"I must beg pardon of my readers that, for this time I have, I fear, huddled up my discourse, having been very busy in helping an old friend out of town. He has a very good estate and is a man of wit; but he has been three years absent from town, and cannot bear a jest; for which I have with some pains convinced him that he can no more live here than if he were a downright bankrupt. He was so fond of dear London that he began to fret, only inwardly; but being unable to laugh and be laughed at, I took a place in the Northern coach for him and his family; and hope he has got to-night safe from all sneerers in his own parlour. "To know what a Toast is in the country gives as much perplexity as she herself does in town; and indeed the learned differ very much upon the original of this word, and the acceptation of it among the moderns; however, it is agreed to have a cheerful and joyous import. A toast in a cold morning, heightened by nutmeg, and sweetened with sugar, has for many ages been given to our rural dispensers of justice before they entered upon causes, and has been of great politic use to take off the severity of their sentences; but has indeed been remarkable for one ill effect, that it inclines those who use it immoderately to speak Latin; to the admiration rather than information of an audience. This application of a toast makes it very obvious that the word may, without a metaphor, be understood as an apt name for a thing which raises us in the most sovereign degree; but many of the Wits of the last age will assert that the word in its present sense was known among them in their youth, and had its rise from an accident in the town of Bath in the reign of King Charles the Second. It happened that on a public day, a celebrated beauty of those times was in the Cross Bath, and one of the crowd of her admirers took a glass of water in which the fair one stood, and drank her health to the company. There was in the place a gay fellow half fuddled, who swore that though he liked not the liquor, he would take the toast. He was opposed in his resolution, yet this whim gave foundation to the present honor which is due to the lady we mention in our liquors, who has ever since been called a Toast."[7] Courtships, and the hopes and fears of Shepherds and Shepherdesses, form many tender and classic episodes throughout this periodical--