r. Robinson Crusoe, Mariner, and writers of his class.
_These_ have no object in setting themselves right with the public or
their own consciences; these have no motive for concealment or
half-truths; these call for no more confidence than I can cheerfully give,
and do not force me to tax my credulity or to fortify it by evidence. I
take up a volume of Dr. Smollett, or a volume of the _Spectator_, and say
the fiction carries a greater amount of truth in solution than the volume
which purports to be all true. Out of the fictitious book I get the
expression of the life of the time; of the manners, of the movement, the
dress, the pleasures, the laughter, the ridicules of society--the old times
live again, and I travel in the old country of England. Can the heaviest
historian do more for me?"

As we read in these delightful volumes of the _Tatler_ and _Spectator_,
the past age returns, the England of our ancestors is revivified. The
Maypole rises in the Strand again in London; the churches are thronged
with daily worshippers; the beaux are gathering in the coffee-houses; the
gentry are going to the Drawing-room; the ladies are thronging to the
toy-shops; the chairmen are jostling in the streets; the footmen are
running with links before the chariots, or fighting round the theatre
doors. In the country I see the young Squire riding to Eton with his
servants behind him, and Will Wimble, the friend of the family, to see him
safe. To make that journey from the Squire's and back, Will is a week on
horseback. The coach takes five days between London and Bath. The judges
and the bar ride the circuit. If my lady comes to town in her
post-chariot, her people carry pistols to fire a salute on Captain
Macheath if he should appear, and her couriers ride ahead to prepare
apartments for her at the great caravanserais on the road; Boniface
receives her under the creaking sign of the "Bell" or the "Ram", and he
and his chamberlains bow her up the great stair to the state-apartments,
whilst her carriage rumbles into the courtyard, where the Exeter "Fly" is
housed that performs the journey in eight days, God willing, having
achieved its daily flight of twenty miles, and landed its passengers for
supper and sleep. The curate is taking his pipe in the kitchen, where the
Captain's man--having hung up his master's half-pike--is at his bacon and
eggs, bragging of Ramillies and Malplaquet to the townsfolk, who have
their club in the chimney-corner.