1

a multitude of evils. He would confider a bulky writer who engroffed a year, and a fwarm of pamphleteers who stole each an hour, as equal wasters of human life, and would make no other difference between them, than between a beast of prey, and a flight of locufts.

NUMB. 86. SATURDAY, December 8, 1759.

SIR,

To the IDLER.

IAM a young lady newly married to a young

gentleman. Our fortune is large, our minds are vacant, our difpofitions gay, our acquaintances numerous, and our relations fplendid. We confidered that marriage, like life, has its youth; that the first year is the year of gaiety and revel, and refolved to see the fhews and feel the joys of London before the increase of our family should confine us to domestick cares and domestick pleafures.

Little time was spent in preparation; the coach was harneffed, and a few days brought us to London, and we alighted at a lodging provided for us by Mifs Biddy Trifle, a maiden niece of my husband's father, where we found apartments on a fecond floor, which my coufin told us would ferve us till we

could

could please ourselves with a more commodious and elegant habitation, and which she had taken at a very high price, because it was not worth the while to make a hard bargain for so short a time.

Here I intended to lie concealed till my new clothes were made, and my new lodging hired; but Mifs Trifle had fo industriously given notice of our arrival to all her acquaintance, that I had the mortification next day of seeing the door thronged with painted coaches and chairs with coronets, and was obliged to receive all my husband's relations on a fecond floor.

Inconveniences are often balanced by fome advantage the elevation of my apartments furnished a fubject for conversation, which, without fome fuch help, we should have been in danger of wanting. Lady Stately told us how many years had paffed fince the climbed so many steps. Mifs Airy ran to the window, and thought it charming to fee the walkers fo little in the ftreet; and Mifs Gentle went to try the fame experiment, and fcreamed to find herself fo far above the ground.

They all knew that we intended to remove, and therefore all gave me advice about a proper choice. One street was recommended for the purity of its air, another for its freedom from noife, another for its nearness to the park, another because there was but a ftep from it to all places of diverfion, and another, because its inhabitants enjoyed at once the town and country.

I had civility enough to hear every recommendation with a look of curiofity while it was made, and of acquiefcence when it was concluded, but in my heart

heart felt no other defire than to be free from the difgrace of a fecond floor, and cared little where I fhould fix, if the apartments were fpacious and fplendid.

Next day a chariot was hired, and Mifs Trifle was dispatched to find a lodging. She returned in the afternoon, with an account of a charming place, to which my husband went in the morning to make the contract. Being young and unexperienced, he took with him his friend Ned Quick, a gentleman of great skill in rooms and furniture, who fees, at a fingle glance, whatever there is to be commended or cen. fured. Mr. Quick, at the first view of the house, declared that it could not be inhabited, for the fun in the afternoon fhone with full glare on the windows of the dining-room.

Mifs Trifle went out again, and foon difcovered another lodging, which Mr. Quick went to furvey, and found, that, whenever the wind fhould blow from the east, all the fmoke of the city would be driven upon it.

A magnificent fet of rooms was then found in one of the streets near Westminster-Bridge, which Mifs Trifle preferred to any which he had yet feen; but Mr. Quick, having mufed upon it for a time, concluded that it would be too much expofed in the morning to the fogs that rife from the river.

Thus Mr. Quick proceeded to give us every day new teftimonies of his tafte and circumfpection; fometimes the ftreet was too narrow for a double range of coaches; fometimes it was an obfcure place, not inhabited by perfons of quality. Some places were dirty, and fome crowded; in fome houfes the

furniture

furniture was ill fuited, and in others the stairs were too narrow. He had fuch fertility of objections that Mifs Trifle was at last tired, and defifted from all attempts for our accommodation.

In the mean time I have still continued to see my company on a second floor, and am afked twenty times a day when I am to leave thofe odious lodgings, in which I live tumultuoufly without pleasure, and expensively without honour. My husband thinks fo highly of Mr. Quick, that he cannot be perfuaded to remove without his approbation; and Mr. Quick thinks his reputation raised by the multiplication of difficulties.

In this diftrefs to whom can I have recourfe? I find my temper vitiated by daily disappointment, bý the fight of pleasures which I cannot partake, and the poffeffion of riches which I cannot enjoy. Dear Mr. Idler, inform my husband that he is trifling away, in fuperfluous vexation, the few months which custom has appropriated to delight; that matrimonial quarrels are not eafily reconciled between those that have no children; that wherever we fettle he must always find fome inconvenience; but nothing is fo much to be avoided as a perpetual stare of enquiry and fufpence.

I am, SIR,

Your humble fervant,

PECCY HEARTLESS.

NUMB. 87. SATURDAY, December 15, 1759.

Ο

F what we know not, we can only judge by what we know. Every novelty appears more wonderful as it is more remote from any thing with which experience or teftimony have hitherto acquainted us, and if it paffes further beyond the notions that we have been accustomed to form, it becomes at laft incredible.

We seldom confider that human knowledge is very narrow, that national manners are formed by chance, that uncommon conjunctures of causes produce rare effects, or that what is impoffible at one time or place may yet happen in another. It is always easier to deny than to enquire. To refuse credit confers for a moment an appearance of fuperiority, which every little mind is tempted to affume when it may be gained fo cheaply as by withdrawing attention from evidence, and declining the fatigue of comparing probabilities. The most pertinacious and vehement demonftrator may be wearied in time by continual negation; and incredulity, which an old poet, in his addrefs to Raleigh, calls the wit of fools, obtunds the argument which it cannot anfwer, as woolfacks deaden arrows though they cannot repel them.

Many relations of travellers have been flighted as fabulous, till more frequent voyages have confirmed their veracity; and it may reasonably be imagined,

that