convenience of having it at hand, when he hath been called away from his desk, and expecteth to resume his seat there again shortly, than from any delight which he taketh in foppery or ostentation. The colour of his clothes is generally noted to be black rather than brown, brown rather than blue or green. His whole deportment is staid, modest, and civil. His motto is "Regularity."

This character was sketched in an interval of business, to divert some of the melancholy hours of a counting-house. It is so little a creature of fancy, that it is scarce anything more than a recollection of some of those frugal and coonemical maxims, which, about the beginning of the last century (England's meanest period), were endeavoured to be inculcated and instilled into the breasts of the London Apprentices by a class of instructors who might not inaptly be termed "The Masters of Mean Morals."- The astonishing narrowness and illiberality of the lessons entained in some of those books is inconceivable by those whose studies have not led them that way, and would almost induce one to subscribe to the hard censure which Drayton has passed upon the mercantile spirit:

The gripple merchant, born to be the curse

Of this brave isle.

I have now lying before me that curious book by Daniel Defoe, "The Complete English Tradesman." The pompous detail, the studied analysis of every little mean art, every sneaking address, every trick and subterfuge, short of larceny, that is necessary to the tradesman's occupation, with the hundreds of anecdotes, dialogues (in Defoe's liveliest manner) interspersed, all tending to the same amiable purpose,-namely, the sacrificing of every honest emotion of the soul to what he calls the main chance,—if you read it in an ironical sense, and as a piece of cutered satire, make it one of the most amusing books which Defte ever writ, as much so as any of his best novels. It is diffi

* This term designated a larger class of young men than that to which it is now confined. It took in the articled clerks of merchants and bankers, the George Barnwells of the day.

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cult to say what his intention was in writing it. It is almost impossible to suppose him in earnest. Yet such is the bent of the book to narrow and to degrade the heart, that if such maxims were as catching and infectious ast those of a licentious cast, which happily is not the case, had I been living at that time, I certainly should have re commended to the Grand Jury of Middlesex, who pres sented "The Fable of the Bees," to have presented this book of Defoe's in preference, as of a far more vile and debasing tendency, I will give one specimen of his advice to the young tradesman on the government of his temper: "The retail tradesman in especial, and even everyt tradesman in his station, must furnish himself with a competent stock of patience. I mean that sort of patience which is needful to bear with all sorts of impertinence and the most provoking curiosity that it is possible toi imagine the buyers, even the worst of them, are, or can be,s guilty of. A tradesman behind his counter must have no flesh and blood about him, no passions, no resentment; he must never be angry, no, not so much as seem to be so, if a custo tomer tumbles him five hundred pounds' worth of goods, and scarce bids money for anything; nay, though they really come to his shop with no intent to buy, as many do, only to see what is to be sold, and though he knows they cannot be better pleased than they are at some other shop where they intend to buy, 'tis all one; the tradesman must take it; he must place it to the account of his calling, that 'tis his business to be ill used, and resent nothing; and so must answer as obligingly to those that give him an hour or two's trouble, and buy nothing, as he does to those who, in half the time, lay out ten or twenty pounds. The case is plain; and if some do give him trouble, and do not buy, others make amends, and do buy; and as for the trouble, 'tis the business of the shop."

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Here follows a most admirable story of a mercer, who by his indefatigable meanness, and more than Socratic patience under affronts, overcame and reconciled a lady, who, upon the report of another lady that he had behaved saucily to" some third lady, had determined to shun his shop, but, by

