A GARDENER once took a Boar in his garden, and cut off one of his ears with a spade. He took him a second time, and cut off the other. He took him a third time, and made a present of him to his landlord. Upon the opening of his head, they found he had no brains, and every body fell a wondering and discoursing upon it. "Sir," says the Gardener, "If this Boar had had any brains, he would have taken the loss of both his ears for a warning, never to come into my garden again." REFLECTION. The life and conversation of some men are so brutal, as if they had only the shape, without the faculties of reasonable creatures. What better is he than the Boar M m in the fable, that abandons himself wholly to his appetites and pleasures; and after so many repeated warnings, one upon the neck of another, still persists in his folly, in despite of all punishments. The Boar's intemperance, and the note upon him afterwards, on the cutting of him up, that he had no brains in his head, may be moralized into the figure of a sensual man, that has neither grace nor knowledge, but runs headlong on to his ruin, without either consideration or conscience. ever. ONCE upon a time, as a Husbandman was meditating in his yard, he cried to Hercules, "Oh, the endless misery of the life I lead! to spend all my days in ploughing, sowing, digging, and dunging, and to make nothing of it at last! Why now in a soldier's life there is honour to be got, and one lucky hit sets up a man for Faith, I will even sell off my stock, get a horse and arms, and try the fortune of war." Away he goes; makes his push; stands the shock of a battle, and compounds at last for the leaving of a leg behind him, to get home again. By this time he has had his bellyful of knight-errantry, and a new freak takes him in the head. He might do better, he fancies, in the way of a merchant. This maggot no sooner set him agog, but he gets a ship immediately; freights her, and so away to sea upon adventure: builds castles in the air, and conceits both the Indies in his coffers, before he gets so much as clear of the port. Well! and what is the end of all this at last? He falls into foul weather, among sands and rocks, where merchant, vessel, goods, and all are lost in one common wreck. : REFLECTION. This doctrine concerns those that rashly change their condition and fortune, and commonly fall into the inconveniences that they thought to avoid. He, that is well already, and, upon a levity of mind, quits his station, in hope to be better, it is forty to one he loses by the change for this lightness is both a vice and a disease, and rather the wallowing of a sickly qualm, than any reasonable agitation of counsel and debate. In the fable, the Husbandman envies the Soldier; the Soldier envies the Merchant, and when he has tried all turns and projects, what with the chance of war, storms, and pirates, he sees his folly too late, and in vain wishes himself with his hinds and flocks again. To say all in a word, this levity is both attended and punished, with an impossibility of mending our condition; for we apply to our bodies, and our fortunes, when the distemper lies in our minds. THE DAW AND THE PIGEONS. A DAW took a particular notice of the Pigeons in a certain dove-house, that they were well fed and provided for: so he went and painted himself a dove colour, and took his commons with the Pigeons. So long as he kept his own counsel, he passed for a bird of the same feather; but it was his misfortune once to cry "kaw," upon which discovery they beat him out of the house, and when he came to his old companions again, they would not admit him neither; so that he lost himself both ways by this disguise. REFLECTION. This is to caution us against all superfluous and dangerous desires. Our own lot is best, and by aiming at what we have not, and what is impossible to be had, we |