always sharpened his appetite, and ordered me a toast and a glass of
wine after my walk. He told me much of the pleasures he found in
retirement, and wondered what had kept him so long out of the country.
After dinner company came in, and Mr. Drugget again repeated the praises
of the country, recommended the pleasures of meditation, and told them
that he had been all the morning at the window, counting the carriages
as they passed before him.

No. 17. SATURDAY, AUGUST 5, 1758.

_Surge tandem Carnifex_[1]. MAECENAS AD AUGUSTUM.

The rainy weather, which has continued the last month, is said to have
given great disturbance to the inspectors of barometers. The oraculous
glasses have deceived their votaries; shower has succeeded shower,
though they predicted sunshine and dry skies; and, by fatal confidence
in these fallacious promises, many coats have lost their gloss, and many
curls been moistened to flaccidity.

This is one of the distresses to which mortals subject themselves by the
pride of speculation. I had no part in this learned disappointment, who
am content to credit my senses, and to believe that rain will fall when
the air blackens, and that the weather will be dry when the sun is
bright. My caution, indeed, does not always preserve me from a shower.
To be wet may happen to the genuine Idler; but to be wet in opposition
to theory, can befall only the Idler that pretends to be busy. Of those
that spin out life in trifles and die without a memorial, many flatter
themselves with high opinions of their own importance, and imagine that
they are every day adding some improvement to human life. To be idle and
to be poor have always been reproaches, and therefore every man
endeavours, with his utmost care, to hide his poverty from others, and
his idleness from himself.

Among those whom I never could persuade to rank themselves with Idlers,
and who speak with indignation of my morning sleeps and nocturnal
rambles; one passes the day in catching spiders, that he may count their
eyes with a microscope; another erects his head, and exhibits the dust
of a marigold separated from the flower with a dexterity worthy of
Leuwenhoeck himself. Some turn the wheel of electricity; some suspend
rings to a load-stone, and find that what they did yesterday they can do
again to-day. Some register the changes of the wind, and die fully
convinced that the wind is changeable.

There are men yet more profound, who have heard t