey eyes, and a large mole near his mouth.'

Writings.-True-born Englishman, (1701), a poetical satire on the foreigners, and a defence of King William and the Dutch. Its sale was almost unexampled; eighty thousand pirated copies were sold on the streets. Tuneless and homely, it shows the