In the time of that princess, it stood long at Settled Fair. At the latter end of King James the First, it fell to Cloudy. It held several years after at Stormy; insomuch that at last despairing of seeing any clear weather at home, I followed the royal exile, and some time after finding my glass rise, returned to my native country with the rest of the loyalists. I was then in hopes to pass the remainder of my days in Settled Fair: but alas! during the greatest part of that reign, the English nation lay in a Dead Calm, which, as it is usual, was followed by high winds and tempests till of late years: in which, with unspeakable joy and satisfaction, I have seen our political weather returned to Settled Fair. I must only observe, that for all this last summer my glass has pointed at Changeable. Upon the whole, I often apply to Fortune Æneas's speech to the sybil:
——Non ulla laborum,
O virgo, nova mi fades inopinave surgit:
Omnia præcepi, atque animo me cum ante peregi.[60]
The advantages which have accrued to those whom I have advised in their affairs, by virtue of this sort of prescience, have been very considerable. A nephew of mine, who has never put his money into the stocks, or taken it out, without my advice, has in a few years raised five hundred pounds to almost so many thousands. As for myself, who look upon riches to consist rather in content than possessions, and measure the greatness of the mind rather by its tranquillity than its ambition, I have seldom used my glass to make my way in the world, but often to retire from it. This is a by-path to happiness, which was first discovered to me by a most pleasing apothegm of Pythagoras: "When the winds," says he, "rise, worship the echo." That great philosopher (whether to make his doctrines the more venerable, or to gild his precepts with the beauty of imagination, or to awaken the curiosity of his disciples; for I will not suppose what is usually said, that he did it to conceal his wisdom from the vulgar) has couched several admirable precepts in remote allusions and mysterious sentences. By the winds in this apothegm, are meant State hurricanes and popular tumults. "When these arise," says he, "worship the echo;" that is, withdraw yourself from the multitude into deserts, woods, solitudes, or the like retirements, which are the usual habitations of the echo.
FOOTNOTES:
[56] It is not unlikely that the account of a State weather-glass in this paper is by Addison, who was the author of the description of an ecclesiastical thermometer in No. 220.
[57] See Nos. 1, 11, and 43. The dedication was to the Second Part of "Don Quixote," which D'Urfey addressed to Charles, Earl of Dorset, in these lines:
"You have, my Lord, a patent from above,
And can monopolise both wit and love,
Inspired and blest by Heaven's peculiar care,
Adored by all the wise and all the fair;
To whom the world united give this due,
Best judge of men, and best of poets too."
[58] See No. 18.
[59] Jerome Cardan (1501-1576), physician and astrologer (see Professor Henry Morley's "Life of Girolamo Cardano," 1854).
[60] Virgil, "Æneid," vi. 103.