Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 276 | Page 2

family, and various abbots.
The bishopric of Bristol is the least wealthy ecclesiastical promotion which confers the dignity of a mitre. Its revenue is generally stated to amount to no more than five or six hundred pounds per annum. In the list of bishops are Fletcher, father of the celebrated dramatist, the colleague of Beaumont; he attended Mary Queen of Scots on the Scaffold; Lake, one of the seven bishops committed to the Tower in the time of James I.; Trelawney, a familiar name in the events of 1688; Butler, who materially improved the episcopal palace of Bristol; Conybeare and Newton, names well known in literary history; with the erudite Warburton, whose name occurs in the list of deans of Bristol.
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DEBTOR AND CREDIT
OR.[1]
The time is out of joint.--_Hamlet._
A man of my profession never counterfeits, till he lays hold upon a debtor and says he rests him: for then he brings him to all manner of unrest.--_The Bailiff, in 'Every Man in his Humour.'_
Run not into debt, either for wares sold or money borrowed; be content to want things that are not of absolute necessity, rather than to run up the score: such a man pays at the latter a third part more than the principal comes to, and is in perpetual servitude to his creditors; lives uncomfortably; is necessitated to increase his debts to stop his creditors' mouths; and many times falls into desperate courses.
SIR M. HALE.
"The greatest of all distinctions in civil life," says Steele, "is that of debtor and creditor;" although no kind of slavery is so easily endured, as that of being in debt. Luxury and expensive habits, which are commonly thought to enlarge our liberty by increasing our enjoyments, are thus the means of its infringement; whilst, in nine cases out of ten, the lessons taught by this rigid experience lead to the bending and breaking of our spirits, and the unfitting of us for the rational pleasures of life. All ranks of mankind seem to fall into this fatal error, from the voluptuous Cleopatra to the needy philosopher, who doles out a mealsworth of morality for his fellow-creatures, and who would fain live according to his own precepts, had he not exhausted his means in the acquisition of his experience.
I blush to confess, that I have often thought the habit of debt to be our national inheritance--from that bugbear of out-of-place men, the Sinking Fund, to the parish-clerk, who mortgages his fees at the chandler's; and that my countrymen seem to have resolved to increase their own enjoyments at the expense of posterity, with whose provision, even Swift thinks we have no concern. Again; I have thought that we are apt to over-rate our national advancement, by supposing the present race to be wiser than the previous one, without once looking into our individual contributions to this state of enlightenment. Proud as we are of this distinction in the social scale, we can record few instances of contemporary genius, and we are bound to confess that men are not a whit the better in the present than in the previous generation. Thus we hoodwink each other till social outrages become every-day occurrences, and every thing but sheer violence is protected by its frequency; and in this manner we consent to compromise our happiness, and then affect to be astonished at its scarcity. In the later ages of the world, men have learned to temporize with principles, and to sacrifice, at the shrine of passing interest, as much real virtue as would bear them harmless throughout life. Hence, of what more avail is the virtue of the Roman fathers, or are the amiable friendships of Scipio and Lelius, than as so many amusing fictions to exercise the imaginations of schoolmen in drawing outlines of character, which experience does not finish. Friends, like certain flowers, bloom around us in the sunshine of success; but at night-fall or at the approach of storms, they shut up their hearts; and thus, poor victims being rifled of their mind's content, with their little string of enjoyments broken up for ever, are abandoned to the pity or scorn of bystanders. It is impossible to reflect for a moment on such a crisis, without dropping a tear for the self-created infirmities of man: but there are considerations at which he shudders, and which he would rather varnish over with the sophistry of his refinement, and the fallacies of self-conceit.
I fear that I am breaking my rule in not confining myself to a few shades of debt and conscience, with a view of determining how far they are usually reconciled among us. The task may not prove altogether fruitless; notwithstanding, to find honest men, would require the lantern of Diogenes, and perhaps turn out like Gratiano's wheat.
In our youthful days,