es of elections; can wash a blackamoor white; make a saint of
an atheist, and a patriot of a profligate; can furnish foreign
ministers with intelligence and raise or let fall the credit of the
nation. This goddess flies with a huge looking-glass in her hands, to
dazzle the crowd, and make them see, according as she turns it, their
ruin in their interest, and their interest in their ruin. In this
glass you will behold your best friends, clad in coats powdered with
fleurs-de-lis, and triple crowns; their girdles hung round with
chains, and beads, and wooden shoes; and your worst enemies adorned
with the ensigns of liberty, property, indulgence, moderation, and a
cornucopia in their hands. Her large wings, like those of a flying
fish, are of no use but while they are moist; she therefore dips them
in mud, and soaring aloft scatters it in the eyes of the multitude,
flying with great swiftness; but at every turn is forced to stoop in
dirty ways for new supplies.

I have been sometimes thinking, if a man had the art of the second
sight for seeing lies, as they have in Scotland for seeing spirits,
how admirably he might entertain himself in this town by observing the
different shapes, sizes, and colors of those swarms of lies which buzz
about the heads of some people, like flies about a horses' ears in
summer; or those legions hovering every afternoon in Exchange alley,
enough to darken the air; or over a club of discontented grandees, and
thence sent down in cargoes to be scattered at elections.

IV

A MEDITATION UPON A BROOMSTICK[113]

This single stick, which you now behold ingloriously lying in that
neglected corner, I once knew in a flourishing state in a forest. It
was full of sap, full of leaves, and full of boughs; but now in vain
does the busy art of man pretend to vie with nature, by tying that
withered bundle of twigs to its sapless trunk; it is now at best but
the reverse of what it was, a tree turned upside down, the branches on
the earth, and the root in the air; it is now handled by every dirty
wench, condemned to do her drudgery, and, by a capricious kind of
fate, destined to make other things clean, and be nasty itself; at
length, worn to the stumps in the service of the maids, it is either
thrown out-of-doors, or condemned to the last use of kindling a fire.
When I beheld this I sighed, and said within myself, "Surely mortal
man is a broomstick!" Nature sent him into the world strong and lusty,
i