In this view, however elevated or depressed the hero of the piece may be, some useful instruction may still be gained, as we find ourselves more or less interested in his transactions. In relating the splendid actions of ambitious heroes, little is offered that can be adopted or imitated by the most numerous class of society; but in detailing the events concomitant with the most miserable penury, a lesson is produced fraught with wisdom, the chief purport of which is to show in what estimation riches are in the eyes of God, who wisely and equally condemns to human distress, the miser that scrapes, and the spendthrift that scatters. Avarice, the most degrading of all passions to the understanding, and the most deleterious to our happiness, exhibits a humiliating picture of human nature, and most impressively illustrates the undeniable truth, that wealth cannot grant ease to its possessor; but, on the contrary, fills him with the most alarming fears for the safety of this imaginary good, and naturally suggests the most consolatory reflection to forbearing poverty, whose unequal share in the distribution of wealth is more than counterbalanced by the comparison. With this view is here presented to the public, the following exact particulars of the most remarkable instances of the misery which is ever attendant upon the mind cursed with the insanity of saving. It appears by the parish register, that Mr. Daniel Dancer was born in the year 1716, and was the eldest of four children, three sons and a daughter. His father lived on Harrow-Weald Common, near Harrow on the Hill, where he possessed property to a very considerable amount, and which his son, by the most determined and whimsical abstemiousness, increased to upwards of three thousand pounds per annum. The years of his minority probably passed unnoticed, as nothing is recorded of him in his youth that might indicate the singularity and propensity to _save_, which so peculiarly distinguished his maturer years; but a detail of his actions is now offered to the world, as the most perfect examples of _saving knowledge_, and how misery may be multiplied by self-denial, for the purpose of accumulating useless riches. Mr. Dancer, as before observed, had a sister, whose disposition to reserve perfectly accorded with his own; and, as they lived together many years, their stories are necessarily connected, and will furnish, in the sequel, the most melancholy and degrading instance of the infirmity and folly of human nature.