For these, and other men of leisure, a kind of paper differing from the _Tatler_, which proposed only to retail the various species of gossip in the coffee-houses, was required, and the new entertainment was provided by the original design of an imaginary club, consisting of several ideal types of character grouped round the central figure of the Spectator. They represent considerable classes or sections of the community, and are, as a rule, men of strongly marked opinions, prejudices, and foibles, which furnish inexhaustible matter of comment to the Spectator himself, who delivers the judgments of reason and common-sense. Sir Roger de Coverley, with his simplicity, his high sense of honour, and his old-world reminiscences, reflects the country gentleman of the best kind; Sir Andrew Freeport expresses the opinions of the enterprising, hard-headed, and rather hard-hearted moneyed interest; Captain Sentry speaks for the army; the Templar for the world of taste and learning; the clergyman for theology and philosophy; while Will Honeycomb, the elderly man of fashion, gives the Spectator many opportunities for criticizing the traditions of morality and breeding surviving from the days of the Restoration. Thus, instead of the division of places which determined the arrangement of the _Tatler_, the different subjects treated in the _Spectator_ are distributed among a variety of persons: the Templar is substituted for the Grecian Coffee-House and Will's; Will Honeycomb takes the place of White's; and Captain Sentry, whose appearances are rare, stands for the more voluminous article on foreign intelligence published in the old periodical, under the head of St. James's. The Spectator himself finds a natural prototype in Isaac Bickerstaff, but his character is drawn with a far greater finish and delicacy, and is much more essential to the design of the paper which he conducts, than was that of the old astrologer. The aim of the Spectator was to establish a rational standard of conduct in morals, manners, art, and literature.