――

HE town of Abdera, notwithstanding Democritus lived there, trying all the powers of irony and laughter to reclaim it, was the vilest and most profligate town in all Thrace. What for poisons, conspiracies, and assassinations libels, pasquinades, and tumults, there was no going there by day

worse by night.

't was

Now, when things were at the worst, it came to pass, that the Andromeda of Euripides being represented at Abdera, the whole orchestra was delighted with it: but of all the passages which delighted them, nothing operated more upon their imaginations, than the tender strokes of nature, which the poet had wrought up in that pathetic speech of Perseus, O Cupid, prince of God and men, &c. Every man almost spoke pure iambics the next day, and talk'd of

every street of Abdera, in every house "O Cupid! Cupid!" in every mouth, like the natural notes of some sweet melody which drops from it whether it will or no nothing but Cupid! Cupid! prince The fire caught

of God and men

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and the whole city, like the heart of one man, open'd itself to Love.

No pharmaeopolist could sell one grain of helebore not a single armourer had a heart to forge one instrument of death

Friendship and Virtue met together, and kiss'd each other in the street- the golden age returned, and hung over the town of Abdera -every Abderite took his oaten pipe, and every Abderitish woman left her purple web, and chastely sat her down and listened to the song

'Twas only in the power, says the Fragment, of the God whose empire extendeth from heaven to earth, and even to the depths of the sea, to have done this.

WHE

HEN all is ready, and every article is disputed and paid for in the inn, unless you are a little sour'd by the adventure, there is always a matter to compound at the door, before you can get into your chaise, and that is with the sons and daughters of poverty, who surround you. Let no man say, "let them go to the devil"

't is a cruel journey to send a few miserables, and they have had sufferings enow without it: I always think it better to take a few sous out in my hand; and I would counsel every gentle traveller to do so likewise; he need not be so exact in setting down his motives for giving them ― They will be register'd elsewhere.

For my own part, there is no man gives so little as I do; for few, that I know, have so little to give: but as this was the first public act of my charity in France, I took the more notice of it.