hear and see, and do a great many fine things, without a reference to any other end than that of showing ourselves to each other to the best advantage. In this view therefore it signifies not, whether the subject of the day be cheerful or melancholy: whether it be tragedy or comedy, we are equally amused and equally impressed; our object is to see fine acting, and splendid scenery. On the same principle, but little regard is had, in the adoption of candidates for holy orders, to their characters or their knowledge; and Mr. Allworth says that a bishop will ordain a priest with less inquiry into the state of his morals, than he uses in the appointment of his butler. If what this gentleman says be true, who never asserts rashly, there shoots up with every new prelate a fungous cohort of ecclesiastics, whose only pretensions are the want of provision, and the dignity of their new connection. Thus the diocese of a newmade bishop is crowded with a hasty growth of clerical adventurers, like a nabob's park with Lombardy poplars.

No 58. SATURDAY, JUNE 22.

Ξενιων δε τε θυμος αριςος.

Welcome is the best cheer.

THE manner in which my return home has been welcomed, has been truly grateful to my feelings. I find that every member of the club is resolved upon giving me an entertainment at his own house. That my readers, however, may be in no mistake about the spirit of these meetings, it may be as well to assure them that the institutes of our general society furnish the model to these private parties; and though here we are under no dread of forfeits or the Echo, a kind of loyalty to the cause in which we have embarked keeps us firm in our adherence; and we pique ourselves upon showing that our habits are mellowed into principles, and are no longer the fruits of coercion. Nothing has more contributed to spread the honour, and propagate the advantages of our institution, than these little volunteer corps, which I am assured have already begun to make a sensible impression on the character of this part of the country.

It has been more particularly remarked of the members of our society, that no men entertain so well, or, in other words, are so perfect in the art and mystery of rendering their houses comfortable to their guests. This I take to be the natural result of the rules by which we are governed, which, as their im

mediate tendency is to inculcate self-command, and to foster the habit of forbearance, impart that characteristic ease to the exertions of politeness, without which it is little more than trick and gesture. This effect of our institutions is the more valuable on account of its rarity; for, although hospitality in its grosser sense is a common attendant upon opulence, instances are unfrequent of those happy arts of welcoming, those unbought graces of manner, which, to a delicate mind, give to the coarsest food a relish above the tables of princes. In these urbanities and comforts of hospitality, I know no man so consummate as my friend Mr. Allworth. He has a way of making his guest appear to be the entertainer, and has so nicely hit the middle point between neglect and importunity, carelessness and punctilio, want and waste, indifference and anxiety, slovenliness and incumbrance, that at his house you have a home stripped of its cares; and the foundation of many a LOOKER-ON has there been laid, under the notion that I was in my slippers and roquelaure, and seated in my mother's great chair.

It is, I suppose, on the same account that every thing I taste at this gentleman's house seems to be better in its kind than what I meet with elsewhere; and his oysters and cyder I should prefer to a supper with Lucullus, on the produce of the Lucrine bay, and the vines that grew on the mountains of Arevisia. As others have entertained us with essays on the sublime and the beautiful, I have seriously projected a treatise on the COMFORTABLE (vacuique animi tranquilla voluptas), which, with the hints I shall be able to borrow from my friend, I shall hope to reduce to a very rational system, and raise my name in the world as the founder of a new philosophy.

As there is a false taste in regard to the sublime

and the beautiful, so are there an infinity of false notions in what respects the comfortable: and I much question if our advances in the two former have not been more considerable than in the latter. That philosophic equilibrium of mind, that sober spirit of calculation, that chastised and wholesome relish of life, that perfect measure and tacit controul of feeling, requisite to the constitution of a true taste in the one, are surely qualities at least as rare as those intellectual perfections which the others demand. It is for this reason, and purely from the many constituent excellencies which enter into its composition, that the comfortable so seldom makes a part of any man's scheme of hospitality; that the common rule by which its extent is measured, is that of quantity alone; and that so few men have any knowledge of that part of it which cannot be cut into solid inches upon a trencher.

But while I cannot admit the quantity or quality of an entertainment to the same consideration with those unpurchasable delicacies of manner (which there are those who have the talent of blending with it), I do not entirely despise the solider parts of it, but regard them as the foundation of the building, which should be strong and substantial, or it will be in vain that grace and accommodation are consulted in the superstructure. A good dinner has its good effects; it sometimes opens the heart as well as the mouth; it has sometimes reconciled ancient enmities; it often disrobes the pride of office, and shows the real man; it gives to merit and genius opportunities of discovering themselves; it not unfrequently removes prejudices and antipathies, by approximating the distance between man and man; and it brings to light many hidden qualities which may contribute to render men reciprocally more amiable to each other. All this,

however, is only to be understood of those tables where mirth is tempered with decorum, and where a liberal jollity, a verecundus Bacchus, characterises the day. Under these circumstances many a man eats himself into a good opinion of his neighbour; and if he carry his resentment to the end of the dinner, it is ten to one but he swallows it down with the first glass of wine.

Since I have taken upon me the care of this parish, I have not been insensible to the moral effects of a good dinner, and have found it a most efficacious mode of effecting reconciliations between my neighbours. When I find one person rather violent in his abuse of another, I always take the liberty of suspecting that his own interests or pride are somehow or other remotely or immediately affected; for I conceive that we have very few of those patriotic declaimers who take up the public cause against an individual from a genuine regard to justice, or to truth. As we descend lower into life, we find its interests and concerns simplified into objects, if not more sordid, certainly less complicated, and which are circumscribed more to the common feelings and wants of nature. Thus when one of my poorer parishioners complains to me of the roguery of an acquaintance, I generally suspect that the quarrel is more with his mutton and potatoes, than his principles or his practice; and accordingly, by enabling the delinquent to give his accuser a plentiful meal, have found that it was not possible for two men to have a better opinion of each other in their hearts. My mother has followed up this plan of peace-making with the most remarkable success; and, as a proof of the effects it is capable of producing, has preserved a list of cases, which runs much after the following manner:

Timothy Blaze was suspected, a few years ago, of