It is out of this his book-meaning always such parts of it as are found suitable, that our statesmen of the present day may be seen taking their lessons. It is out of this his garden of sweet flowers that the still existing Finance Committee, and without acknowledgment, have culled, as we have seen, a chaplet wherewith to decorate their brows. It is in this his school, that by another Right Honorable Teacher of Economy, those maxims have certainly been found, and to all appearance learnt, which we shall come to presently.

Had the purpose of his argument, or of his life, required it— here, in this very place, instead of declaiming and writing for money, and trying to persuade men that nothing but money is of any value, the orator might, and naturally would, have declared against money,-shown in the way that so many other declaimers have shown, that it is of no value, that it is even worse than useless, and that without "the basest profligacy and corruption" no man-no public man at least-can ever get, or try to get, any of it.

In exaggerations, improbity or folly may behold a use on either side; but to common honesty, nothing is here needful but com

mon sense.

Money is a good thing; a very good thing indeed: and, if it were not a good thing, scarce would any thing else be for there are few good things which a man may not get by means of it: get, either in exchange for it, or (what is still better) even without parting with it.

But the misfortune is, that from us the people, for paying orators of the class of Edmund Burke, it is not to be had without our being forced to part with it: and if the orator suffer in case of his not having it, in case of his never having got so much of it as he could have wished, we the people, who, after having had it, find ourselves, for the use and benefit of the orator, forced to part with it, suffer still more.

Thence it is, that if there be any thing else, which, the people not feeling themselves forced to part with it, the orator can persuade himself to be satisfied with, so much the better. Upon this plan, every body is satisfied; orator and people both: whereas, upon the orator's plan, only one of the parties is satisfied, viz. the orator; the orator, who is the agent and spokesman of the ruling few; while the other party, viz. we the people, are suffering and grumbling, and as it should seem not altogether without reason; for we are the many; and in our number consists our title to regard; a very unpretending title, but not the less a good and suffi

cient one.

A

TREATISE

ON

GREYHOUNDS,

WITH

Observations

ON THE

TREATMENT AND DISORDERS OF THEM.

Nee tibi cura Canum fuerit postrema.

VIRGIL GEORG. Lib. iii. 404.

LONDON.

NO. XVII.

Pam.

VOL. IX.

D

PREFACE.

There is an old adage, that nothing is new under the sun; and an author of some celebrity has accused our ancestors of having said every thing that we should have said ourselves. I am not weak enough to think the following pages have much novelty to recommend them, being composed principally of fragments, collected from different publications on subjects nearly connected with the present treatise. With the "Amateur," however, they may have some little merit, from being thrown into a narrower compass, and brought immediately before the eye, from the wide and more expanded surface over which they have been spread.— Other persons may consider the whole as beneath their notice; yet they will allow me to observe to them, that in the great drama of life many scenes of lighter import are necessary to relieve the more serious characters of the piece. Churchill said truly. Spite of itself, the brain too finely wrought`.`

"Preys on itself and is destroy'd by thought."

And the same may be said with equal propriety of continued corporeal exertions. The Great Author of all goodness has, indeed, so wisely tempered the human frame, that our innocent aniusements promote both our health and happiness, and only become culpable, when they become the business of life instead of its recreation.

Pliny, in his devotion to field amusements, did not forget the more serious occupations of the mind, and reminds us, "that Minerva was as fond of traversing the hills as Diana." And Mr.

Melmoth's Version of the "Experietis non Dianara magis montibus, quam Minervam inerrare." Plin. Epist. lib. 1-6.

Pope, in one of his unpublished letters, has observed, "no pleasures so well suit with exercise as those of the imagination, which can be pursued even in the field, and when your Dogs are at fault, can fill up the interval."

I have endeavoured to introduce a few classical flowers into what some persons may term the barren ground, on which I have been employed; and they may take off, perhaps, a little of its dreariness from the prospect. The references to the ancient Greek and Latin authors have swoln imperceptibly to some extent; but the ancient Greek and Latin authors are, in fact, the storehouses, from which almost all our knowledge in every art and science is derived. Whoever loses sight of them when the course of education is run through, gives up at once a never-failing source of delight.' He parts with friends to whom he might at all hours have recourse for the most rational and refined entertainment, and there is not an observation, trite as it may be reckoned, more correct than that of the great Roman orator-" Hæc studia adolescentiam alunt, senectutem oblectant, secundas res ornant, adversis perfugium ac solatium præbent, delectant domi, non impediunt foris, pernoctant nobiscum, peregrinantur, rusticantur."

232

The "Integros exquirere fontes," I would press again and again upon the youthful reader.-In maturer age he will feel the value of the recommendation, and excuse its warmth.

Cicer. Orat. pro Archiâ Poeta,