A correspondent, after summing up the lessons he daily extracts from trees, flowers, insects, and the inmates of his garden, continues:—
'In short, there is such a close affinity between a proper cultivation of a flower-garden and a right discipline of the mind that it is almost impossible for any thoughtful person, that has made any proficiency in the one, to avoid paying a due attention to the other. That industry and care which are so requisite to cleanse a garden from all sorts of weeds will naturally suggest to him how much more expedient it would be to exert the same diligence in eradicating all sorts of prejudices, follies, and vices from the mind, where they will be sure to prevail, without a great deal of care and correction, as common weeds in a neglected piece of ground.
'And as it requires more pains to extirpate some weeds than others, according as they are more firmly fixed, more numerous, or more naturalised to the soil; so those faults will be found to be most difficult to be suppressed which have been of the largest growth and taken the deepest root, which are more predominant in number and most congenial to the constitution.'
No. 92. The 'World.'—Oct. 3, 1754.
Mr. FitzAdam, defining the characters of Siphons and Soakers, points to a theory that dropsy, of which so many of their order perish, is a manifest judgment upon them, the wine they so much loved being turned into water, and themselves drowned at last in the element they so much abhorred.
'A rational and sober man, invited by the wit and gaiety of good company, and hurried away by an uncommon flow of spirits, may happen to drink too much, and perhaps accidentally to get drunk; but then these sallies will be short and not frequent. Whereas the soaker is an utter stranger to wit and mirth, and no friend to either. His business is serious, and he applies himself seriously to it; he steadily pursues the numbing, stupefying, and petrifying, not the animating and exhilarating qualities of the wine. The more he drinks, the duller he grows; his politics become more obscure, and his narratives more tedious and less intelligible; till, at last maudlin, he employs what little articulation he has left in relating his doleful state to an insensible audience.
'I am well aware that the numerous society of siphons (as I shall for the future typify the soakers, suction being equally the only business of both) will say, like Sir Tunbelly, "What would this fellow have us do?" To which I am at no loss for an answer: "Do anything else."'
No. 100. The 'World.'—Nov. 28, 1754.
'I heard the other day with great pleasure from my friend, Mr. Dodsley, that Mr. Johnson's "English Dictionary," with a grammar and history of our language, will be published this winter, in two large volumes in folio.