to comply. We had many books to teach us our more important duties,
and to settle opinions in philosophy or politics; but an arbiter
elegantiarum, (a judge of propriety) was yet wanting who should survey
the track of daily conversation, and free it from thorns and prickles,
which tease the passer, though they do not wound him. For this purpose
nothing is so proper as the frequent publication of short papers, which
we read, not as study, but amusement. If the subject be slight, the
treatise is short. The busy may find time, and the idle may find
patience. This mode of conveying cheap and easy knowledge began among us
in the civil war, when it was much the interest of either party to raise
and fix the prejudices of the people. At that time appeared Mercurius
Aulicus, Mercurius Rusticus, and Mercurius Civicus. It is said that when
any title grew popular, it was stolen by the antagonist, who by this
stratagem conveyed his notions to those who would not have received him
had he not worn the appearance of a friend. The tumult of those
unhappy days left scarcely any man leisure to treasure up occasional
compositions; and so much were they neglected that a complete collection
is nowhere to be found.

These Mercuries were succeeded by L'Estrange's Observator; and that by
Lesley's Rehearsal, and perhaps by others; but hitherto nothing had
been conveyed to the people, in this commodious manner, but controversy
relating to the Church or State; of which they taught many to talk, whom
they could not teach to judge.

It has been suggested that the Royal Society was instituted soon after
the Restoration to divert the attention of the people from public
discontent. The Tatler and Spectator had the same tendency; they were
published at a time when two parties--loud, restless, and violent,
each with plausible declarations, and each perhaps without any distinct
termination of its views--were agitating the nation; to minds heated
with political contest they supplied cooler and more inoffensive
reflections; and it is said by Addison, in a subsequent work, that they
had a perceptible influence upon the conversation of that time, and
taught the frolic and the gay to unite merriment with decency--an effect
which they can never wholly lose while they continue to be among the
first books by which both sexes are initiated in the elegances of
knowledge.

The Tatler and Spectator adjusted, like Casa, the unsettled practice
of daily intercourse b