the over-persuasions of a fourth lady, was induced to go to it; which she does, declaring beforehand that she will buy nothing, but give him all the trouble she can. Her attack and his defence, her insolence and his persevering patience, are described in colours worthy of a Mandeville; but it is too long to recite. "The short inference from this long discourse," says he, "is this,-that here you see, and I could give you many examples like this, how and in what manner a shopkeeper is to behave himself in the way of his business; what impertinences, what taunts, flouts, and ridiculous things, he must bear in his trade; and must not show the least return, or the least signal of disgust: he must have no passions, no fire in his temper; he must be all soft and smooth; nay, if his real temper be naturally fiery and hot, he must show none of it in his shop; he must be a perfect complete hypocrite, if he will be a complete tradesman.* It is true, natural tempers are not to be always counterfeited: the man cannot easily be a lamb in his shop, and a lion in himself; but, let it be easy or hard, it must be done, and is done. There are men who have by custom and usage brought themselves to it, that nothing could be meeker and milder than they when behind the counter, and yet nothing be more furious and raging in every other part of life: nay, the provocations they have met with in their shops have so irritated their rage, that they would go upstairs from their shop, and fall into frenzies, and a kind of madness, and beat their heads against the wall, and perhaps mischief themselves, if not prevented, till the violence of it had gotten vent, and the passions abate and cool. I heard once of a shopkeeper that behaved himself thus to such an extreme, that, when he was provoked by the impertinence of the customers beyond what his temper could bear, he would go upstairs and beat his wife, kick his children about like dogs, and be as furious for two or three minutes as a man chained down in Bedlam; and again, when that heat was over, would sit down, and cry faster than the children he had abused; and, after the fit,

* As no qualification accompanies this maxim, it must be understood as the genuine sentiment of the author!

he would go down into the shop again, and be as humble, courteous, and as calm, as any man whatever; so absolute a government of his passions had he in the shop, and so little out of it: in the shop, a soulless animal that would resent nothing; and in the family, a madman: in the shop, meek like a lamb; but in the family outrageous, like a Lybian lion. The sum of the matter is, it is necessary for a tradesman to subject himself, by all the ways possible, to his business; his customers are to be his idols: so far as he may worship idols by allowance, he is to bow down to them, and worship them; at least, he is not in any way to displease them, or show any disgust or distaste, whatsoever they may say or do. The bottom of all is, that he is intending to get money by them; and it is not for him that gets money to offer the least inconvenience to them by whom he gets it: he is to consider, that, as Solomon says, "the borrower is servant to the lender;" so the seller is servant to the buyer. What he says on the head of " Pleasures and Recreations" is not less amusing: "The tradesman's pleasure should be in his business; his companions should be his books (he means his ledger, waste-book, &c.); and, if he has a family, he makes his excursions upstairs, and no further. None of my cautions aim at restraining a tradesman from diverting himself, as we call it, with his fireside, or keeping company with his wife and children." Liberal allowance! nay, almost licentious and criminal indulgence! But it is time to dismiss this Philosopher of Meanness. More of this stuff would illiberalize the pages of the "Reflector." Was the man in earnest, when he could bring such powers of description, and all the charms of natural eloquence, in commendation of the meanest, vilest, wretchedest degradations of the human character? or did he not rather laugh in his sleeve at the doctrines which he inculcated; and, retorting upon the grave citizens of London their own arts, palm upon them a sample of disguised satire under the name of wholesome instruction?

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O your account of Sir Jeffery Dunstan, in columns 82930 (where, by an unfortunate erratum, the effigies of two Sir Jefferys appear, when the uppermost figure is clearly meant for Sir Harry Dimsdale), you may add that the writer of this has frequently met him in his latter days, about 1790 or 1791, returning in an evening, after his long day's itineracy, to his domicile, a wretched shed in the most beggarly purlieu of Bethnal Green, a little on this side the Mile-end Turnpike. The lower figure in that leaf most correctly describes his then appearance, except that no graphic art can convey an idea of the general squalor of it, and of his bag (his constant concomitant) in particular. Whether it contained old wigs" at that time, I know not; but it seemed a fitter repository for bones snatched out of kennels a'f than for any part of a gentleman's dress, even at secondhand.

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The ex-member for Garrat was a melancholy instance of a great man whose popularity is worn out. He still carried his sack; but it seemed a part of his identity rather than an implement of his profession; a badge of past grandeur: could anything have divested him of that, he would have shown poor forked animal" indeed. My life upon it, it contained no curls at the time I speak of. The most decayed and spiritless remnants of what was once a peruke would have scorned the filthy case; would absolutely have "burst its cerements." No: it was empty, or brought home bones, or a few cinders, possibly. A strong odour of burnt bones, I remember, blended with the scent of horseflesh seething into dog's meat, and, only relieved a little by the breathings of a few brick-kilns, made up the atmosphere of the delicate suburban spot which this great man had chosen for the last scene of his earthly vanities. The cry of "old wigs" had ceased with the possession of any such fripperies: his sack might have contained not unaptly