This infamous piece of good-breeding, which reigns among the coxcombs of the town, has not yet made its way into the country; and as it is impossible for such an irrational way of conversation to last long, among a people that make any profession of religion or show of modesty, if the country gentlemen get into it they will certainly be left in the lurch. Their good-breeding will come too late to them, and they will be thought a parcel of lewd clowns, while they fancy themselves talking together like men of wit and pleasure.
As the two points of good-breeding which I have hitherto insisted upon, regard behaviour and conversation, there is a third which turns upon dress. In this too the country are very much behind-hand. The rural beaux are not yet got out of the fashion that took place at the time of the Revolution, but ride about the country in red coats and laced hats, while the women in many parts are still trying to outvie one another in the height of their headdresses.
But a friend of mine, who is now upon the western circuit, having promised to give me an account of the several modes and fashions that prevail in the different parts of the nation through which he passes, I shall defer the enlarging upon this last topick till I have received a letter from him, which I expect every post. L.
NO. 120. WEDNESDAY, JULY 18.
Equidem credo, quia sit divinitus illis
Ingenium.
VIRG. Georg. i. ver. 415.
I think their breasts with heav'nly souls inspir'd.
DRYDEN.
My friend Sir ROGER is very often merry with me upon my passing so much of my time among his poultry. He has caught me twice or thrice looking after a bird's nest, and several times sitting an hour or two together near an hen and chickens. He tells me he believes I am personally acquainted with every fowl about his house; calls such a particular cock my favourite, and frequently complains that his ducks and geese have more of my company than himself.
I must confess I am infinitely delighted with those speculations of nature which are to be made in a country-life; and as my reading has very much lain among books of natural history, I cannot forbear recollecting upon this occasion the several remarks which I have met with in authors, and comparing them with what falls under my own observation: The argument for providence drawn from the natural history of animals being in my opinion demonstrative.
The make of every kind of animal is different from that of every other kind; and yet there is not the least turn in the muscles or twist in the fibres of any one, which does not render them more proper for that particular animal's way of life than any other cast or texture of them would have been.
The most violent appetites in all creatures are Lust and Hunger: The first is a perpetual call upon them to propagate their kind; the latter to preserve themselves.