s with contempt, and received and dismissed them
with surly silence.

My master was afraid lest the shop should suffer by this change of my
behaviour; and, therefore, after some expostulations, posted me in the
warehouse, and preserved me from the danger and reproach of desertion,
to which my discontent would certainly have urged me, had I continued
any longer behind the counter.

In the sixth year of my servitude my brother died of drunken joy, for
having run down a fox that had baffled all the packs in the province. I
was now heir, and with the hearty consent of my master commenced
gentleman. The adventures in which my new character engaged me shall be
communicated in another letter, by, Sir,

Yours, &c.

MISOCAPELUS.

No. 117. TUESDAY, APRIL 30, 1751.

[Greek: Hossan ep Oulumpo memasan Themen autar ep Ossae
Paelion einosiphullon, in ouranos ambatos eiae.] HOMER, Od.
[Greek: L] 314.

The gods they challenge, and affect the skies:
Heav'd on Olympus tott'ring Ossa stood;
On Ossa, Pelion nods with all his wood. POPE.

TO THE RAMBLER.

SIR,

Nothing has more retarded the advancement of learning than the
disposition of vulgar minds to ridicule and vilify what they cannot
comprehend. All industry must be excited by hope; and as the student
often proposes no other reward to himself than praise, he is easily
discouraged by contempt and insult. He who brings with him into a
clamorous multitude the timidity of recluse speculation, and has never
hardened his front in publick life, or accustomed his passions to the
vicissitudes and accidents, the triumphs and defeats of mixed
conversation, will blush at the stare of petulant incredulity, and
suffer himself to be driven by a burst of laughter, from the fortresses
of demonstration. The mechanist will be afraid to assert before hardy
contradiction, the possibility of tearing down bulwarks with a
silk-worm's thread; and the astronomer of relating the rapidity of
light, the distance of the fixed stars, and the height of the lunar
mountains.

If I could by any efforts have shaken off this cowardice, I had not
sheltered myself under a borrowed name, nor applied to you for the means
of communicating to the publick the theory of a garret; a subject which,
except some slight and transient strictures, has been hitherto neglected
by those who were best qualified to adorn it, either for want of leisure
to prosecute the various researches in which a nice discus