wanting to the felicity of life. If they are, therefore, univerfally discouraged, art and difcovery can make no advances. Whatever is attempted without previous certainty of fuccefs, may be confidered as a project, and amongst narrow minds may, therefore, expofe its author to cenfure and contempt; and if the liberty of laughing be once indulged, every man will laugh at what he does not understand, every project will be confidered as madness, and every great or new defign will be cenfured as a project. Men, unaccustomed to reafon and researches, think every enterprise impracticable, which is extended beyond common effects, or comprises many intermediate operations. Many that presume to laugh at projectors, would confider a flight through the air in a winged chariot, and the movement of a mighty engine by the fteam of water, as equally the dreams of mechanic lunacy; and would hear, with equal negligence, of the union of the Thames and Severn by a canal, and the fcheme of Albuquerque, the viceroy of the Indies, who in the rage of hoftility had contrived to make Egypt a barren defert, by turning the Nile into the Red Sea.

Those who have attempted much, have seldom failed to perform more than those who never deviate from the common roads of action: many valuable preparations of chemistry are fuppofed to have rifen from unfuccessful enquiries after the grand elixir: it is, therefore, juft to encourage thofe who endeavour to enlarge the power of art, fince they often fucceed beyond expectation; and when they fail, may fometimes benefit the world even by their miscarriages.

VOL. III.

NUMB. 102.

SATURDAY, October 27, 1753.

Quid tam dextro pede concipis, ut te

Conatus non poeniteat votique peracti?

Juv.

I

What in the conduct of our life appears

So well defign'd, fo luckily begun,

But, when we have our wifh, we wish undone. DRYDEN

SIR,

To the ADVENTURER.

HAVE been for many years a trader in London.

My beginning was narrow, and my stock small; I was, therefore, a long time brow-beaten and despised by thofe, who having more money thought they had more merit than myself. I did not, however, fuffer my resentment to inftigate me to any mean arts of fupplantation, nor my eagerness of riches to betray me to any indirect methods of gain; I pursued my business with inceffant affiduity, fupported by the hope of being one day richer than those who contemned me; and had, upon every annual review of my books, the fatisfaction of finding my fortune increafed beyond my expectation.

In a few years my induftry and probity were fully recompenfed, my wealth was really great, and my reputation for wealth ftill greater. I had large warehouses crowded with goods, and confiderable funs in the public funds; I was careffed upon the Exchange

Exchange by the moft eminent merchants; became the oracle of the common council; was folicited to engage in all commercial undertakings; was flattered with the hopes of becoming in a fhort time one of the directors of a wealthy company, and, to complete my mercantile honours, enjoyed the expenfive happiness of fining for fheriff.

Riches you know, eafily produce riches: when I had arrived to this degree of wealth, I had no longer any obftruction or oppofition to fear; new acquifitions were hourly brought within my reach, and I continued for fome years longer to heap thousands upon thousands.

At laft I refolved to camplete the circle of a citizen's profperity by the purchase of an estate in the country, and to close my life in retirement. From the hour that this defign entered my imagination, I found the fatigues of my employment every day more oppreffive, and perfuaded myself that I was no longer equal to perpetual attention, and that my health would foon be destroyed by the torment and diffraction of extenfive bufinefs. I could image to myself no happiness, but in vacant jollity, and uninterrupted leisure; nor entertain my friends with any other topick, than the vexation and uncertainty of trade, and the happinefs of rural privacy.

But notwithstanding these declarations, I could not at once reconcile myself to the thoughts of ceafing to get money; and though I was every day enquiring for a purchase, I found fome reafon for rejecting all that were offered me; and, indeed, had accumulated fo many beauties and conveniencies in my idea of the fpot, where I was finally to be

happy, that, perhaps, the world might have been travelled over, without discovery of a place which would not have been defective in fome particular.

Thus I went on ftill talking of retirement, and ftill refufing to retire; my friends began to laugh at my delays, and I grew afhamed to trifle longer with my own inclinations; an aftate was at length purchafed, I transferred my ftock to a prudent young man who had married my daughter, went down into the country, and commenced lord of a spacious

manor.

Here for fome time I found happiness equal to my expectation. I reformed the old houfe according to the advice of the best architects, I threw down the walls of the garden, and inclofed it with palifades, planted long avenues of trees, filled a green-house with exotick plants, dug a new canal, and threw the earth into the old moat.

The fame of thefe expenfive improvements brought in all the country to fee the fhew. I entertained my vifitors with great liberality, led them round my gardens, fhewed them my apartments, laid before them plans for new decorations, and was gratified by the wonder of fome and the envy of

others.

I was envied; but how little can one man judge of the condition of another? The time was now coming, in which affluence and fplendour could no longer make me pleafed with myself. I had built. till the imagination of the architect was exhaufted; I had added one convenience to another, till I knew not what more to wish or to defign; I had laid out my gardens, planted my park, and completed my water-works

water-works; and what now remained to be done? what, but to look up to turrets, of which when they were once raised I had no farther ufe, to range over apartments where time was tarnishing the furniture, to ftand by the cafcade of which I fcarcely now perceived the found, and to watch the growth of woods that must give their fhade to a diftant gene

ration.

In this gloomy inactivity, is every day begun and ended the happiness that I have been fo long procuring is now at an end, because it has been procured; I wander from room to room till I am weary of myfelf; I ride out to a neighbouring hill in the centre of my estate, from whence all my lands lie in profpect round me; I fee nothing that I have not feen before, and return home difappointed, though I knew that I had nothing to expect.

In my happy days of bufinefs I had been accuftomed to rife early in the morning; and remember the time when I grieved that the night came fo foon upon me, and obliged me for a few hours to shut out affluence and profperity. I now feldom fee the rifing fun, but to" tell him," with the fallen angel, "how I hate his beams." I awake from fleep as to languor or imprisonment, and have no employment for the first hour but to confider by what art I fhall rid myself of the fecond. I protract the breakfast as long as I can, becaufe when it is ended I have no call for my attention, till I can with fome degree of decency grow impatient for my dinner. If I could dine all my life, I fhould be happy; I eat not because I am hungry, but because I am idle: but, alas ! the time quickly comes when I can eat no longer;