but I cannot perceive that
she is more free from disquiet than those whose understandings take a
wider range. Her marigolds, when they are almost cured, are often
scattered by the wind, the rain sometimes falls upon fruit when it
ought to be gathered dry. While her artificial wines are fermenting,
her whole life is restlessness and anxiety. Her sweetmeats are not
always bright, and the maid sometimes forgets the just proportion of
salt and pepper, when venison is to be baked. Her conserves mould, her
wines sour, and pickles mother; and, like all the rest of mankind, she
is every day mortified with the defeat of her schemes and the
disappointment of her hopes.

With regard to vice and virtue she seems a kind of neutral being. She
has no crime but luxury, nor any virtue but chastity; she has no
desire to be praised but for her cookery; nor wishes any ill to the
rest of mankind, but that whenever they aspire to a feast, their
custards may be wheyish, and their pie-crusts tough.

I am now very impatient to know whether I am to look on these ladies
as the great pattern of our sex, and to consider conserves and pickles
as the business of my life; whether the censures which I now suffer be
just, and whether the brewers of wines, and the distillers of washes,
have a right to look with insolence on the weakness of

CORNELIA.

_Samuel Johnson._

THE STAGE COACH

To _The Adventurer_.

Sir,

It has been observed, I think, by Sir WILLIAM TEMPLE, and after him by
almost every other writer, that England affords a greater variety of
characters than the rest of the world. This is ascribed to the liberty
prevailing amongst us, which gives every man the privilege of being
wise or foolish his own way, and preserves him from the necessity of
hypocrisy or the servility of imitation.

That the position itself is true, I am not completely satisfied. To be
nearly acquainted with the people of different countries can happen to
very few; and in life, as in every thing else beheld at a distance,
there appears an even uniformity: the petty discriminations which
diversify the natural character, are not discoverable but by a close
inspection; we, therefore, find them most at home, because there we
have most opportunities of remarking them. Much less am I convinced,
that his peculiar diversification, if it be real, is the consequence
of peculiar liberty; for where is the government to be found that
superintend