Spring, Creation's fickle queen. -..;.-
Winter's wither'd clutches hold thee,
Doting on thy youthful charms ;
Summer, longing to infold thee,
Pulls thee to his ardent arms.
My paper owes, methinks, a kind of annual tribute
to the Spring : under its auspices it began, and start-
ed into life with the primrose and the violet. I
question much if I should have had courage for this
project at any other time ef the year ; but when all
nature is teeming with a new produce, when every
vegetable is acting up to its destination, and answer-
ing its calling, I should feel it as a tacit reproach to
myself, if at the same moment I were conscious of
an indisposition towards those duties and exertions
for which, as a moral agent, I was designed. The
aids too of a fine day, and a glowing horizon, are not
inconsiderable towards forming a temper of mind
adapted to spirited undertakings ; and it is on this
account, that if there be one day in the week finer
than another, it is sure to become the sera of a cheer-
ful Number ; and on this occasion the fields of my
neighbour Blunt are the scene of my operations. I
know of no spot in which Spring appears with such
advantage, as in the premises of this gentleman ;
56. LOOKER-ON. 57
who, since the surprising revolution wrought in hi
character, by the institutes and habits of our society,
has developed a great many hidden qualities of a
very agreeable kind, and among the rest, a peculiar
talent in the distribution of rural scenery. There is,
indeed, so strong a relationship between morals and
taste, that the one is seldom improved without a ma^
nifest advantage to the other ; and as they both have
their birth in the same right constitution of mind, a
secret tie of affinity always approximates them, how-
ever their natural tendency to unite may be crossed
by superinduced habits, and perverse modes of edu-
cation. Thus, for every step my neighbour Blunt
has advanced in his plans of self-correction, I think
I have remarked some corresponding improvement
in the disposition of his grounds : and his present
expansion of mind has been attended with a propor-
tionate enlargement of his scenes and prospects. A
Kttle hillock in the midst of one of his fields, ou
which there is a circular bench round the trunk of an
ancient oak % whence you look down upon his garden,
which is only a more studied kind of park, has always
been the scene of my lighter speculations ; as his
chesnut groves have been my resort, when it has
been my purpose to submit to my readers a soberer
train of thoughts. Shut up as I am at present, in the
midst of the capital, I must necessarily forego these
aids ; but yet perhaps this denial gives me an in-
tenser feeling of the beauties which I lose, and paints
them yet stronger in idea, for the regret which ac-
companies the thought of them. The time which I
had dedicated to this visit, is on the point of expiring ;
a circumstance that gives me the greater pleasure, as
I observe that no one in this part of the world seems
to feel any interest in the progress of the year, bu t
as it facilitates the destruction of the species ; thus*
38 LOOKF.R-ON. N 56.
while Nature is busied in refreshing her works, and
breathing new life and youth into the creation, we
are in this metropolis only occupied about the pro-
gress of slaughter, and have no ears but for topics of
calamity. Nobody talks now of the rose, or the lily,
or the blossom, or the verdure : a new interest has
succeeded, by which they are totally supplanted ;
and the odours of Spring are exchanged for smoke
and powder. Her ethereal mildness, her balmy fra-
grance, and her rosy chaplets, will no longer be her
favourite attributes ; and it will be unclassical to re-
present her under any less formidable figure, than
that of a frowning goddess, reposing on a cannon.
She must adopt a crown of laurel, instead of her gar-
lands of flowers ; and instead of opening her buds,
6he must be occupied in opening her campaigns.
Poetry too must give up many of the fine things
which she has borrowed from the Spring, as well as
many of the handsome things which she has said of
her in return ; and considering the threatening form
under which she is viewed at present, the " *ys><r*
J* */** iT^j) " of Hesiod will no longer apply to
this season of the year.
