Eudoxus and Leontine began the world with small estates. They were both of them men of good sense and great virtue. They prosecuted their studies together in their earlier years, and entered into such a friendship as lasted to the end of their lives. Eudoxus, at his first setting out in the world, threw himself into a court, where by his natural endowments and his acquired abilities he (150: 5) made his way from one post to another, till at length he had raised a very considerable fortune. Leontine, on the contrary, sought all opportunities of improving his mind by study, conversation, and travel. He was not only acquainted with all the sciences, but with the most eminent (10) professors of them throughout Europe. He knew perfectly well the interests of its princes, with the customs and fashions of their courts, and could scarce meet with the name of an extraordinary person in the _Gazette_ whom he had not either talked to or seen. In short, he (15) had so well mixed and digested his knowledge of men and books, that he made one of the most accomplished persons of his age. During the whole course of his studies and travels, he kept up a punctual correspondence with Eudoxus, who often made himself acceptable to the (20) principal men about court by the intelligence which he received from Leontine. When they were both turned of forty,--an age in which, according to Mr. Cowley, "there is no dallying with life,"--they determined, pursuant to the resolution they had taken in the beginning of their (25) lives, to retire, and pass the remainder of their days in the country. In order to this, they both of them married much about the same time. Leontine, with his own and his wife's fortune, bought a farm of three hundred a year, which lay within the neighbourhood of his friend Eudoxus, who had purchased an estate of as many thousands. They were both of them fathers about the same time; Eudoxus having a son born to him, and Leontine a daughter: but, to the unspeakable grief of the latter, his (151: 5) young wife, in whom all his happiness was wrapt up, died in a few days after the birth of her daughter. His affliction would have been insupportable had not he been comforted by the daily visits and conversations of his friend. As they were one day talking together with their (10) usual intimacy, Leontine considering how incapable he was of giving his daughter a proper education in his own house, and Eudoxus reflecting on the ordinary behaviour of a son who knows himself to be the heir of a great estate, they both agreed upon an exchange of children: (15) namely, that the boy should be bred up with Leontine as his son, and that the girl should live with Eudoxus as his daughter, till they were each of them arrived at years of discretion. The wife of Eudoxus, knowing that her son could not be so advantageously brought up as under the (20)