till Sir Roger is gone out of the church.*

The knight walks

down from his seat in the chancel between a double row of his

tenants, that stand bowing to him on each side; and every one now and then inquires how such an one's wife, or mother, or son, or father do, whom he does not see at church; which is understood as a secret reprimand to the person that is absent.

The chaplain has often told me, that upon a catechising-day, when Sir Roger has been pleased with a boy that answers well, he has ordered a bible to be given him next day for his encouragement; and sometimes accompanies it with a flitch of bacon to his mother. Sir Roger has likewise added five pounds a year to the clerk's place; and that he may encourage the young fellows to make themselves perfect in the church-service, has pro

The church close to which Addison was born and where his father ministered, may have supplied some of the traits to the exquisite picture of a rural Sabbath which this chapter presents.

The parish church of Milston is a modest edifice, situated in a combe or hollow of the Wiltshire downs, about two miles north-west of Amesbury. In the parsonage house-now an honoured ruin-on the 1st of May, 1672, Joseph Addison was born. It is only separated from the grave-yard by a hawthorn fence, and must have been, when inhabited, the beau ideal of a country parsonage. It has a spacious garden, rich glebe, and commands a pretty view, bounded by the hill on which stands the church of Durrington.

Milston Church remains nearly in the same state as during the first twelve years of his life which Addison passed under its shadow. As no benevolent parishioner took the hint conveyed in Sir Roger's will, it is still without tower or steeple; the belfry being nothing more than a small louvered shed. Within, the church is partitioned off by tall worm-eaten pews, and is scarcely capable of holding a hundred persons. At the east end stands the communion table, "railed in." It was once lighted by a stained glass window; but of this it was deprived by the cupidity of a deceased incumbent. The same person was guilty of a worse act::-To oblige a friend-" a collector”—he actually tore out the leaf of the parish register which contained the entry of Joseph Addison's birth.

Milston Church does not display the texts of Scripture attributed to the Coverley edifice. If any existed when Addison wrote, they must have been since effaced by whitewash.-*

mised, upon the death of the present incumbent, who is very old, to bestow it according to merit.

The fair understanding between Sir Roger and his chaplain, and their mutual concurrence in doing good, is the more remarkable, because the very next village is famous for the differences and contentions that rise between the parson and the 'squire, who live in a perpetual state of war. The parson is always at the 'squire, and the 'squire to be revenged on the parson, never comes to church. The 'squire has made all his tenants atheists and tithe-stealers; while the parson instructs them every Sunday in the dignity of his order, and insinuates to them almost in every sermon, that he is a better man than his patron. In short, matters are come to such an extremity, that the 'squire has not said his prayers either in public or private this half year; and that the parson threatens him, if he does not mend his manners, to pray for him in the face of the whole congregation.

Feuds of this nature, though too frequent in the country, are

very fatal to the ordinary people; who are so used to be dazzled with riches, that they pay as much deference to the understanding of a man of an estate, as of a man of learning; and are very hardly brought to regard any truth, how important soever it may be, that is preached to them, when they know there are several men of five hundred a year who do not believe it.

L.

No. 115. THURSDAY, JULY 12.

-Ut sit mens sana in corpore sano.

Juv. Sat. x. 356.

A healthy body and a mind at ease.

BODILY labour is of two kinds; either that which a man submits to for his livelihood, or that which he undergoes for his pleasure. The latter of them generally changes the name of labour for that of exercise, but differs only from ordinary labour as it rises from another motive.

A country life abounds in both these kinds of labour, and for that reason gives a man a greater stock of health, and consequently a more perfect enjoyment of himself, than any other way of life. I consider the body as a system of tubes and glands, or to use a more rustic phrase, a bundle of pipes and strainers, fitted to one another after so wonderful a manner, as to make a proper engine for the soul to work with. This description does not only comprehend the bowels, bones, tendons, veins, nerves, and arteries, but every muscle and every ligature, which is a composition of fibres, that are so many imperceptible tubes or pipes interwoven on all sides with invisible glands or strainers.

