“----My voice is still for war! Gods, can a Roman Senate long debate Which of the two to choose--slavery or death!” I suppose that speech may have slipped out of modern reader-books; but it used to make one of the stock declamations, on which ambitious school-boys of my time spent great floods of fervid elocution. Addison wrote somewhat, as I have said, for Steele’s first periodic venture in the _Tatler_, attracted by its opportunities and the graces of it; and they together plotted and carried into execution the publication of the _Spectator_. I trust that its quiet elegance has not altogether fallen away from the knowledge of this generation of young people. Dr. Johnson, you know, said of its Addison papers, that whoever would write English well should give his days and nights to their perusal. Yet such a journal could and would never succeed now: it does not deal with questions of large and vital interest; its sentences do not crackle and blaze with the heat we look for in the preachments of our time. Its leisurely discourse--placid as summer brooks--would beguile us to sleep. A ream of old _Spectators_ discussing proprieties and modesties would not put one of our daring ball-room belles to the blush. The talk of these old gentlemen about the minor morals were too mild, perhaps too merciful; yet it is well to know of them; and one can go to a great many worse quarters than the _Spectator_, even now, for proper hints about etiquette, manners, and social proprieties. _Sir Roger De Coverley._ Whatever other writings of these gallant gentlemen and teachers of Queen Anne’s time the reader may have upon his shelves, he cannot do better than equip them with that little story (excerpted from the _Spectator_) of “Sir Roger De Coverley.” No truer or more winning picture of worthy old English knighthood can you find anywhere in literature; nowhere such a tender twilight color falling through books upon old English country homes. Those papers made the scaffolding by which our own Irving built up his best stories about English country homesteads, and English revels of Christmas; and the De Coverley echoes sound sweetly and surely all up and down the pages of _Bracebridge Hall_. The character of Sir Roger will live forever--so gracious--so courteous--so dignified--so gentle: his servants love him, and his dogs, and his white gelding. “It being a cold day,” says his old butler, “when he made his will, he left for mourning to every man in the parish a great frieze coat, and to every woman a black riding-hood. Captain Sentry showed great kindnesses to the old house-dog my master was so fond of. It would have gone to your heart to have heard the moans the dumb creature made on the day of my master’s death. He has never joyed himself since--no more has any of us.”