In another view also this novel character in which
the Spring appears, threatens very much to circum-
scribe the range of compliment, and to impoverish
the fund of allusion and comparison, which supply
us with eulogies on the female sex. Thus, when we
ascribe to a lady the breath of Spring, unless her
perfections be such as not to leave it in doubt, it
may not be immediately understood whether we
mean that breath of Spring which comes from her
carnations or from her cannons, from her hoivitzers
or from her hyacinths. As to myself, however, who
have received such true delight from contemplating
the Spring under her ancient form, I am determined
o 56. LOOKER-ON. 59
not to acknowledge her in her new character: I
shall not follow her when she is transporting her ar-
tillery and baggage over dusty plains, where " fields,
all iron, cast a gleaming brown;" but shall seek "her
through fields of cowslip and clover, and study to sur-
prise her in those moments when she is sporting it with
Zephyr and Flora " on a soft downy bank damask'd
with flowers." I shall still persist in borrowing my
allusions from her in my eulogies on the fair sex, and
shall still come to her for patterns of sweetness and
grace. I shall hope that the ladies will consider me
with more than usual favour, on account of these my
disinterested exertions in their cause ; for their cause
it certainly is, who have hitherto held all the seasons
of the year under contribution to their praise ; and
who, when one province of compliment is invaded,
may reasonably be apprehensive for them all.
Galla, till totus sua munera dedicat annus ;
Ver roseas malas et labra ruledine pingit ;
Mille oculis ignes radiantibus imprimit astas ,
Autumnus malura sinu dua poma recondil ;
Quod reliquum est aspergit hyems candore nivali.
Galla, to thee the lavish year has given
All that its genial lap receives from Heaven :
The Spring thy rosy cheek with damask dyes,
And Summer suns shoot kindling from thy eyes ;
Two apples Autumn hides within thy breast,
And Winter's purest snow has bleach'dthe rest.
I consider too, that if the Spring should lose its an-
cient honours and attractions, I may possibly lose a
part of the credit attached to one of my principal re-
ceipts for the moral cures I undertake to perform ; I
mean the cultivation of rural pleasures. Now this is
a circumstance of great national weight, and only
next in importance to that defalcation of compliment
sustained in the female empire. A course of quiet
60 LOOKER-ON. If 9 515.
contemplation at this season of the year is my chief
dependance in those chronic cases of the mind,
where the mass of our reasoning is vitiated, and
where the sources of enjoyment are corrupt. A little
Spring physic is as wholesome for mental diseases, as
for those of the body ; and I know of no moral medi-
cines of a more alterative efficacy, than those which
operate by the gradual introduction of new sentiments
and tastes. I generally recommend a Spring in pre-
ference to a Summer course, because the novelty and
vivacity of its productions engage us to persevere in
it with greater cheerfulness and constancy; and
make it the properest to be balanced against the
common amusements of a dissipated career.
But though, in this view of it, my prescription
must be acknowledged to be excellent, inasmuch as,
by giving us a sublimer relish of life, it discredits
those pleasures which are at best unimproving and
barren, yet, as a specific against the melancholy pas-
sions, I consider it as deserving still greater praise.
Pride, envy, and those choleric and gloomy feelings,
which for the most part accompany poverty and dis-
appointment, are softened and subdued in our minds,
as soon as our ambition is directed to more obvious
gratifications, and to more attainable objects. The
inquiry to which nature invites us is so boundless, so
various, and so inexhaustible a theme, that no man,
who has ever engaged in it with spirit, has ever com-
plained of weariness or satiety, looked back with re-
gret on the objects which he has abandoned for it,
or repined at the triumphs of the great and the fortu-
nate, in the more envied situations of life.
It is a certain truth, that few things contribute
more to calm the passions, and expand the heart
than this direction of our inquiries; itcahns the pas-
sions, by disposing them to milder and more innocent
N 56. LOOKER-ON. 61
enjoyments ; it expands the heart, by the infinity of
new relations it unfolds, and the vaster views it
affords of creative wisdom. By thus acquiring the
habit of regarding things more in their relative
places, and in their real colours we learn to make a
juster estimate of life, to set the proper price upon
unsubstantial greatness, and to look around us (oculo
irretortoj with resolute complacency, and with digni-
fied composure.
I care not, Fortune, what you me deny :
You cannot rob me of fair nature's grace ;
You cannot shut the windows of the sky,
Through which Aurora shows her brightening face ;
You cannot bar my constant feet to trace
The woods and iawns by living stream at eve.