This general idea of a human body, without considering it in the niceties of anatomy, lets us see how absolutely necessary labour is for the right preservation of it. There must be frequent motions and agitations, to mix, digest, and separate the juices contained in it, as well as to clear and cleanse that infinitude of pipes and strainers of which it is composed, and to give their solid parts a more firm and lasting tone. Labour or exercise ferments the humours, casts them into their proper channels, throws off redundancies, and helps nature in those secret distri

butions without which the body cannot subsist in its vigour, nor the soul act with cheerfulness.

I might here mention the effects which this has upon all the faculties of the mind, by keeping the understanding clear, the imagination untroubled, and refining those spirits that are neces sary for the proper exertion of our intellectual faculties, during the present laws of union between soul and body. It is to a neglect in this particular that we must ascribe the spleen, which is so frequent in men of studious and sedentary tempers, as well as the vapours to which those of the other sex are so often subject.

Had not exercise been absolutely necessary for our well-being, nature would not have made the body so proper for it, by giving such an activity to the limbs, and such a pliancy to every part as necessarily produces those compressions, extensions, contortions, dilatations, and all other kinds of motions that are necessary for the preservation of such a system of tubes and glands as has been before mentioned. And that we might not want inducements to engage in such an exercise of the body as is proper for its welfare, it is so ordered that nothing valuable can be procured without it. Not to mention riches and honour, even food and raiment are not to be come at without the toil of the hands, and sweat of the brows.. Providence furnishes materials, but expects that we should work them up ourselves. The earth must be laboured before it gives its increase; and when it is forced into its several products, how many hands must they pass through before they are fit for use? Manufactures, trade, and agriculture, naturally employ more than nineteen parts of the species in twenty; and as for those who are not cbliged to labour, by the condition in which they are born, they are more miserable than

We may say, studious, but not sedentary tempers: the proper word, if we would retain both the adjectives, is, lives.—Iİ.

the rest of mankind, unless they indulge themselves in that voluntary labour which goes by the name of exercise.

My friend Sir Roger has been an indefatigable man in business of this kind, and has hung several parts of his house with the trophies of his former labours. The walls of his great hall are covered with the horns of several kinds of deer that he has killed in the chase, which he thinks the most valuable furniture of his house, as they afford him frequent topics of discourse, and shew that he has not been idle. At the lower end of the hall is a large otter's skin stuffed with hay, which his mother ordered to be hung up in that manner, and the knight looks upon with great satisfaction, because, it seems, he was but nine years old when his dog killed him. A little room adjoining to the hall is a kind of arsenal, filled with guns of several sizes and inventions, with which the knight has made great havoc in the woods, and destroyed many thousands of pheasants, partridges, and woodcocks. His stable doors are patched with noses that belonged to foxes of the knight's own hunting down. Sir Roger shewed

1

Although the "Spectator" advocated in this and other pages moderate indulgence in the sports of the field, the excessive passion of country gentlemen for them to the exclusion of more intellectual pastimes, he elsewhere deplores. In a later volume he quotes a saying that the curse fulminated by Goliah having missed David, had rested on the modern squire:-"I will give thee to the fowls of the air, and to the beasts of the field." The country gentleman was respected by his neighbours, less for morality or intellect, than for the number of foxes' noses he could show nailed to his stables and barns.

The sedentary, though assuredly less healthful and respectable games and pastimes introduced by Charles the Second and his followers from abroad, had not, even in Queen Anne's day, become so thoroughly naturalised as they were afterwards; and ladies keenly participated in the sports of the field. The Queen herself followed the hounds in a chaise with one horse," which," says Swift, "she drives herself; and drives furiously, like Jehu; and is a mighty hunter, like Nimrod." She was, if Stella's journalist did not exaggerate, quite equal to runs even longer than those performed by the Coverley hounds; for, on the 7th August, 1711, she drove before dinner five-and-forty miles after a stag.