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 ever. 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.

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

lose what we have already. No man goes out of himself but to his loss. Imitation is servile, let it be where, how, and what it will. Nature points out to us which way every man's talent and genius lies; and he that keeps to his own province, or bias, speeds best. The painting of the Daw like a Pigeon, did not make him one, neither can any man do himself right in another person's shape: besides, that when he is once out, it is hard to find his way home again. The hypocrite is never so far from being a good christian, as when he looks likest one. It is much a case with a faction in a government, and a Daw in a pigeon-house. There is a fraud driven on, and they assimilate themselves, as much as may be, to the interests they propose to be the better for. They put on all appearances in matter of opinion, practice, and pretence, suitable to the humour they are to join withal: but still some unlucky accident or other happens to discover them in the end, and then, when they would go off again, the people of their own plume and colour beat them away, and refuse to entertain them. This is no more than what we find to be true in all turns of state. Double-dealers may pass muster for a while, but all parties wash their hands of them in the conclusion.

THERE was once a Dog that could beat all his fellows, and was so puffed up with the glory of his exploits, that nothing would serve him but he must challenge a Bull to the combat. They met, and after a short encounter, the Dog lay for dead; but coming to himself again, "Well," says he, "this is the fruit of my insolence and folly, in provoking an enemy, that nature has made my superior."

REFLECTION.

It is not courage, but temerity, for men to venture their lives, reputations, and fortunes upon unequal encounters; unless where they are obliged by an overruling impulse of honour, conscience, and duty, to stand all hazards. That, which the world accounts brave, is,