But that which, perhaps more than all, recom-
mends the silent lessons which the mind may receive
through the eye, by a proper use of this season of the
year, is the happy and wholesome mixture of gay
and grave admonitions with which they are checker-
ed. I could never look upon the progress of vegeta-
tion, and so complete a renewal of nature's graces,
without a secret pensiveness, inspired by the re-
flection that the return of the daisy, and the regene-
ration of the rose, has brought me, with a sensible
approach, one step nearer to old-age and the grave ;
that they meet me again, indeed, but not where they
met me before ; not renovated as they are, not ga-
thering fresh youth and vivacity ; endued, perhaps,
with less ability to enjoy them ; perhaps deprived of
some of those sharers in the satisfactions they con-
veyed, who were wont to endear them by a partner-
ship of feeling.
It is true, that right over yonder hill the sun is
rising again with his usual splendour ; I recognise
vol. xmi. o
62 LOOKER-ON. N e 56.
the returning fragrance of this grove and this field ;
I see the little lambs in sprightly groups again co-
vering the green slopes, and the furze again hanging
out their golden baskets. But where is that bosom
friend that stood with me upon this spot last Spring,
and remarked with me the then returning glory of
the sun, as he broke out from behind that same hill :
that recognised with me the returning fragrance of
this grove and this field, and contemplated with a
corresponding gaiety of heart the little fleecy progeny
sporting on the declivity of yonder hill, amidst the
yellow bloom of the furze ? Alas ! the winter in the
mean time has laid him in his grave, where his worm-
eaten body lies, without sense or motion, although
the same objects which used to raise in him such
high delight are come again with their former
charms, though the fields smell as fresh as ever, and
the same merry tribe are again skipping on the sides
of the mountains.
He'las! he'las! cebeau Printemps,
Qui quelques jours a- peine dure,
Ne revient point pour les amans,
C jmme il revient pour la nature.
At this season of the year, and cherishing, as I do,
these ideas of the Spring and its advantages, I must
needs be a little out of humour with the metropolis,
where she is only regarded for her cabbages or her
campaigns. Indeed 1 nave cautiously abstained from
introducing her as a subject at any houses where I
visit, since the other day, when upon my ohserving,
at a friend's table in the city, how great a feast was
afforded to the curious and contemplative at this time
of the year, a little gentleman with spectacles, at my
right hand, agreed that now we might begin to ex-
pect news from the Continent ; while at the same in-
3
No 56. LOOKER-ON. 63
stant I was supported in my remark by a very con-
sequential voice from the top of the table, which
pronounced that salmon xvas in all its glory.
These are affronts passed upon Nature's prime,
which I cannot with any patience endure ; and as
the Spring is always personified, in my fancy, under
the form of a beautiful female, breathing perfumes,
and adorned with garlands, I feel all that gallantry
and zeal in her behalf, which it is natural to be in-
spired with in the cause of the sex. Accordingly I
am sure to be filled with indignation, when I see her
the object of gross and indelicate regards, and viewed
only as the source of sensual gratifications. I am
impatient to go where I shall behold her treated with
her due honours, and where she speaks not to sense
and appetite, but to the understanding and to the
heart.
In the mean time I cannot help regretting that our
English gentry, by the present modes of living, are
cut off from all connection with the country at this
delightful time, and really see little more of it than
what languishes in their flower-pots, or travels on the
backs of chimney-sweepers. Any thing attracts
more than rural objects and rural contemplations :
and the barren sea receives them as soon as the
town is too hot to hold them, or pronounced so by
the laws of fashionable feeling. I tremble for the
fate of the English garden, that pride of our nation,
in such inauspicious times, unless, while their owners
are salting themselves at Weymouth and Brighthelm-
stone, they could put their country-seats in a pickle
that could preserve them. The sea could never with
more propriety be said to be gaining upon the land,
than at the present moment ; nor does she in this in-
stance restore what she takes, with the same punc-
tuality with which she is said on the coast to make
g2
64 LOOKER-ON. N 56.
good in one place, what she has wrested from us in
another ; indeed it would not be easy to make us
compensation for these robberies which she commits
in the very heart of our country. That she pillages
our forests, I can see with patience ; she is even
welcome now and then to a morsel of barren land on
the coast ; but I never can bear that she should rob
our gardens of their due care and cultivation, till I am
satisfied that in this particular also she makes us a
complete public reparation.
