came next, seemed in his looks to promise a new Spring, and wore the livery of those months. The succeeding month was all soiled with the juice of grapes, as if he had just come from the wine-press. November, though he was in this division, yet by the many stops he made seemed rather inclined to the Winter, which followed close at his heels. He advanced in the shape of an old man in the extremity of age: the hair he had was so very white, it seemed a real snow; his eyes were red and piercing, and his beard hung with a great quantity of icicles; he was wrapt up in furs, but yet so pinched with excess of cold, that his limbs were all contracted, and his body bent to the ground, so that he could not have supported himself had it not been for Comus, the god of revels, and Necessity, the mother of Fate, who sustained him on each side. The shape and mantle of Comus was one of the things that most surprised me; as he advanced towards me, his countenance seemed the most desirable I had ever seen. On the forepart of his mantle was pictured joy, delight, and satisfaction, with a thousand emblems of merriment, and jests with faces looking two ways at once; but as he passed from me, I was amazed at a. shape so little correspondent to his face: his head was bald, and all the rest of his limbs appeared old and deformed. On the hinder part of his mantle was represented Murder with dishevelled hair and a dagger all bloody, Anger in a robe of scarlet, and Suspicion squinting with both eyes; but, above all, the most conspicuous was the battle of the Lapitha and the Centaurs. I detested so hideous a shape, and turned my eyes upon Saturn, who was stealing away behind him, with a scythe in one hand and an hour-glass in the other, unobserved. Behind Necessity was Vesta, the goddess of fire,

with a lamp which was perpetually supplied with oil, and whose flame was eternal. She cheered the rugged brow of Necessity, and warmed her so far as almost to make her assume the features and likeness of Choice. December, January, and February, passed on after the rest, all in furs; there was little distinction to be made amongst them; and they were more or less displeasing, as they discovered more or less haste towards the grateful return of Spring.'

[Supposed to be by POPE.]

2.

N° 426. WEDNESDAY, JULY 9, 1712.

-Quid non mortalia pectora cogis,

Auri sacra fames?—

VIRG. Æn. iii. ver. 56.

O sacred hunger of pernicious gold!

What bands of faith can impious lucre hold!

DRYDEN.

A VERY agreeable friend of mine, the other day, carrying me in his coach into the country to dinner, fell into discourse concerning the care of parents due to their children,' and the piety of children towards their parents.' He was reflecting upon the succession of particular virtues and qualities there might be preserved from one generation to another, if these regards were reciprocally held in veneration : but as he never fails to mix an air of mirth and goodhumour with his good sense and reasoning, he entered into the following relation :

'I WILL not be confident in what century, or under what reign it happened, that this want of mutual confidence and right understanding between father and son was fatal to the family of the Valentines in Germany. Basilius Valentinus' was a person who had arrived at the utmost perfection in the hermetic art, and initiated his son Alexandrinus in the same mysteries: but, as you know they are not to be attained but by the painful, the pious, the chaste, and pure of heart, Basilius did not open to him, because of his youth, and the deviations too natural to it, the greatest secrets of which he was master, as well knowing that the operation would fail in the hands of a man so liable to errors in life as Alexandrinus. But believing, from a certain indisposition of mind as well as body, his dissolution was drawing nigh, he called Alexandrinus to him, and as he lay on a couch, over against which his son was seated, and prepared by sending out his servants one after another, and admonition to examine that no one overheard them, he revealed the most important of his secrets with the solemnity and language of an adept. "My son," said he, "many have been the watchings, long the lucubrations, constant the labours, of thy father, not only to gain a great and plentiful estate to his posterity, but also to take care that he should have no posterity. Be not amazed, my child, I do not mean that thou shalt be taken from me, but that I will never leave thee, and consequently cannot be said to have posterity. Behold, my dearest Alexandrinus, the effect of what was propagated in nine months.

This story of Basilius Valentinus is taken from the Ambassador's Travels of Olearius, book v.

We are not to contradict nature, but to follow and to help her; just as long as an infant is in the womb of its parent, so long are these medicines of revivification in preparing. Observe this small phial and this little gallipot; in this an unguent, in the other a liquor. In these, my child, are collected such powers, as shall revive the springs of life when they are yet but just ceased, and give new strength, new spirits, and, in a word, wholly restore all the organs and senses of the human body to as great a duration, as it had before enjoyed from its birth to the day of the application of these my medicines. But, my beloved son, care must be taken to apply them within ten hours after the breath is out of the body, while yet the clay is warm with its late life, and yet capable of resuscitation. I find my frame grown crazy with perpetual toil and meditation; and I conjure you, as soon as I am dead, to anoint me with this unguent; and when you see me begin to move, pour into my lips this inestimable liquor, else the force of the ointment will be ineffectual. By this means you will give me life as I have you, and we will from that hour mutually lay aside the authority of having bestowed life on each other, but live as brethren, and prepare new medicines against such another period of time as will demand another application of the same restoratives." In a few days after these wonderful ingredients were delivered to Alexandrinus, Basilius departed this life. But such was the pious sorrow of the son at the loss of so excellent a father, and the first transports of grief had so wholly disabled him from all manner of business, that he never thought of the medicines till the time to which his father had limited their efficacy was expired. To tell the truth, Alexandrinus was a man of wit and pleasure, and

considered his father had lived out his natural time; his life was long and uniform, suitable to the regularity of it; but that he himself, poor sinner, wanted a new life, to repent of a very bad one hitherto, and in the examination of his heart, resolved to go on as he did with this natural being of his, but repent very faithfully, and spend very piously the life to which he should be restored by application of these rarities, when time should come, to his own person.

• It has been observed, that Providence frequently punishes the self-love of men, who would do immoderately for their own offspring, with children very much below their characters and qualifications; insomuch that they only transmit their names to be borne by those who give daily proofs of the vanity of the labour and ambition of their progenitors.

'It happened thus in the family of Basilius; for Alexandrinus began to enjoy his ample fortune in all the extremities of household expence, furniture, and insolent equipage; and this he pursued till the day of his own departure began, as he grew sensible, to approach. As Basilius was punished with a son very unlike him, Alexandrinus was visited by one of his own disposition. It is natural that ill men should be suspicious; and Alexandrinus, besides that jealousy, had proofs of the vicious disposition of his son Renatus, for that was his name.

Alexandrinus, as I observed, having very good reason for thinking it unsafe to trust the real secret of his phial and gallipot to any man living, projected to make sure work, and hope for his success depending from the avarice, not the bounty of his benefactor.

With this thought he called Renatus to his bedside, and bespoke him in the most pathetic gesture