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and an hopeful youth, who had been newly advanced to great honour and preferment, was forced by a neighbouring cobler to resign all for an old song. It has been represented to me, that those inconsiderable rascals do nothing but go about dissolving of marriages, and spoiling of fortunes, impoverishing rich, and ruining great people, interrupting beauties in the midst of their conquests, and generals in the course of their victories. A boisterous peripatetic hardly goes through a street without waking half a dozen kings and princes to open their shops or clean shoes, frequently transforming sceptres into paring shovels, and proclamations into bills. I have by me a letter from a young statesman, who in five or six hours came to be emperor of Europe, after which he made war upon the great Turk, touted him horse and foot, and was crowned lord of the universe in Constantinople : the conclusion of all his successes is, that on the 12th instant, about seven in the morning, his imperial majesty was deposed by a chimney-sweeper.

On the other hand, I have espistolary testimonies of gratitude from many misetable people, who owe to this clamorous

tribe frequent deliverances from great misfortunes. A small coal-man, by waking of one of these distressed gentlemen, saved him from ten years imprisonment. An honest watchman bidding aloud good morrow to another, freed him from the malice of many potent enemies, and brought all their designs against him to nothing. A certain valetudinarian confesses he had often been cured of a sore throat by the hoarseness of a carman; and relieved from a fit of the gout by the sound of old shoes. A noisy puppy, that plagued a sober gentleman all night long with his impertinence, was silenced by a cinder- wench with a word speaking.

Instead therefore of suppressing this order of mortals, I would propose it to my readers to make the best advantage of their morning salutations. A famous Macedonian prince, for fear of forgetting himself in the midst of his good fortune, had a youth to wait on him every morning and bid him remember that he was a man. A citizen who is waked by one of these criers, may regard him as a kind of remembrancer come to admonish him that it is time to return to the circumstances he has over-looked

all the night time, to leave off fancying himself what he is not, and prepare to act suitably to the condition he is really placed

in.

SPECTATOR.

JUSTICE.

WHEN a nation once loses its regard to justice; when they do not look upon it as something venerable, holy, and inviolable; when any of them dare presume to lessen, affront or terrify those who have the distribution of it in their hands; when a judge is capable of being influenced by any thing but law, or a cause may be recommended by any thing that is foreign to its own merits we may venture to pronounce that such a nation is hastening to its ruin.

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I always rejoice when I see a tribunal filled with a man of an upright and inflexible temper, who in the execution of his country's laws can overcome all private

fear, resentment solicitation and even

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pity itself. Whatever passion enters into a sentence or decision, so far will there be in

it a tincture of injustice. In short, justice discards party, friendship, kindred, and is therefore always represented as blind, that we may suppose her thoughts are wholly intent on the equity of a cause, without being diverted or prejudiced by objects foreign to it.

I shall conclude with a Persian story which is very suitable to my present subject. It will not a little please the reader, if he has the same taste of it which I myself have.

As one of the sultans lay encamped on the plains of Avala, a certain great man of the army entered by force into a peasant's house, and finding his wife very handsome, turned the good man out of his dwelling, and went to bed to her. The peasant complained the next morning to the sultan, and desired redress; but was not able to point out the criminal. The emperor, who was very much incensed at the injury done to the poor man, told him that probably the offender might give his wife another visit, and if he did, commanded him immediately to repair to his tent and acquaint him with it. Accordingly within two or three days the officer entered again the peasant's house,

corpse

and turned the owner out of doors; who thereupon applied himself to the imperial tent, as he was ordered. The sultan went in person, with his guards, to the poor man's house, where he arrived about midnight. As the attendants carried each of them a flambeau in his hand, the sultan, after having ordered all the lights to be put out, gave the word to enter the house, find out the criminal, and put him to death. This was immediately executed, and the laid out upon the floor by the emperor's command. He then bid every one light his flambeau, and stand about the dead body. The sultan approaching it, looked upon the face, and immediately fell upon his knees in prayer. Upon his rising up he ordered the peasant to set before him whatever food he had in his house. The peasant brought out a great deal of coarse fare, of which the emperor eat very heartily. The peasant seeing him in good humour, presumed to ask of him, why he had ordered the flambeaux to be put out before he had commanded the adulterer should be slain? Why, upon their being lighted again, he looked upon the face of the dead body, and fell down in pray er? And why after this

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