I shall finish this day's entertainment with a
translation of some remarks which I find in Baron
Von Lowhen's Analysis of Nobility, and which I
think assist the objects of this paper. " It will not
be disparaging the nobility, to recommend agricul-
ture to them in all its branches. The English philo-
sopher, whose thought on education I have quoted,
among other objects of a young person's study, lays
considerable stress on the advantage of learning some
manual trade ; which also made a part of the plan of
Charles the Great in the education of his children.
The benefits flowing from agriculture are so great,
that an attention to this art will supply the want of
more splendid talents to the community. There is
certainly no part of natural philosophy of equal im-
portance with agriculture : and a nobleman merits as
much the esteem of his country for benefiting it
through this channel, as through that of war or nego-
tiation : the use of such talents results from the de-
pravity of mankind; but both the origin and objects
of agriculture are innocent and virtuous. The per-
fection of a nobleman's character consists in the
union of these qualities; so that, while by his civil
and military talents he is promoting the honour, by
his agricultural skill he may be improving the estate
of his family. Among the Romans, Cato the Censor
No 56. LOOKER-ON. 65
wrote treatises upon agriculture, and the Emperor
Dioelesian resigned for it the charms of sovereignty.
Cyrus the Great made it a mark of his particular fa-
vour to admit a subject into his little orchard which
he had cultivated with his own hands. We read in
the historical relations of China, that there is a public
ceremony of opening the grounds, at which the em-
peror and other Indian monarchs assist every year ;
and the kings of the ancient Persians mixed with the
husbandmen at an annual feast. We are also told,
that every year the farmer who has turned his lands
to the best account, is made by the emperor of
China a mandarin of the eighth order. The heroic
prince of Conde frequently made agriculture the
amusement of his leisure ; and I myself, when in
England, saw the earl of Peterborough, who had
commanded the British forces, stripped to his waist-
coat, with his spade in his hand, and hard at work
with his gardeners,"
g3
66 LOOKER-ON. N57.
N 57. SATURDAY, JUNE 15.
Semper ego auditor tantum nunquamne reponam ?
Still must I hear, and never answer make ?
Sermon to a Clerical Congregation.
How was he honoured in the midst of the people, on his coming
out of the sanctuary !
Jfhcn he put on the robe of honour, and was clothed with the per-
fection of glory, when he went up to the altar, he made the gar-
ment of holiness honourable. Eccl. ch. 50.
It is now a long time that the privilege has been
yours, of counselling, correcting, exhorting, admo-
nishing, and reproving myself and the rest of my
countrymen, without danger of interruption or reply ;
and, upon the whole, I have no great fault to find
with your doctrines, which, in the main, have been
salutary and well-intended. But it is the great mis-
chief attendant upon the office you have undertaken,
that, while a man is employed in exposing the errors
and reprehending the vices of his fellow-creatures,
he is apt to make a tacit reserve in his own favour,
and, in the ardour of his preceptive zeal, to forget
the necessity of practice, and the power of example.
The corruption of the clergy in earlier times was the
effect of this self-partiality. Their eagerness to
make converts, swallowed up this attention to their
own conduct ; and if their consciences became im-
portunate and troublesome, the sophistry of the pas-
N 57. LOOKER-ON. 67
sions was always at hand, to suggest that their private
vices were only the result of their public zeal ; that,
in our present state of imperfection, a great and un-
limited scope of exertion must necessarily multiply
particular failures, and that these particular failures
drew a kind of honour to themselves, from the alli-
ance they claimed with an universal activity and un-
bounded zeal in the great cause of religion.
This argument, if true of one man, must be true
of another ; pursue it whither it leads, and we shall
find it will operate its own overthrow, and prove no-
thing by proving too much. Let every man adopt it,
and let every man neglect himself in the pursuit of a
general good ; where will be the advantage of les-
sons and instructions, and what kind of general good
will that be, which fastens upon no individual ?
Such palliatives of private and particular vices, are
absurd and dangerous in the extreme ; since the end
of our creation, the interests of humanity, and the
law of nature, require that a man's self should be his
first care, and that his own practice should be the
measure of his worth.
