ossessor, how often it has been forfeited by treason, or how often sold
by prodigality. The power or wealth of the present inhabitants of a
country cannot be much increased by an inquiry after the names of those
barbarians, who destroyed one another twenty centuries ago, in contests
for the shelter of woods, or convenience of pasturage. Yet we see that
no man can be at rest in the enjoyment of a new purchase till he has
learned the history of his grounds from the ancient inhabitants of the
parish, and that no nation omits to record the actions of their
ancestors, however bloody, savage, and rapacious.

The same disposition, as different opportunities call it forth,
discovers itself in great or little things. I have always thought it
unworthy of a wise man to slumber in total inactivity, only because he
happens to have no employment equal to his ambition or genius; it is
therefore my custom to apply my attention to the objects before me, and
as I cannot think any place wholly unworthy of notice that affords a
habitation to a man of letters, I have collected the history and
antiquities of the several garrets in which I have resided.

Quantulacunque estis, vos ego magna voco.

How small to others, but how great to me!

Many of these narratives my industry has been able to extend to a
considerable length; but the woman with whom I now lodge has lived only
eighteen months in the house, and can give no account of its ancient
revolutions; the plaisterer having, at her entrance, obliterated, by his
white-wash, all the smoky memorials which former tenants had left upon
the ceiling, and perhaps drawn the veil of oblivion over politicians,
philosophers, and poets.

When I first, cheapened my lodgings, the landlady told me, that she
hoped I was not an author, for the lodgers on the first floor had
stipulated that the upper rooms should not be occupied by a noisy trade.
I very readily promised to give no disturbance to her family, and soon
despatched a bargain on the usual terms.

I had not slept many nights in my new apartment before I began to
inquire after my predecessors, and found my landlady, whose imagination
is filled chiefly with her own affairs, very ready to give me
information.

Curiosity, like all other desires, produces pain as wel as pleasure.
Before she began her narrative, I had heated my head with expectations
of adventures and discoveries, of elegance in disguise, and learning in
distress; and was some