fame calamity. However, the thought of the propofer arofe from a very good motive, and the parcelling of ourselves out, as called to particular acts of beneficence, would be a pretty cement of society and virtue. It is the ordinary foundation for mens holding a commerce with each other, and becoming familiar, that they agree in the fame fort of pleafure; and fure it may also be some reason for amity, that they are under one common distress. If all the rich who are lame in the gout, from a life of ease, pleasure and luxury, would help those few who have it without a previous life of pleasure, and add a few of fuch laborious men, who are become lame from unhappy blows, falls, or other accidents of age or fickness; I fay, would fuch gouty perfons administer to the neceffities of men disabled like themfelves, the consciousness of such a behaviour would be the best julep, cordial, and anodyne in the feverish, faint and tormenting viciffitudes of that miferable diftemper. The fame may be faid of all other, both bodily and intellectual evils. Thefe claffes of charity would certainly bring down bleffings upon an age and people; and if men were not petrified with the love of this world, againit all fenfe of the commerce which ought to be among them, it would not be an unreafonable bill for a poor man in the agony of pain, aggravated by want and poverty, to draw upon a fick alderman after this form: Mr. Bafil Plenty, SIR, r Cripple-Gate, OU have the gout and flone, with fixty thousand pound flerling; I have the gout and stone, not worth one farthing; I shall pray for you, and defire you would pay the bearer twenty fhillings for value received from, SIR, Your humble fervant, The reader's own imagination will fuggeft to him the reasonableness of fuch correfpondences, and diverfify N5 them them into a thousand forms; but I fhall close this as I began upon the fubject of blindnefs. The following letter feems to be written by a man of learning, who is returned to his ftudy after a fufpence of an ability to do fo. The benefit he reports himself to have received, may well claim the handsomest encomium he can give the operator. 6 6 Mr. SPECTATOR, R Uminating lately on your admirable difcourfes on the Pleafures of the Imagination, I began to confider to which of our fenfes we are obliged for the greatest and most important fhare of thofe pleafures; and I foon concluded that it was to the fight: That is the fovereign of the fenfes, and mother of all the arts and fciences, that have refined the rudeness of the uncultivated mind to a politenefs that diftinguishes the fine fpirits from the barbarous gout of the great vulgar and the mall. The fight is the obliging benefactress that beflows on us the most tranfporting fenfations that we have from the various and wonderful products of Nature. To the fight we owe the amazing difcoveries of the height, magnitude, and motion of the planets; their feveral revo⚫lutions about their common centre of light, heat and motion, the fun. The fight travels yet farther to the fixed ftars, and furnishes the understanding with folid • reasons to prove, that each of them is a fun moving 6 on its own axis in the center of its own vortex or turbillion, and performing the fame offices to its dependent planets, that our glorious fun does to this. But the inquiries of the fight will not be ftopped here, but make their progrefs through the immenfe expanfe of the Milky Way, and there divide the blended fires of the Galaxy into infinite and different worlds, made up of diftinct funs, and their peculiar equipages of planets, till unable to purfue this track any farther, it deputes the imagination to go on to new discoveries, till it fill the unbounded space with endless worlds. 4 The fight informs the ftatuary's chifel with power to give breath to lifeless brafs and marble, and the painter's painter's pencil to fwell the flat canvas with moving figures actuated by imaginary fouls. Mufick indeed may plead another original, fince Jubal, by the dif ⚫ferent falls of his hammer on the anvil, difcover'd by the ear the first rude mufick that pleas'd the ante⚫ diluvian fathers; but then the fight has not only reduced thofe wilder founds into artful order and harmony, but conveys that harmony to the most diftant parts of the world without the help of found. To the fight we owe not only all the difcoveries of philofophy, but all the divine imagery of poetry that tranfports the intelligent reader of Homer, Milton, and Virgil. ་ As the fight has polifhed the world, so does it fupply us with the moft grateful and lafting pleafure. Let love, let friendship, paternal affection, filial piety, and conjugal duty, declare the joys the fight beftows on a meeting after abfence. But it would be endless to enumerate all the pleasures and advantages of fight; every one that has it, every hour he makes ufe of it, finds them, feels them, enjoys them. Thus as our greateft pleasures and knowledge are ' derived from the fight, fo has Providence been more 'curious in the formation of its feat, the eye, than of the organs of the other fenfes. That ftupendous ⚫ machine is compofed in a wonderful manner of mufcles, membranes, and humours. Its motions are admirably directed by the mufcles; the perfpicuity of the humours tranfmit the rays of light; the rays are regularly refracted by their figure, the black lining of the fclerotis effectually prevents their being con'founded by reflexion. It is wonderful indeed to con'fider how many objects the eye is fitted to take in at once, and fucceffively in an instant, and at the fame time to make a judgment of their pofition, figure, or colour. It watches againft our dangers, guides our fteps, and lets in all the vifible objects, whofe beauty and variety inftruct and delight. The pleafures and advantages of fight being fo great, the lofs muft be very grievous of which Milton, from experience, gives the most fenfible idea, • both • both in the third book of his Paradife Loft, and in his Sampson Agonistes. To Light in the former. Thee I revifit safe, And feel thy fou'reign vital lamp; but thou And a little after. Seafons return, but not to me returns Of Nature's works, to me expung'd and raz'd, Again in Sampson Agonistes. But chief of all, Olofs of fight! of thee I moft complain; Annull'd Still as a fool, In pow'r of others, never in my own, Scarce half I feem to live, dead more than half : Without all hopes of day. The enjoyment of fight then being fo great a bleffing, and the lofs of it fo terrible an evil, how excellent • and 6 and valuable is the skill of that artift which can restore the former, and redress the latter? My frequent peru'fal of the advertisements in the publick News-Papers (generally the most agreeable entertainment they afford) has prefented me with many and various benefits of this kind done to my countrymen by that skilful artist Dr. Grant, her Majefty's oculift extraordinary, whofe happy hand has brought and reftored to fight feveral hundreds in lefs than four years. Many have ' received fight by his means who came blind from their mothers womb, as in the famous inftance of Jones of Newington. I myself have been cured by him of a 'weakness in my eyes next to blindness, and am ready to believe any thing that is reported of his ability this way; and know that many, who could not purchase his affistance with money, have enjoy'd it from his charity. But a lift of particulars would fwell my let⚫ter beyond its bounds, what I have faid being fufficient to comfort those who are in the like distress, fince they may conceive hopes of being no longer miferable in this kind, while there is yet alive so able an oculift as Dr. Grant. 6 સ્વ T I am the SPECTATOR's humble fervant, PHILANTHROPUS, Tuesday, |