If there were men, however, formerly, who could
satisfy themselves with these hollow excuses, even
these have now lost every shadow of foundation. The
age of church-errantry is over missionaries, legates,
crusaders, and reformers, have long gone off the
stage ; and the range of our parochial clergy is suffi-
ciently confined, to give them the needful time for
attention to their own conduct, and the discharge
of their personal duties. On the contrary, I conceive
that the great leisure they enjoy, comparatively with
the generality of professional men, imposes on them
a severer obligation, in respect to all the rules of
social virtue, as well as the principles and practices
ef religion and morality ; whereas, amidst the nu-
68 LOOKER-ON. N 57.
merous calls and interruptions that arise in all secular
professions, that collectedness of principle, thatsteady
march of virtue, which are the fruits of much rea-
soning with one's self, and the tacit victories of the
heart, are hardly to be expected in any eminent de-
gree, from men immersed in interested pursuits and
habituated to look upon woi-ldly advantage as the
great concern of their being.
If some of our teachers are more engaged than
others ; if some are even loaded with occupation ;
yet this occupation, however great, is always, or
should be always, calculated to season their minds
with wholesome lessons, to supply matter for the
highest contemplations, and to purify, whether it be
little or much, the leisure they enjoy.
I consider that our Creator has made us all stew-
ards in different departments, and of different trusts ;
that one is a steward of his riches, another of his
health, another of his faculties, and that thus one will
be more particularly responsible on one account than
on another. The clergy are stewards of their leisure,
inasmuch as they, for the greater part, possess more
of it than other men. To him, therefore, who has
husbanded well this leisure, it may perhaps be said,
when the moment of retribution shall arrive " Well
done, thou good and faithful servant ; thou hast been
faithful over thy portion of time ; I will make thee
partaker of eternity !
The space, it is true, is circumscribed, in which
this leisure is to be exerted ; and this I will allow to
be a most honourable ground of complaint, in those
who have exhausted all the opportunities of doing
good, which the limits of their station afford ; who
have silenced every call of misery ; removed every
aching doubt ; adjusted every family dissension ; and
performed every part of their commission within the
N 57. LOOKER-ON. 69
reach of their ability, to the extent of their parochial
charge. But I cannot admit that the space for their
labours to move in is too confined to nourish that
dignified love of praise, and that wholesome ambi-
tion, which, they may fairly contend, is a very prin-
cipal and commendable spring of virtuous actions.
The indeterminate admiration of crowds, where few
can give any better reason for their applause than
because those around them applaud, maj r satisfy a
coarse appetite for praise, and an avidity that ex-
cludes preference ; but a noble mind values admira-
tion for the spirit in which it is bestowed ; and is
more flattered by the eulogies of humble gratitude,
and the unsuborned testimonies of rustic veneration,
than the senseless shouts of staring multitudes, that
have nothing but noise and number to enforce their
applause. It was wisely said to Alexander, in reproof
of his extravagant thirst of fame, that but little more
than Greece was sufficient to render Hercules a demi-
god, while all the world was not sufficient to render
Alexander a Hercules.
The want of room, therefore, in their severa
spheres, for the exertion of their industry and ta-
lent-, supplies no excuse to clergymen for that devi-
ation, too common among them, from the paths of
their profession, and the adoption of new and strange
characters. As every man who deserts his charac-
ter, forfeits the esteem and credit attached to it, so
some men can repair this loss by their new acquisi-
tions and collateral attainments ; but a clergyman is
a double loser, who departs out of his own province,
in search of remote excellence ; he is contemptible
for what he has abandoned, and ridiculous for what
he assumes. When I see, therefore, a minister of
the gospel straining every nerve to shine in the beau
monde, and pass for a choice spirit, I look upon such
10 LOOKER-ON. N 51.
a person as the most miserable of all dupes to his va-
nity ; and such a conduct as no bad commenton that
energetic line of the poet's,
Guilt's blunder, and the loudest laugh of Hell.
A grave and modest carriage in a young clergyman
is so well rewarded, and there is yet remaining in
our country such a disposition to venerate a virtuous
parish priest, that one cannot but wonder, that a de-
scription of men can prevail upon themselves to for-
feit this pre-eminence, for the sake of a profane dis-
tinction in characters and attainments, which in
others are indecorous and unamiable; in them pre-
posterous and criminal. There is, in life, a contrast